The www.dontow.com is the website of Don M. Tow. It contains articles in three topical categories (or pages): Political/Social Commentary, Taiji, and Other Topics. Currently, a new release of this website is published usually every three months. The website also has a fourth category “Soccer” about the soccer book that I published in 2006.
Any article in a particular category can be accessed via the corresponding category on the menu bar at the top of the page. Any article in a particular release can be accessed via the corresponding release on the right sidebar.
This website began in October 2006, and the website has been redesigned twice, once in October 2008, and the second time in November 2009.
Due to WordPress is no longer supporting the “theme” (Modern Style) I have used for my website for more than the past 15 years, I will need to choose another WordPress theme in the future. At that time, changing the “theme” will change the structure and appearance of my website.
We welcome comments from readers. Readers can directly submit their comments at the end of any article.
Important Announcement I – United States is changing its basic structure to the world. The world can see more clearly what the real U.S is like.
Important Announcement II – My health
Due to my recent health issues, my health is not the same as before. I have lost a lot of my basic memory. Fortunately, a lot of my long term memory seems to be there. I will not update my website as frequently as before.
Important Announcement III – My book talk
My book talk on my book The Yin and Yang of the Dragon and the Eagle: Tale of Two Cultures and Two Countries will be on Thursday October 29, 2026 from 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM. The 10/29/2026 talk will be a private talk at our church, but it will be a taped talk which can be repeated at other occasions.
July 2026Comments Off on A South China Morning Post Editorial “How Chinese philosophy influenced US founding fathers”
This was an editorial opinion by Chow Chung-yan, Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on 6/26/2026. I am reprinting this article.
“Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, published the sayings of Confucius in his colonial newspaper and today’s sculpture recognising that ancient Chinese age is carved into the face of the United States Supreme Court very proudly,” said US President Donald Trump in Beijing last month.
[Of all the presidents of the U.S., such a positive comment coming from President Trump, who has been very critical of China, must be true and meaningful. This comment was not part of the original editorial comment by Mr. Chow, it is an added comment by me.]
It took two-and-a-half centuries for an American president to explicitly acknowledge the profound Chinese impact on the US founding fathers. Trump’s recent declaration could be a historical first. Unless archival evidence surfaces to suggest otherwise, he is the first US president to formally recognise this intellectual gap on the world stage.
This admission stands in stark contrast to our current geopolitical discourse. Today, Western political commentary frequently depicts China as the ultimate cultural and ideological antithesis to the West. Yet, a deeper dive into history reveals that ancient Chinese philosophy did not just sit on the periphery of Western thought; it actively inspired both the European Enlightenment and the American founders.
To see this connection hidden in plain sight, one need only look at the architecture of American democracy itself. Sitting atop the East Pediment of the US Supreme Court building is a monumental trio of ancient lawgivers: Moses, Solon and Confucius.
Sculpted by Hermon MacNeil in the 1930s under the direction of architect Cass Gilbert, these figures were chosen to represent the core foundational pillars of American jurisprudence. MacNeil wanted to trace the lineage of American law. He included Confucius because he believed that true justice must prioritise collective civic virtue and social harmony over mere individual rights. Today, this statue of Confucius sits directly above the window of the chief justice’s office suite, serving as a silent, historic guardian watching over the highest judicial seat in America.
The Supreme Court pediment, however, is merely the physical manifestation of a deep intellectual current. While it would be a stretch to suggest that Thomas Jefferson sat down with The Analects to draft the Declaration of Independence, the structural parallels between ancient Chinese thought and American revolutionary ideals are unmistakable.
Then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and then state councillor Dai Bingguo applaud beside a portrait of former US president Thomas Jefferson during the signing of a memorandum of understanding on clean energy and climate change in Washington on July 28, 2009. Photo: EPA
Both Jefferson and Franklin were avid consumers of literature detailing Chinese governance. The declaration’s foundational premise that “all men are created equal” was a radical departure from the rigid British aristocratic class system. Historian Martin Powers, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, argues convincingly that the American founders did not construct their democratic and egalitarian frameworks in an intellectual vacuum. His research shows that both Jefferson and Franklin drew immense inspiration from Chinese political structures, particularly the concept of a merit-based state apparatus.
Jefferson championed what he termed a “natural aristocracy”, an elite class defined strictly by virtue, education and talent, rather than an “artificial aristocracy” anchored to birthright and inherited wealth. Franklin took this critique of inherited status a step further by directly citing Chinese tradition. Defending his opposition to hereditary honours, he wrote: “Thus among the Chinese, the most ancient, and from long Experience the wisest of Nations, honour does not descend, but ascends.” In the Chinese model, honours were granted to parents based on the achievements of their children, a concept that completely inverted European feudal logic.
Even the iconic American phrase “the pursuit of happiness”, traditionally credited to John Locke or the Greek philosopher Epicurus, heavily mirrors the Confucian and Mencian doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven. Mencius argued that the ultimate legitimacy of any government rests on a singular metric: its capacity to secure the tangible well-being and contentment of its populace. This philosophy remains the bedrock of Chinese governance today.
Furthermore, Mencius asserted that if a ruler fails this test and oppresses his people, he loses the Mandate of Heaven, giving the populace a legitimate right and moral duty to overthrow him. The rhetorical echo in the Declaration of Independence is striking. Jefferson writes that when a government becomes destructive to the people’s safety and happiness, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”.
People perform a commemoration ceremony for ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius and Mencius’ mother, in Zoucheng, Shandong province, on May 6, 2019. Photo: Xinhua
These ideological alignments are no historical accident. The American founders were children of the European Enlightenment – a movement that was deeply, unabashedly infatuated with China. During the 17th and 18th centuries, a massive wave of “Sinophilia” swept across Europe. Philosophers desperately seeking to reform societies fractured by religious warfare, monarchical corruption and clerical dogma looked to the East. As detailed accounts from Jesuit missionaries flooded the continent, Enlightenment thinkers weaponised Chinese philosophy as a blueprint for a rational, secular civilisation.
Voltaire was so captivated by these ideas that his writing desk, still preserved in the Paris Museum, was ornately decorated with Chinese landscapes. He viewed Confucianism as the purest expression of Deism – a belief in a rational creator grounded in human ethics and reason rather than divine revelation or the threat of eternal damnation. Similarly, Francois Quesnay, the leader of the French Physiocrats and a foundational mentor to Adam Smith, was so famously obsessed with Chinese governance that he was nicknamed the “Confucius of Europe”. Quesnay looked directly to the Daoist concept of Wuwei (action through inaction) as he formulated the economic doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism.
However, by the late 18th century, Europe’s intellectual romance with China began to curdle. The onset of the Industrial Revolution granted Western powers unprecedented military and technological dominance. A new generation of thinkers, typified by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, began rewriting global history. China was abruptly reframed – no longer an enlightened utopia of merit and reason, but a stagnant, frozen pool of “Oriental despotism”.
From that pivotal moment onwards, the West adopted the posture of a stern schoolmaster, attempting to reform China through trade, diplomacy or gunboat warfare. China’s foundational contributions to the Enlightenment were systematically minimised, forgotten and buried under a narrative of Western exceptionalism.
Admittedly, the early views held by Voltaire, Quesnay and Franklin were somewhat romanticised – but no more so than contemporary idealisations of the Magna Carta or Athenian democracy. By the time of the First Opium War in 1839, internal decay and centuries of self-imposed isolation had indeed left China vulnerable and corrupt. The myth of absolute Western cultural superiority became so pervasive that generations of Chinese intellectuals accepted it wholesale, leading to radical 20th-century movements aimed at completely eradicating traditional Chinese heritage.
Today, however, the pendulum is swinging back. Scholars and citizens are beginning to recognise the folly of completely dismissing a centuries-old civilisation. As the US approaches its historic 250th anniversary, there is a timely opportunity for thinkers on both sides of the Pacific to unearth these forgotten intellectual roots. By looking past modern political theatre and recognising the shared philosophical DNA that built the modern world, the oldest surviving and newest superpowers might finally foster a relationship rooted in genuine mutual respect.
Chow Chung-yan began his journalistic career at the South China Morning Post and rose to become Editor-in-Chief in 2025. He has been running the SCMP’s day-to-day news
July 2026Comments Off on July 2026 Update on US-China Relationship
With Trump in his second term as the President of the U.S., he has taken many actions that may be questionable from a legal perspective. Even if they are legal, they are definitely not for the benefits of the whole country, but only for the Republican Party and often for the benefits of Trump and his family.
Trump has manifested in his second term as the worst of himself. Not only that he is not serving as the President of the whole nation, he has manifested himself as the president of the Republican Party, and more specifically as the head of that part of the Republican Party that aligns fully with themselves and not the party representing the whole country. He has abandoned those who are not wealthy, he has abandoned those who are not as well established financially or as healthy or compensated by health insurance including government established health insurance. He has reduced funding for the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps) and for the Afforded Care Act (ACA), the comprehensive healthcare reform that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010. and commonly referred to as Obamacare.
His policies benefit the rich and those who can support themselves if they are faced with medical problems. He has abandoned the majority of the people who are not among the country’s wealthy class, he has diminished those government policies that can help the country’s poorer classes.
I think that there are two general policies that govern Trump’s presidency, especially his second term. He knows that the policies he plans to implement will not be popular, perhaps resulting in a lot of unrest. He wanted to have his military police under him to handle the public unrest. Since normally the police is under the state or local governments, he wanted his own police under his control. That was why he wanted the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to serve as his military police.
Secondly, he also knows his policies may be very unpopular and he may not be rated highly and knows that he may not have a lot of followers under his party and that is why he is creating the ground work for questioning various voting results. He also knows that he can unleash his conservative ultra rightish click of followers who tried to rise up to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. Many of these followers were arrested and sentenced to prison, but Trump pardoned them, and he may reuse them in the future. He is preparing to overrule whatever election results will turn out in the future. He is more than a dictator who plans to overthrow whatever popular voting will turn out.
This is Trump’s one two punch: (1) Military police with ICE under his control, and (2) preparing to question and overthrow popular elections using whatever means necessary.
July 2026Comments Off on July 2026 Update on Recovering on My Stroke
In my last update I provided in early part of June 2026, now i want to provide an update around July 10, 2026. There are two major issues. One is that in the last several weeks, i have lost my appetite. The second issue is that in the last several months, because of my lack of consistent training, i can no longer do my Taiji forms (e.g, the Yang Style Taiji 24 Form) properly.
First, let me discuss the first issue. After discussing with my primary physician Dr. Xu. She prescribed a medicine Megestrol Acetate 40 Mg taken twice a day that hopefully may increase my appetite (although. Dr. Xu already warmed me that that medicine may not do the trick). It is too early to determine whether that medicine would do the trick. Since it is not doing any harm, I will continue with that medicine. Related to the first issue is my self imposed restriction on my diet, e.g., no orange juice and no ice cream, which I found might have contributed to my loss of appetite. So I decided to remove that restriction and see whether my appetite may return. We should know in the next few weeks.
The second issue is that I can no longer stay steady when doing my Taiji forms. For example, I want to practice doing the Yang Style Taiji 24 Form, which I used to be able to do. However, because I haven’t practiced it for several months, I can no longer do it with a steady pace. I have a tendency to be unable to keep my feet and hands steady and in a position to keep my feet and hands oriented in a particular manner to maximize the rotation of the hip (and therefore maximize the power from the forms I am doing). Hopefully with consistent practice, I can recover my previous steadiness. This will just take more and more practice; so time will tell.
A South China Morning Post Editorial “How Chinese philosophy influenced US founding fathers”
This was an editorial opinion by Chow Chung-yan, Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on 6/26/2026. I am reprinting this article.
“Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, published the sayings of Confucius in his colonial newspaper and today’s sculpture recognising that ancient Chinese age is carved into the face of the United States Supreme Court very proudly,” said US President Donald Trump in Beijing last month.
[Of all the presidents of the U.S., such a positive comment coming from President Trump, who has been very critical of China, must be true and meaningful. This comment was not part of the original editorial comment by Mr. Chow, it is an added comment by me.]
It took two-and-a-half centuries for an American president to explicitly acknowledge the profound Chinese impact on the US founding fathers. Trump’s recent declaration could be a historical first. Unless archival evidence surfaces to suggest otherwise, he is the first US president to formally recognise this intellectual gap on the world stage.
This admission stands in stark contrast to our current geopolitical discourse. Today, Western political commentary frequently depicts China as the ultimate cultural and ideological antithesis to the West. Yet, a deeper dive into history reveals that ancient Chinese philosophy did not just sit on the periphery of Western thought; it actively inspired both the European Enlightenment and the American founders.
To see this connection hidden in plain sight, one need only look at the architecture of American democracy itself. Sitting atop the East Pediment of the US Supreme Court building is a monumental trio of ancient lawgivers: Moses, Solon and Confucius.
Sculpted by Hermon MacNeil in the 1930s under the direction of architect Cass Gilbert, these figures were chosen to represent the core foundational pillars of American jurisprudence. MacNeil wanted to trace the lineage of American law. He included Confucius because he believed that true justice must prioritise collective civic virtue and social harmony over mere individual rights. Today, this statue of Confucius sits directly above the window of the chief justice’s office suite, serving as a silent, historic guardian watching over the highest judicial seat in America.
The Supreme Court pediment, however, is merely the physical manifestation of a deep intellectual current. While it would be a stretch to suggest that Thomas Jefferson sat down with The Analects to draft the Declaration of Independence, the structural parallels between ancient Chinese thought and American revolutionary ideals are unmistakable.
Both Jefferson and Franklin were avid consumers of literature detailing Chinese governance. The declaration’s foundational premise that “all men are created equal” was a radical departure from the rigid British aristocratic class system. Historian Martin Powers, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, argues convincingly that the American founders did not construct their democratic and egalitarian frameworks in an intellectual vacuum. His research shows that both Jefferson and Franklin drew immense inspiration from Chinese political structures, particularly the concept of a merit-based state apparatus.
Jefferson championed what he termed a “natural aristocracy”, an elite class defined strictly by virtue, education and talent, rather than an “artificial aristocracy” anchored to birthright and inherited wealth. Franklin took this critique of inherited status a step further by directly citing Chinese tradition. Defending his opposition to hereditary honours, he wrote: “Thus among the Chinese, the most ancient, and from long Experience the wisest of Nations, honour does not descend, but ascends.” In the Chinese model, honours were granted to parents based on the achievements of their children, a concept that completely inverted European feudal logic.
Even the iconic American phrase “the pursuit of happiness”, traditionally credited to John Locke or the Greek philosopher Epicurus, heavily mirrors the Confucian and Mencian doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven. Mencius argued that the ultimate legitimacy of any government rests on a singular metric: its capacity to secure the tangible well-being and contentment of its populace. This philosophy remains the bedrock of Chinese governance today.
Furthermore, Mencius asserted that if a ruler fails this test and oppresses his people, he loses the Mandate of Heaven, giving the populace a legitimate right and moral duty to overthrow him. The rhetorical echo in the Declaration of Independence is striking. Jefferson writes that when a government becomes destructive to the people’s safety and happiness, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”.
These ideological alignments are no historical accident. The American founders were children of the European Enlightenment – a movement that was deeply, unabashedly infatuated with China. During the 17th and 18th centuries, a massive wave of “Sinophilia” swept across Europe. Philosophers desperately seeking to reform societies fractured by religious warfare, monarchical corruption and clerical dogma looked to the East. As detailed accounts from Jesuit missionaries flooded the continent, Enlightenment thinkers weaponised Chinese philosophy as a blueprint for a rational, secular civilisation.
Voltaire was so captivated by these ideas that his writing desk, still preserved in the Paris Museum, was ornately decorated with Chinese landscapes. He viewed Confucianism as the purest expression of Deism – a belief in a rational creator grounded in human ethics and reason rather than divine revelation or the threat of eternal damnation. Similarly, Francois Quesnay, the leader of the French Physiocrats and a foundational mentor to Adam Smith, was so famously obsessed with Chinese governance that he was nicknamed the “Confucius of Europe”. Quesnay looked directly to the Daoist concept of Wuwei (action through inaction) as he formulated the economic doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism.
However, by the late 18th century, Europe’s intellectual romance with China began to curdle. The onset of the Industrial Revolution granted Western powers unprecedented military and technological dominance. A new generation of thinkers, typified by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, began rewriting global history. China was abruptly reframed – no longer an enlightened utopia of merit and reason, but a stagnant, frozen pool of “Oriental despotism”.
From that pivotal moment onwards, the West adopted the posture of a stern schoolmaster, attempting to reform China through trade, diplomacy or gunboat warfare. China’s foundational contributions to the Enlightenment were systematically minimised, forgotten and buried under a narrative of Western exceptionalism.
Admittedly, the early views held by Voltaire, Quesnay and Franklin were somewhat romanticised – but no more so than contemporary idealisations of the Magna Carta or Athenian democracy. By the time of the First Opium War in 1839, internal decay and centuries of self-imposed isolation had indeed left China vulnerable and corrupt. The myth of absolute Western cultural superiority became so pervasive that generations of Chinese intellectuals accepted it wholesale, leading to radical 20th-century movements aimed at completely eradicating traditional Chinese heritage.
Today, however, the pendulum is swinging back. Scholars and citizens are beginning to recognise the folly of completely dismissing a centuries-old civilisation. As the US approaches its historic 250th anniversary, there is a timely opportunity for thinkers on both sides of the Pacific to unearth these forgotten intellectual roots. By looking past modern political theatre and recognising the shared philosophical DNA that built the modern world, the oldest surviving and newest superpowers might finally foster a relationship rooted in genuine mutual respect.
Chow Chung-yan began his journalistic career at the South China Morning Post and rose to become Editor-in-Chief in 2025. He has been running the SCMP’s day-to-day news