Labels will be the death of us. They strip away humanity. They cloud judgment. They are weaponized in a zero-sum quest for dominance. They are devilishly effective and dangerous. Because of this, label warfare must be vanquished. America epitomizes this truth. The United States of America is fast becoming an oxymoron. We just celebrated a tense, politicized 250th anniversary. Society has suffered a collapse in civics. In this environment, Liberal, Conservative, Capitalist, So

I was in China the past month. My last day coincided with the Presidents of China and America holding a summit in Beijing on Thursday. Did this summit, potentially the first of several this year, matter? And if so, to whom and why? I see a disconnect between the macro of the political theater on the national and global stages and the micro of the day-to-day concerns of the Chinese middle class. U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of

“ I will faithfully fulfill my responsibilities bestowed by the Constitution, with the nation’s needs as my mission and the people’s interests my yardstick. ” 1 China today is a reinvigorated successor to its “ Hundred Schools of Thought ” ancestors. Though China defies easy labeling, the melded legacy of the early Confucians and Legalists courses through Chinese society. We see this in statements such as that of Chinese leader Xi Jinping above and his overseeing of strict ru

“‘ The tendency of human nature to do good is like that of water to flow downward .’” 1 This 2,300-year-old statement by Mencius, second only to Confucius in the Confucian pantheon, would have been relatable, yet not, to Daoists Laozi and Zhuangzi who believed that the Way of nature is balanced. This distinction is representative of the freewheeling philosophical “Hundred Schools of Thought” discourse for hearts and minds that blossomed in the Chinese heartland during the hal

“Promote Civility and Cultivate New Social Norms” (Zhengzhou, China) “A successful society is one that is supported by a majority of the people.” This comment during a recent conversation led us down a new path. I would add that a successful society is also one in which the people are proud, confident, and satisfied with their place in the world. By this metric, the People’s Republic of China is currently more successful as a society than the United States of America. In othe

Chinese ship in Jiangsu, China (photo by Bing Shang on Unsplash.com) The rush of Chinese products in global markets is not caused by dark strategy or deceitful subsidies. It’s driven instead by something more dry and powerful: the fact that China’s tax and financial systems encourage companies to build more and faster over efficiency and profitability. It’s not ideology. It’s incentives, math, and momentum. And, lest I forget, the Chinese also make good stuff. Taxation China’

The message from China could not have been clearer this week. The People's Republic has re-emerged as a world leader with a goal of...

Andrew Singer Talks About China and America , Vol. 3, Issue 32 Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred Year Marathon lays out a stark, urgent premise worthy of a John le Carre novel: that China has been quietly and brilliantly executing a long-term, covert strategy to displace the United States as the world’s dominant superpower by 2049. According to Pillsbury, this is not just geopolitical rivalry. It is a methodical, calculated effort rooted in ancient stratagems and cloaked in de

Andrew Singer Talks About China and America, Vol. 3, Issue 30 China has always been molded by its land boundaries. Throughout recorded history, this is where the Han people of China encountered, fought, conquered, were conquered, and co-existed with numerous cultures and civilizations. China’s peripheries are fault lines. Borderlands that have been absorbed, resisted, erased, and reasserted over time. This was as true when a smaller, historic China was centered in the heartla

Andrew Singer Talks About China and America, Vol. 3, Issue 28 A friend and I were discussing the recent temporary tariff pause in the de...

Andrew Singer Talks About China and America, Vol. 3, Issue 27 I recently returned from almost a month in China, primarily spent in Henan...

Andrew Singer Talks About China and America, Vol. 3, Issue 21 I am not the only Substacker writing about China, America, and the changing...

Andrew Singer Talks About China and America, Vol. 3, Issue 9 The slates are set for the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The two main...

Andrew Singer Talks About China and America, Vol. 2, Issue 19 China boasts an energized, under-40 population of more than one half...