1. Mechanical Laws of Motion
2. Law of Gravitation
3. Thermodynamics
4. Electrodynamics (or Theory of Electricity and Magnetism)
5. Theory of Relativity (both Special Theory and General Theory)
6. Theory of the Nucleus and the Atoms
7. Quantum Physics
8. Quantum Electrodynamics (QED)
9. Discovery of the Weak Force and Formulation of the Electroweak Forc
10. Modern Building Blocks of Matter
11. Standard Model of Particle Physics
12. Bell’s Theorem and Ex[erimental Confirmation of Quantum Physics

However, as pointed out in that Dec. 2023 article, we also wrote ” that in spite of all the discoveries in the last half centrury, there are still several major mysteries:

• Dark matter:  Dark matter is matter in our universe which cannot be seen, because they don’t interact electromagnetically, and they don’t interact through the strong force and maybe also through the weak force, but they interact through the gravitational force.  Ordinary matter make up only about 5% of the universe, but dark matter consist of about 27%.
• Dark energy:  Dark energy is a theoretical repulsive force that counteracts gravity and causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate, and it makes up 68% of our universe.
• Matter-antimatter asymmetry:  Almost all of the matter we see in the universe is made up of matter, but matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts when the original universe is made up of energy.

Therefore, major discoveries are waiting to be discovered to answer these questions. Perhaps, this means that the greatest discoveries may still be waiting to be discovered.

We have no illusion that these discoveries will be easy to be discovered. Furthermore, even with the support of AI, it may not be discovered without creative thinkers and deep knowledge of what transpired in the minds of the great physicists during the last several hundreds of years. Nevertheless, we believe that AI could help us in solving some of the mysteries facing us, perhaps even in the three mysteries just mentioned.

We believe that this faith is not just based on wishful thinking, but it is based on what went on with respect to some of the things that happened related to some of the great discoveries in the last 75 years. This was pointed out in the earlier article “Some Thoughts on AI and Frontiers of Science” (posted in the June 2023 issue of this website), which we will repeat here to serve as lead ins to the current discusssion of AI and unsolved puzzles of physics.

Examples of Possible Leads as Input to AI-Enabled Computers:  We probably can discuss for hours on the definition of creativity and wouldn’t be able to come to agreement on its definition and whether computers can exhibit that.  However, let’s not talk in abstract, and actually look at some of the discoveries in the last 50-100 years that were considered to be major discoveries.  In particular, consider the field of high energy physics (or elementary particle physics). In my opinion, some of those discoveries could have come from computers with suitable questions or inputs from a knowledgeable researcher or a team of knowledgeable researchers, then with the help of AI-capable computer(s), some leads suggested to the computer could enable the computer and/or researcher(s) to make the new discovery.  Here are a few examples:

• For the asymptotic freedom theory (leading to Quantum Chromodynamics or QCD, the current theory of strong interactions of quarks and gluons) of Yang-Mills gauge theory from the work of Politzer, and Gross and Wilczek in 1972-1973 that resulted in their 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, it turned out that two-three years earlier Anthony Zee investigated several theories for this asymptotic freedom property.  Unfortunately for him, one of the few theories that he didn’t investigate was Yang-Mills gauge theory.  If he did, he probably would have discovered it.  So if someone in 1970-1971 had fed this information to an AI-enabled computer and asked the computer the question what other theories they could have investigated for this property, the computer might have suggested Yang-Mills gauge theory for investigation and then the researcher would have discovered it. 
• Even parity violation of Lee and Yang for their 1956 work with respect to weak interactions.  If someone had fed the information to a smart computer that there were strong experimental data to support conservation of parity in strong and electromagnetic interactions, and had asked a smart computer to search for evidence of conservation of parity in weak interactions, the computer would have answered that there was not much evidence, and they could have proposed non-conservation of parity in weak interactions before Lee and Yang, which was what Lee and Yang did.
• Even on the question of the expansion of the universe originally discovered by Hubble in the 1920s (Hubble didn’t get the Nobel Prize in Physics because at that time astronomy was not considered part of physics) and the more recent accelerated expansion discovery of the universe by Perlmutter/Schmidt/Riess (Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011), a computer with the right inputs and the right questions could have discovered or led to discover that.
• Three-degree cosmic background radiation that got Penzias and Wilson of Bell Labs their 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in the mid 1960s could have been discovered by a smart computer with the right questions and inputs, instead of the accidental discovery of Penzias and Wilson (at first, they were uncertain what they discovered), even though at that time a group at Princeton was looking for that kind of astrological evidence). But they didn’t have smart computers with AI in the early-mid 1960s. If there were, more groups might have looked into this area of research around the time of discovery of Penzias and Wilson.

This is not taking away any credit from the people who achieved these past achievements, because they deserve all the credits that they received.

I think if we work on it, we could come up with many other new ideas or discoveries not only in physics, but also in other fields, that could have been made or led researchers to by computers with AI, as long as appropriate questions and relevant data are input to the AI-enabled computers.  Of course, this may be an iterative process, meaning there could be going back and forth with the AI-enabled computers before a meaningful new idea or discovery will emerge, or before a new idea that could lead to a new discovery will emerge.

We have actually tried this approach with the basic version of ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/) by asking the question why there is so much matter over anti-matter in our current observed universe. However, the current responses are not much meaningful and far from leading us to more worthwhile research areas to pursue further research.

We welcome comments from our readers. Perhaps we are too naive to believe that such a simple approach could lead to fruitful research. Perhaps we need to feed the AI-enabled computers with more meaningful questions to probe so that the AI-enabled computers can come up with more meaningful ideas that can lead us to do more meaninful research and lead to new discoveries.

This article is my personal view of the most important discoveries in Physics. However, in light of some of the great mysteries mentioned at the end of this article, I believe that perhaps the greatest discoveries in physics are yet to be discovered. There are of course other items that could easily been included in this list, e.g., Dmitri Mendeleev of the Periodic Table and major discoveries regarding the origin and development of the universe.

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I – Mechanical Laws of Motion:  The study of how objects move or do not move when forces act upon them is known as mechanics.  In 1687 Isaac Newton published his three laws of motion in the “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.”  Newton’s First Law of Motion: an object’s motion will not change unless there is an external force on it. (2) Newton’s Second Law of Motion: the force on an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration. (3) Newton’s Third Law of Motion: when two objects interact, they apply forces to each other of equal magnitude and opposite direction.

Newton’s Mechanical Laws of Motions describes mechanics completely and correctly for over 200 years until the early 1900s when Albert Einstein proposed his Theory of Relativity that led to some corrections to Newton’s classical theory of mechanics when objects are moving very rapidly (closed to the speed of light).

Besides Newton, other key contributors included Galileo Galilei,

II – Theory of Gravitation:  Because of an object’s mass, every object affects all other objects.  Because of their masses, predicting how do these objects affect each other is known as gravitation theory.  Newton created the theory of gravity around 1666 by proposing that every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force that is directly proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Just like Newton’s mechanical laws of motion, Newton’s classical theory of gravitation described the physical world very accurately for over 200 years until Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (in particular, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity) that require some modifications when massive objects are involved.

Besides Newton, key contributors include Johannes Kepler and Nicolaus Copenicus.

III – Thermodynamics:  Thermodynamics is the study of the relations between heat, work, temperature, and energy. The laws of thermodynamics describe how the energy in a system changes and whether the system can perform useful work on its surroundings.

First law of thermodynamics: one of the most fundamental laws of nature is the conservation of energy principle. It simply states that during an interaction, energy can change from one form to another but the total amount of energy remains constant.

One such scientist was Sadi Carnot, the “father of thermodynamics”, who in 1824 published “Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire,” a discourse on heat, power, and engine efficiency. Most cite this book as the starting point for thermodynamics as a modern science.

Entropy is a scientific concept that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept entropy are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics where it was first recognized, to the microscopic description of nature in statistical physics, and to the principles of information theory. It has found far-ranging applications in chemistry and physics, in biological systems and their relation to life, in cosmology, economics, sociology, weather science, climate change, and information systems including the transmission of information in telecommunication.

Besides the first law of thermodynamics, there are several other laws of thermodynamics, such as the second law of thermodynamics that states that the entropy of a system always increases, or heat does not spontaneously pass from a colder to a hotter body. or the third law of thermodynamics that states that a system’s entropy approaches a constant value as its temperature approaches absolute zero.

Key contributors to thermodynamics include Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Sadi Carnot, Rudolf Clausius, Lars Onsager, Benjamin Thompson, and others.

IV – Electrodynamics or Theory of Electricity and Magnetism:  Before the invention of electromagnetism, people or scientists used to think electricity and magnetism are two different topics. The view has changed after James Clerk Maxwell published A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in the year 1873. The publication states that the interaction of positive and negative charges is mediated by one force. This observation laid a foundation for Electromagnetism which describes electrodynamics by Maxwell’s four equations.

Classical electrodynamics can be completely described by the four Maxwell’s equations which can be found in any undergraduate textbook on electrodynamics or electricity and magnetism.

Beside James Clerk Maxwell, other contributors to electrodynamics include Andre-Marie Ampere, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, Michael Faraday, Hans Christian Oersted, Alexandro Volta.

This is now known as Classical Electrodynamics, which describes electrodynamics accurately until we have to take into account quantum mechanical impacts when we consider electrodynamics involving subatomic particles.

At the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century, we have seen two revolutionary developments which have completely revolutionized physics, and that is the development of Quantum Mechanics (or Quantum Physics) and Theory of Relativity.  We will discuss Theory of Relativity in Item 5 and Quantum Physics in Item 7.

V – Theory of Relativity:  Special Theory and General Theory:  The Theory of Relativity has two parts:  The Special Theory of Relativity that does not take into account the gravitation force, and the General Theory of Relativity takes into account the gravitation force. 

In Newtonian physics, different observers in different reference frames may observe different laws, but in the Special Theory of Relativity, the same laws of physics hold true in all reference frames; furthermore, the speed of light is the same for all observers, which is different from classical mechanics that states that it depends on  the speed of the observers doing the measurement.  One of the consequences of the Theory of Special Relativity is that the mass of an observer depends on the velocity of the object, and there is a relation between the energy of an object of mass m and its velocity v via the famous relationship of E = mc².

Because the mass of an object increases with increasing velocity and it will take an infinite amount of energy to increase its velocity to pass the speed of light, the speed of light is the maximum speed of any object.

In the Theory of General Relativity where gravitation is taken into account, it states that any object will distort the geometry around that object by creating a geometric field around that object, the force that is around that object follows the geometry of the field created by that object.

There have been many confirmations of the predictions of General Relativity. The earliest ones were done in 1919 by Arthur Eddington during the solar eclipse of the sun on the bending of light due to the sun’s gravitation.

The Theory of General Relativity has deep significance in determining the behavior of objects, especially involving very massive objects involving large velocities.  That is why there are many significant implications in astronomy and massive objects such as neutron stars and back holes.

Besides Albert Einstein, other contributors to Theory of Relativity include Peter Bergmann, Herman Bondi, Arthur Eddington, Marcel Grossman, Steve Hawking, Leopold Infeld, Albert Michalson, Hendrik Lorentz, Herman Minkowski, Edward Morley, Robert Oppenheimer, Roger Penrose, Max Planck, Henri Poincare, Karl Schwarzschild, John Wheeler.

VI – Theory of the Nucleus and the Atoms:  The theory of the atom and the nucleus involved several discoveries.  It was John Alton who proposed that matter is made up of indivisible small atoms and all atoms of the same element are identical.  It was Ernest Rutherford who proposed that the core of an atom is made up of a nucleus consisted of electrically positive protons and electrically neutral neutrons.  It was Niels Bohr who proposed a theory of the hydrogen atom based on quantum theory that electrons move around a nucleus, but only in prescribed orbits, and If electrons jump to a lower-energy orbit, the difference is sent out as radiation.

Key contributors include: John Alton, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Max Planck.

VII – Quantum Physics:  A big revolution occurred at the end of the 19^th century  and the beginning of the 20^th century with the discovery and formulation of Quantum Physics.  In 1900 Max Planck first proposed that atoms and molecules can emit or absorb energy in discrete quantities only. The smallest amount of energy that can be emitted or absorbed in the form of electromagnetic radiation is known as quantum. Then in 1913 Niels Bohr made use of Planck’s idea that some physical quantities only take discrete values, and electrons move around a nucleus, but only in prescribed orbits, and If electrons jump to a lower-energy orbit, the difference is sent out as radiation.

Several other people built on the quantum idea and made additional discoveries that led to the full development of quantum physics that revolutionized the world with all kinds of electronic gadgets build on quantum physics, such as the transistors, radar, computers, worldwide web.

Although Quantum Physics revolutionized physics, science, and introduced many wonders to the world, at the same time, Quantum Physics also introduced many mysteries to the world, such as wave-particle duality, the uncertainty principle, the act of observing nature can change what is being observed, the probability interpretation instead of the deterministic interpretation in classical physics.  Many people question whether Quantum Physics can be the real theory describing the world.

Besides Max Planck and Niels Bohr, there were many major contributors to Quantum Physics, including Albert Einstein, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Clinton Davisson, Lester Germer, George Paget Thomson, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley, John Wheeler.

VIII – Quantum Electrodynamics (QED):  QED is the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics. In essence, it describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum physics and special relativity is achieved. QED mathematically describes all phenomena involving electrically charged particles interacting by means of exchange of photons and represents the quantum counterpart of classical electromagnetism giving a complete account of matter and light interaction.  QED has made the theoretical prediction of the magnetic moment of the electron to an accuracy of about one part in a trillion,making QED the most accurate theory in the history of science.

Key contributors to Quantum Electrodynamics include:  Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, Shinichiro Tomonaga, Freeman Dyson.

IX – Discovery of the Weak Force and Formulation of the Electroweak Force:  The weak force is the force that is involved in radioactive decay such as when a neutron inside an atomic nucleus undergoing an interactive decay and transforms into a proton plus an electron and an anti-neutrino. The weak force was discovered by Enrico Fermi in 1933 based on earlier work by Marie Curie. Weak interactions were involved in most of the reactions in the very early Universe by which particles changed from one sort to another. They are therefore largely responsible for the overall mixture of particles from which the current Universe is made.

in the mid-1950s, T. D. Lee and C. N. Yang proposed that weak interaction does not conserve parity, which shortly after was confirmed experimentally by C. S. Wu.  In the 1960s, Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg unified the electromagnetic force and the weak force by showing them to be two aspects of a single force, now termed the electroweak force.

Key contributors include Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, T. D. Lee, C. N. Yang, C. S. Wu, Yoichiro Nambu, Sheldon Glashow, Leon Lederman, Martin Perl, Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg, Gerardus ’t Hooft , Martinus J. G. Veltman.

X – Building Blocks of Matter:  This isa long standing problem for physicists.  However, great progress seems tp have been achieved in the last half century plus, both theoretically and experimentally.  It is somewhat premature to claim that this is among the greatest discoveries in Physics until they have been completely proven.  At this time we only declare that this Item 10 and the next Item 11 “Standard Model of Particle Physics” to be potential candidates to be included as part of the greatest discoveries in Physics.  One reason our current understanding is incomplete is because the so-called “Standard Model of Particle Physics” (see next Item 11) addresses only the 3 forces (the strong force, the weak force, and the electromagnetic force), but it does not address the gravitation force.

Our current understanding is that matter is made up of atoms, consisting of a nucleus and electrons orbiting the nucleus.  The nucleus is made up of protons and neutrons.  Protons and neutrons are made up of quarks, and there are 6 quarks:  up quark (u), down quark (d), strange quark (s), charm quark (c), top quark (t), and bottom quark (b). The nuclear matter made up of quarks interact with each other by:

• exchanging gluons when interacting via the strong force
• exchanging photons when interacting via the electromagnetic force,
• exchanging the W-boson or the Z-boson when interacting via the weak force.

Besides the electron neutrino, there are also the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino.

A missing piece of the building block of matter is the Higgs boson, which was proposed in 1964 as a mechanism for some particles acquiring mass, and was finally discovered in 2012.

Key contributors include Murray Gell Mann, George Zweig, Yuval Ne’eman, Robert Brout-François Englert-Peter Higgs, Gerald Guralnik-Carl Hagen-Tom Kibble, Leo Lederman, Martin Perl, Federick Federick Reines, Melvin Schwartz, Jack Steinberger, Burton Richter, Samuel C. C. Ting, and many others (especially experimentalists).

XI – Standard Model of Particle Physics:  The strong force was proposed in 1935 by Hideki Yukawa, that governs the interaction of protons and neutrons inside an atomic nucleus (or interactions between different quarks which are the components of protons and neutrons).

The current theory of strong interactions is described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), which describes how particles called quarks (which are constituents of protons and neutrons) and leptons (which include electrons) interact to make up matter. It also explains how force carrying particles, which belong to a broader group of bosons influence the quarks and leptons.  QCD has two features:  One called “Asymptotic Freedom” which says that at high energies (or short distances) the interaction of quarks are essentially free, another called “Color confinement” that says that when the quarks are separated by large distances, there is a force confining them so that they cannot be separated, i.e. individual quarks cannot be found in nature.” 

The Standard Model of Particle Physics refers to the combination of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and the Electroweak Force theory of Glashow-Salam-Wainberg (as discussed in Section 9), and is used to explain three of the four fundamental forces of nature that govern the universe: electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force.

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons.  The strong force, which is carried by gluons, binds together atomic nuclei to make them stable.  The strong force also governs the interactions inside a sun known as nuclear fusion. It is nuclear fusion that creates the energy from the sun that governs our solar system and the whole universe.  The weak force, carried by W and Z bosons, causes nuclear reactions that have powered our Sun and other stars for billions of years.  Electromagnetism is carried by photons and involves the interaction of electric fields and magnetic fields. The fourth fundamental force is gravity, but it is not adequately explained by the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

Both the Electroweak Theory and Quantum Chromodynamics belong to a type of quantum field theory that is based on the Yang-Mills non-Abelian gauge theory first proposed by C. N. Yang and Robert Mills in 1954.

Key contributors include Hideki Yukawa, Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, Steve Wainberg, David Gross, David Politzer, Frank Wilczek, Robert Mills, C. N. Yang, the people mentioned in Item 10 “Building Blocks of Matter,” and many others, especially experimentalists (since modern experiments are carried out by large experimental teams).

XII – Bell’s Theorem and Experimental Confirmation of Quantum Physics:  Because of many mysteries surrounding Quantum Physics (QP), many people believe that Quantum Physics cannot be correct and it will be replaced in the future by a more realistic theory.  These people included Einstein, who made remarks like God does not play dice, or spooky action at a distance.   Many people thought that a “local hidden variable theory” (LHVT) will replace Quantum Physics.  However, in 1964 James Bell proved a very remarkable theorem that shows any LHVT cannot always have the same prediction as Quantum Physics, thus allowing experiments to determine whether QP or LHVT is correct.

Many experiments in the last half a century have been done, and they have all shown that QP is correct, and LHVT is incorrect, thus confirming that QP may be correct in spite of all its mysteries.

This has led to the beginning of building quantum computers, which with its fantastic speed of calculation, will revolutionize computers and lead to another revolution in industry and in our daily lives just like Quantum Physics revolutionized our world in the 20^th century.

Albert Einstein, Edwin Schrodinger, Alan Aspect, John Clauser, Stuart Freedman, Antonio Zeilinger, John Wheeler, and others.

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In spite of all the discoveries in the last half century, however, there are still several major mysteries:

• Dark matter:  Dark matter is matter in our universe which cannot be seen, because they don’t interact electromagnetically, and they don’t interact through the strong force and maybe also through the weak force, but they interact through the gravitational force.  Ordinary matter make up only about 5% of the universe, but dark matter consist of about 27%.

• Dark energy:  Dark energy is a theoretical repulsive force that counteracts gravity and causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate, and it makes up 68% of our universe.

• Matter-antimatter asymmetry:  Almost all of the matter we see in the universe is made up of matter, but matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts when the original universe is made up of energy.

Therefore, major discoveries are waiting to be discovered to answer these questions.

• China’s governing constitutional instruments specify that the mainland and Taiwan are one country;
• And so does the constitutional document of Taiwan, Republic of China – it ALSO specifies that the two entities are a single, indivisible country;
• To this day, the ROC Constitution ostensibly applies not just to Taiwan but to the whole of China, indicating the Taipei-based government’s control over Tibet and other parts;
• China’s “Nine Dash Line” under which the country claims a large portion of the South China Sea is actually a reduced version of Taiwan’s “Eleven Dash Line”, which Taiwan still applies to the same waters;
• Journalists correctly mention that some countries (193) legally support China while others (13) legally support Taiwan; but they omit the key fact that both groups (read the small print) legally support the principle that mainland China and Taiwan are a single country;
• While some in Taiwan’s DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) openly push for independence, the party would have to rip up or massively amend Taiwan’s own constitutional document to do so.

Professor of Law Richard Cullen reports on the actual legal situation, and how it evolved, to clear up the widely circulated myths about the relationship between mainland China and Taiwan.

AMIDST THE ACUTE geopolitical debate about the status of Taiwan, the clear constitutional consensus that there is One China, which includes Taiwan, is largely overlooked. 

We need to examine some key historical developments in order to comprehend how this has come to pass; and why this agreement endures. 

It will also become plain, as we investigate these events, why certain parties, today, find this agreed cross-strait fundamental legal perspective to be a notably awkward component of the foundations that lie beneath the acrimonious geopolitical debate.

THREE CENTURIES AGO

Taiwan was formally established as a part of China well over 300 years ago, in 1684, when the Manchu, Qing Dynasty annexed Taiwan, following the Manchu defeat of the Ming Dynasty.

Taiwan is close to the province of Fujian.

Subsequently, Taiwan was absorbed as a colony within the rapidly emerging new Japanese Empire, as a war prize, after Japan defeated Qing Dynasty China in 1895, in the First Sino-Japanese War. 

After the dropping of American atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.  One consequence of this surrender was that Japan’s imperial rule over Taiwan was essentially terminated with immediate effect (subject to the completion of handover procedures) in August 1945. 

THE RE-OCCUPATION OF TAIWAN ISLAND

By October 1945, the then globally recognized Chinese Government – the Republic of China (ROC) Kuomintang (KMT) Government – began to re-occupy Taiwan.  By May, 1947 the KMT had established, in accord with the ROC Constitution, a Province of Taiwan Government in Taipei.

Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taiwan. Image by Rovin Ferrer/ Unsplash.

By late 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) had defeated the KMT in the Chinese Civil War, which re-commenced in 1945-46, once it was clear that Japan faced defeat in the Second Sino Japanese War (and WW2).  The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established by the CPC on October 1, 1949.  The KMT – and, thus, the ROC – meanwhile, retreated to Taiwan. 

Staunch American support – including the threat of using atomic weapons against the PRC – helped ensured that the CPC was prevented from taking over Taiwan in the 1950s.  But it also became clear that the KMT aim to make China one, again (including Taiwan) under the ROC Constitution, was not going to happen.

THE ROC CONSTITUTION

But what were the origins and fundamental scope of that ROC Constitution?

Following the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the Republic of China was established in 1912, when a Provisional Constitution for the ROC was drawn up.  Further Provisional Constitutions were promulgated, including one in 1931.  After extensive drafting and debate, the original version of the current ROC Constitution took effect on December 25, 1947, almost two years before the defeat of the KMT in the Chinese Civil War.

Page one of the original constitution, drafted 1946, ratified 1947.

Since then, the ROC Constitution has been amended a number of times, but its essential structure has not been altered in the sense that it remains, to this day, a constitution that ostensibly applies not just to Taiwan but to all of China.  Given that when this constitution was first applied, the KMT was globally recognized as the government of all of China (including Taiwan), this is not surprising.

TAIWAN’S CONSTITUTION SAYS IT INCLUDES TIBET, FOR EXAMPLE

Thus, within the ROC Constitution, as it currently applies, there are repeated references to the geographical-political constituent parts of China, including Provinces, Mongolian Leagues and Banners and Tibet.  Meanwhile, Article 4 states that the territory of the ROC cannot be altered except by resolution of the National Assembly. 

In fact, the list of ROC, nominal, territorial disputes with jurisdictions on the Asian mainland (including, Afghanistan, India, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan and the USSR) remained quite extensive for some decades after 1949.

Taiwan’s documents assume leadership over all China, including Tibet. Photo by Daniele Salutari on Unsplash.

The PRC, meanwhile, resolved most of its continental, international territorial disputes, with India being the key exception.  (The PRC negotiated treaties settling these border disputes on behalf of China were typically not recognized as legitimate by the ROC (which maintained Taipei’s claim to represent all of China.))

NINE-DASH LINE IS ‘REDUCED’ VERSION

Both the ROC and the PRC maintain largely overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea and the East China Sea.  Thus, the contested “Nine Dash Line”, which underpins PRC claims to extensive jurisdiction of large parts of the South China Sea is, in fact, a reduced (in favour of Vietnam) version of the earlier ROC, “Eleven Dash Line”, which Taiwan still applies. 

Both the PRC and the ROC also strongly contest Japanese control of the Diaoyu (or Senkaku) Islands in the East China Sea.

This Taiwanese military emblem shows the island, not as a separate country, but as part of the whole.

TAIWAN HAD TWO GOVERNMENTS IN TAIPEI

A further indicative aspect of how the ROC Constitution has been applied (within Taiwan controlled territory) since 1949 is that until 1998, the Taiwanese governing system comprised a National Government based in Taipei – and a separate Province of Taiwan Government – with each government essentially having jurisdiction over the same geographical area. 

From 1957 to 2018, this was the Taiwan Provincial Government. Image: Vegafish/ Wikimedia Commons.

The ROC on Taiwan also once supported a separate, operating but largely nominal Province of Fujian Government, which came into existence due to the KMT maintaining political control over certain small offshore island groups (Kinmen and Matsu) geographically part of Fujian Province on the Mainland.  (These islands are located in the Taiwan Strait very close to the Mainland.)

Until late 1971, the claimed but nominal ROC jurisdiction over all of China was widely recognized internationally – and especially by the United Nations.  The ROC, representing China, became one of the Five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council (holding a veto power), along with Britain, France, the US and the USSR (now Russia). 

Eventually the geopolitical tectonic plates shifted, however, and, in late 1971, the United Nations voted by a large margin to stop recognizing the KMT Government in Taiwan as the government of all of China and switch that recognition to the PRC Government based in Beijing.

Subsequently, many countries began to accept that the sole legitimate government of China was based in Beijing, including Australia in 1972 and the US in 1979. 

OVERWHELMING MAJORITY

Today, Beijing maintains full diplomatic relations, on this same basis, with the overwhelming majority of UN Member States.  The ROC on Taiwan now retains full diplomatic relations with just 12 of the 193 UN Member States – plus the Holy See, which governs Vatican City.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is the current governing party in Taiwan and Tsai Ing-wen is the DPP President of Taiwan.  The Voice of America recently confirmed, the DPP favours independence for Taiwan.  

THIS IS AWKWARD

Awkwardly, as we have seen above, the ROC Constitution, under which the DPP governs Taiwan, insistently supports the unity of all of China – including Taiwan.  Indeed, the ROC Constitution would require massive amendment if it were to be transformed into a constitution which could provide a Basic Law for a constitutionally independent Taiwan.  Any such move would, in turn, cross a critically bright, PRC political red-line, triggering plainly foreseeable, grave consequences.

The agreement that Taiwan is part of China is universally acknowledged.

Taiwan’s own constitution, the ROC Constitution, has, thus, created an entrenched, major formal deterrent to any reckless political action aimed at undermining the shared, cross-strait constitutional consensus that there is only One China – including Taiwan.

The misleading “western lens” view is pushed by many journalists critical of China, including some in Hong Kong.

This has established a thorny underlying, ultimately geopolitical problem for the DPP – and for Washington (along with other China Threat devotees) even as the US continues to play the Taiwan card as part of its massive project to try and contain the rise of China.

ONE CHINA POLICY REMAINS UNIVERSALLY ENDORSED

Although it is most unlikely that the then ROC President, Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT could have envisaged, in 1947, the particular, impulse-controlling – and unifying – influence of the remarkable ROC Constitution over 75 years later, we can surely be thankful that it continues to have this constructive, long-term impact. 

Richard Cullen is a Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong and a popular writer on public affairs.

• Reprint of article by Richard Cullen, who is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. This article was published in “Fridayeveryday” on June 28, 2023.

About three and a half years ago, we posted an article “Some Thoughts on How We can Experience and Learn from the Past Virtually” in which we raised the question “Whether we can make use of the information from the past, not only to relive past events, but also to make use of that information to learn from it.” The idea is whether we can make use of Artificial Intelligence” (AI) to learn from the information in the past and then creatively built on that to lead to new scientific discoveries. The current article provides some specific thoughts on that proposal.

Instead of debating for hours on creativity and whether computers can have the creativity to come up with outstanding discoveries or inventions, below we discuss some specific examples from physics which with the help of leading questions to AI computers could lead to significant scientific discoveries.

Some Specific Thoughts on Making Use of AI in Physics: The idea is to choose a good topic, compile the knowledge we currently know about this topic, including, e.g., who are the major thought leaders on that topic, what are the major thoughts of lead investigators on this topic, formulate some key questions to ask about that topic, and gather relevant data related to that topic. Then provide this information as input to AI-capable computers.  Then utilize artificial intelligence to help us to investigate that topic.  As part of asking the computer to do AI work, we could also ask the computer to carry out a virtual discussion or brainstorm with a group of scientific researchers on a difficult problem that they might all have researched on previously.  (If we do that, then we may need to provide the computer with information about the background of such lead investigators, not only their technical background, but also information on the type of person they are, on their personality and their methods of thinking, etc.)

The idea is definitely not new.  As a matter of fact, many people probably have thought about this idea, and many people probably have also dismissed the idea because they argue that a major discovery will require great intelligence and creativity that are beyond the reach of our current computers.  This leads to the question of creativity, and whether computers can have that kind of creativity to come up with outstanding discoveries or inventions. 

Examples of Possible Leads as Input to AI-Enabled Computers: We probably can discuss for hours on the definition of creativity and wouldn’t be able to come to agreement on its definition and whether computers can exhibit that.  However, let’s not talk in abstract, and actually look at some of the discoveries in the last 50-100 years that were considered to be important discoveries.  In particular, consider the field of high energy physics, or elementary particle physics.  In my opinion, some of those discoveries could have come from computers with suitable questions or inputs from a knowledgeable researcher or a team of knowledgeable researchers, then with the help of AI-capable computer(s), some leads suggested to the computer could enable the computer and/or researcher(s) to make a new discovery.  Here are a few examples:

• For the asymptotic freedom theory (leading to Quantum Chromodynamics or QCD, the current theory of strong interactions of quarks and gluons) of Yang-Mills gauge theory from the work of Politzer, and Gross and Wilczek in 1972-1973 that resulted in their 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, it turned out that two-three years earlier Anthony Zee investigated several theories for this asymptotic freedom property.  Unfortunately for him, one of the few theories that he didn’t investigate was Yang-Mills gauge theory.  If he did, he probably would have discovered it.  So if someone in 1970-1971 had fed this information to an AI-enabled computer and asked the computer the question what other theories they could have investigated for this property, the computer might have suggested Yang-Mills gauge theory for investigation and then the researcher would have discovered it. 
• Even parity violation of Lee and Yang for their 1956 work with respect to weak interactions.  If someone had fed the information to a smart computer that there were strong experimental data to support conservation of parity in strong and electromagnetic interactions, and had asked a smart computer to search for evidence of conservation of parity in weak interactions, the computer would have answered that there was not much evidence, and they could have proposed non-conservation of parity in weak interactions before Lee and Yang, which was what Lee and Yang did.
• Even on the question of the expansion of the universe originally discovered by Hubble in the 1920s (Hubble didn’t get the Nobel Prize in Physics because at that time astronomy was not considered part of physics) and the more recent accelerated expansion discovery of the universe by Perlmutter/Schmidt/Riess (Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011), a computer with the right inputs and the right questions could have discovered or led to discover that.
• Three-degree cosmic background radiation that got Penzias and Wilson of Bell Labs for their work in the mid 1960s leading to the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics could have been discovered by a smart computer with the right questions and inputs, instead of the accidental discovery of Penzias and Wilson (at first, they didn’t even know what they discovered), even though at that time a group at Princeton was looking for that kind of astrological evidence), but they didn’t have smart computer with AI in the early-mid 1960s. This means that more groups might have looked into this area of research around the time of discovery of Penzias and Wilson.

I think if we work on it, we could come up with many other previous new ideas or discoveries not only in physics, but also in other fields, that could have been made or led researchers to by computers with AI, as long as appropriate questions and relevant data are input to the AI-enabled computers.  Of course, this may be an iterative process, meaning there could be going back and forth with the computers before a meaningful new idea or discovery, or before leading to a new idea or discovery, will emerge.

This is not taking away any credit for the people who achieved these past achievements.

I also do agree that certain discoveries such as from Newton’s gravitation theory to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity may require such a great leap of creativity that it is unlikely that currently anticipated AI-enabled computers could have come up with that discovery or invention, or saying it in another way, it is unlikely that the persons feeding the computers could have come up with the right questions and feed the computers with the appropriate inputs.

Other Important Topics in Physics: In the physics field, other examples of possible topics for AI-enabled computers to attack include:

• What is dark energy?
• What is dark matter?
• Why is there so much asymmetry between matter and antimatter?
• Deep paradoxes of Quantum Physics, e.g, collapse of the wavefunction and quantum entanglement

These are all important and well-known problems.  The key is to figure out the next deeper level of questions and appropriate data to feed and interact with the computers.  So it is not that we just assign a problem to the computers, like assigning it as a Ph.D. thesis topic to one or more graduate students, but we have to work closely with the computers, like often with the Ph.D.-seeking graduate students, and through what could be a long, difficult, and creative collaborative process before some meaningful results, or before some new leads, can come out. As far as the above list of topics, I think that we need to probe to one or two levels deeper to come up with suitable questions to ask the AI-enabled computers.

Closing Thoughts: Even though the idea discussed here is very simple, I think probing AI-enabled computers with field-specific knowledge-based questions and then working closely with AI-enabled computers has lots of potential, across all fields (whether it is science, engineering, biology, medical, economical, social, political, etc.). I am sure that more and more people will work in this area and make progress along this line of reasoning, especially as AI becomes more sophisticated and more creative. 

This article provides a review of the movie “The Wandering Earth II” which revolves around a science fiction theme that in the future an aging sun has become a red giant that will engulf the earth and destroy all the people of the world. The people of the world through the United Earth Government (UEG) is trying to adopt an approach to address this most important problem. In the meantime, the earth has also been undergoing changes experiencing a series of natural disasters that has destroyed much of the population of the earth, and results in a large percentage of the earth’s people moving underground to live and survive. With facing these natural disasters as well as other man-made problems, undoubtedly there is a variety of opinions on what approach or approaches should the UEG adopt to attempt to solve these problems. The approach that the UEG seems to have adopted is called the Move Mountain Project (MMP), which is a plan to make a series of nuclear explosions on the surface of the moon that would move the moon away so that earth is not under the gravitational environment of the moon, and then kick the earth out of the orbit of the sun, and let it travel into another distant sun that could provide a livable environment for the people of earth.

Of course, facing these monumental problems to try to figure solutions that determine the life and death of all the people of this world will undoubtedly generate different opinions.  The approach that the UEG has adopted is called the Moving Mountain Project (MMP).  Not only that there is great opposition to the MMP approach that the EUG has adopted. There are large and violent protests and sabotages around the world against the MMP.  Many people favor taking the approach of the Digital Life Project (DLP) that develops mind-loading technologies into Artificial Intelligent (AI) robots so that humans will be replaced by AI smart robots.  In this approach, although humans will not survive and humanity will only manifest itself in AI robots, but the human minds will continue to exist in the brains of AI smart robots.  Although the DLP was not the approach adopted by the UEG, AI smart robots will definitely be involved in this future society.  At the end of the movie, it mentions an interesting twist indicating that these smart AI robots may have their own malicious intent to take over the world, i.e., these smart robots may not always follow the original commands of their human creators.

The ideas discussed in this movie are all very interesting and soul searching.  The problems facing humanity are complex.  There are no easy solutions.  Independent of the MMP or DLP approach chosen by the UEG, the involvement of AI smart robots will become more and more in the lives of humans, and whether humans can always be in command of AI smart robots, especially in the future when humans may all die out, is an open question.  I must compliment the people involved in making this movie for their valiant and creative attempt to address this problem.  As you can understand, it is not easy to convey this complicated and complex problem for the audience in a movie to understand and be able to follow the different happenings in the movie.  This leads to my most important critique of the movie.  In spite of the movie being almost three hours long, “The Wandering Earth II” just doesn’t provide adequate explanations to help the audience to be able to follow and understand what is happening in front of their eyes.  You need a constant guidebook to explain to you the different twists and developments in the movie.  To be honest with you, at times I felt completely lost in the movie.  For me, this problem was enlarged when all the dialogues are in Chinese Mandarin, and only English is shown in the subtitles.  This reminds me of the feelings I had (and many other people also had) when watching the classic “2001:  A Space Odyssey,” a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick.  I should also add that the involvement of AI smart robots, including their malicious attempt to take over the world, was also discussed in the 1968 classic “2001:  A Space Odyssey.”

“The Wandering Earth II” also offers impressive high-tech scenes that go along with the high tech subject matters, and therefore watching it in a big screen in a movie theater would be better than watching it in a small computer or TV screen.

There are several major characters in the movie.  One is the famous HK actor and singer Andy Lau who plays the computer scientist Tu Hengyu and plays a critical role in the AI-related event at the end of the movie.  The other is Wu Jing, the popular martial artist and the star of an extremely best selling action war movie “Wolf Warrior,” who plays the astronaut Liu Peiqiang.  An actress Han Duoduo (played by Wang Zhi), is the wife of Wu Jing.  Zhou Zhezhi (played by Li Xuejian) is the Chinese ambassador to UEG.  Another actress is Hao Xiaoxi (played by Zhu Yanmanzi), who is the Chinese UEG ambassador’s personal assistant.  The director and screenplay writer is Frant Gwo.  The producer is Gong Ge’er, and the movie is based on the original writing of Li Cixin.

In spite of my earlier critique of this movie, I recommend strongly to people to see this movie, for its soul searching theme, and how humanity collectively mobilizes the world to address the critical end-of-the-world problems.  Let me conclude this review by noting how the movie industry has reviewed this movie.  The Rotten Tomatoes gave it a rating of 70%, a relatively high rating (e.g., the movies “Avatar:  The Way or Water” and “Batman:  The Doom That Came to Gotham” were rated at 76%).  Metascore gave it a score of 56, a reasonably good score.  The movie critic Roger Ebert gave it a score of 75.  But New York Times gave it a low score of 30, but that could be politically driven because it is a blockbuster made in China, and not in the U.S., and it was China who played a major and decisive role in the UEG.

Ever since quantum theory (QT) was invented almost 100 years ago (in 1925), it has led to a tremendous number of innovations that has revolutionized the world, including our lives and the business world.  However, at the same time, from almost the very beginning, QT has created a number of deep mysteries that have shaken how we look at and understand the world, including making a great reassessment of whether we can actually explain what happens in nature, besides that we can no longer predict the outcome of every experiment, except to predict the probability of the outcome of experiments.  It has led Einstein to make remarks like “Does the moon exist when there is no one looking at the moon?” and “God doesn’t play dice.”

In this summary paper, we recall these early mysteries, that led many physicists to acknowledge that although QT can make remarkable predictions (such as predicting accurately to one part to the billion), many also question whether QT is a complete theory, and its explanation of how and why things happen in nature may not be satisfactory.  Some people thought that something like local hidden variable theory (LHVT) that states that there are also (hidden) variables that we are not aware of, and if we know and can specify the values of these hidden variables, then we will be able to predict the exact outcome of every experiment.  Many physicists were even contemplating that LHVT may turn out to succeed QT and will be able to predict not only what will happen, but also to explain why certain things happen.  Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any possible experiment that can be done to differentiate QT and LHVT.

This was the case for about 40 years until 1964 when the Irish physicist James S. Bell proved a remarkable but simple theorem (now known as Bell’s Theorem) that shows that QT and Local Hidden Variable Theories can lead to different experimental results, and therefore we can let experiments to decide on QT or LHVT.  Starting in the 1970s and during the next half century, it has led to many remarkable experiments that repeatedly confirm all the predictions of QT and at the same time showed that Local Hidden Variable Theories are wrong.  This not only declared that QT as the winner over LHVT, it also caused us to rethink how we should look at the world and whether there may be a limit in our understanding and description of the details of what is happening in an experiment.  We will come back to Bell’s Theorem after we review the mysteries of Quantum Theory.

Mystery of QT-I:  Wave-Particle Duality:

We now recall the series of quantum mysteries that started with the advent of QT.  The first one was that the behavior of subatomic objects like electrons behave very differently from macroscopic objects, like baseballs, in the world around us.  That is, in the microscopic world of electrons, they exhibit wave-like properties, but simultaneously also particle-like properties.  The best explanation of this can be found in Feynman’s Lectures on Physics in his explanation of the double-slit experiment. [1]  Physicists are all familiar with the double-slit experiments.  For those who are not familiar with the double-slit experiments, it is best to read the description and explanation from Feynman himself in Ref. 1.  A slightly shorter explanation can also be found in [2].  Note that in the explanation, we not only see the interference pattern of waves, but we also observe that the electrons arrive at the backdrop with full clicks, but never a half click, indicating that electrons also behave like particles even though simultaneously they are also behaving like waves.  This phenomenom is known as wave-particle duality of QT, i.e., subatomic particles display both characteristics, showing behavior like a wave, and also showing behavior like a particle.

Mystery of QT-II:  The Act of Observance Can Change What You Are Observing:

If we follow the discussion of the double-slit experiment by Feynman, and if we try to determine which of the slits that the electron goes through, we learned that the act of observance actually changes the result of the experiment.  This is actually perfectly understandable in the microscopic world, because in order to observe the path of the electron, for example by placing a light after the slits. Since electric charges scatter light, then noticing whether the light is coming from near slit 1 or slit 2, we will be able to determine whether the electron went through slit 1 or slit 2.  However, when we do that, the resulting pattern on the backdrop changes drastically so that the interference pattern we saw in the original double-slit experiment signaling the wave-like property of electrons has disappeared, and replaced by the pattern characteristic of particle-like behavior.  In the macroscopic world, we don’t see this because the disturbance from the act of observing is not large enough to change the result of the experiment.

Mystery of QT-III:  One Cannot Simultaneously Measure Precisely the Position and Momentum of any Object (also known as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle):

One way of understanding this principle is that in order to measure the precise position of an object, you have to use shorter and shorter wavelength of light.  But the shorter the light’s wavelength, the higher is the frequency of the light, since the light’s frequency is in inverse proportion to the light’s wavelength.  And the higher the frequency of the light, the more energy is the light, since E=hv, where E is the energy, v is the frequency, and h is Planck’s constant.  That is why to measure precisely the position of an object, you need to use shorter and shorter wavelength, or higher and higher frequency, and therefore you impart more and more energy to the object.  If the object is a microscopic object like an electron, the energy you impart from the observance of its position would disturb its velocity greatly, thus resulting in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

Mystery of QT-IV:  In the Subatomic World, We Can Only Predict the Probability Distribution of Certain Physical Happenings in the Future:

In classical physics, if we are given the initial conditions of an object, then using the laws of physics, we can predict precisely the future behavior of an object.  However, in the subatomic world, because particles also have wave-like characteristics, we can no longer predict precisely the behavior of an object even if given the initial conditions.

Instead, in QT, the state of an object is described by a complex wave function C (complex in the mathematical sense of real versus complex numbers).  The probability of finding the object in a certain state and time is given by the square of the complex function C, i.e., |C|².  In QT, we can only predict the probability of finding the object in a certain position and time, but never precisely that the object will be in a certain position at a particular time.  In other words, we change the precise prediction of classical physics to the probability prediction of quantum theory.  

This led many people, including Einstein, to make the remark that God does not play dice and question whether there is a more fundamental theory than quantum theory so that the uncertainties can be removed and the theory can then be deterministic, and not probabilistic.  That was what led many people to the LHVT as mentioned in the Background section at the beginning of this article.

Local Hidden Variable Theory (LHVT) and Bell’s Theorem:

Before we discuss the experiments done in the past half century related to Bell’s Theorem and the implications of these experiments, we first discuss two classic thought experiments from 1935.

Schrodinger’s Cat:  As we discussed earlier that the act of observing can change what we are observing.  So in the double-slit experiment, if we try to detect which slit the electron went through, the interference pattern that was observed indicating the wave-like properties of electrons disappeared.  Within the wave function mathematical description of QT, the wave function was originally a superposition of states, but then the act of observation causes the wave function to collapse to a specific state.

This led Schrodinger to the following thought experiment in 1935.  There is a radioactive atom inside a box that is connected to a radioactive detector that is connected to a hammer that breaks a glass jar which then releases a poison gas, and inside this box is a cat. The radioactive atom has certain probability of radioactive decay, e.g., with a half-life of about 10 minutes. From QT, the radioactive atom is described by a wave function that is a superposition of two states, a decay state and a non-decay state. A decay state will release the poison that will kill the cat. A non-decay state will not release the poison and the cat remains alive. Before the box is opened when we don’t know what is inside the box, the quantum wave function of what is inside the box is a superposition of a live cat and a dead cat. However, when the box is opened, we will find either a live cat or a dead cat, and never a half-dead cat and a half-alive cat. In other words, the act of observation caused the wave function to collapse from a superposition of states to a specific state. This is analogous to the double slit experiment with electrons that the act of observing changes what we are observing.

The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Paradox:  Einstein together with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen proposed another thought experiment, also in 1935. This involved a QT system at rest and zero angular momentum, also known as spin-0, that emits two photons in the opposite directions. Since photons also have spins (their spins are either up or down), and linear momentum and angular momentum are conserved, if one photon is moving to the left and is measured to have spin up, then the other photon is moving to the right and if measured must then have spin down. If we provide sufficient time for these two photons to travel a large distance, then if we measure the spin of the left photon and find it to be spin up, then if we measure the spin of the right photon, then its spin has to be down. This seems to say that the photons seem to be entangled, i.e, measuring the spin of the photon going to the left will automatically tell you the spin of the photon going to the right.  This is known as quantum entanglement. Since the distance between these two photons can be sufficiently large so that no information can be transmitted from the left photon to the right photon, unless we are willing to give up one of the cornerstones of the theory of special relativity that stipulates that no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light.  This led Einstein to make the remark that QT seems to allow “spooky action at a distance.”  This thought experiment of Einstein/Podolsky/Rosen is known as the EPR Paradox.  Now we are ready to discuss Bell’s Theorem.

Bell’s Theorem:  In 1964, the Scottish Physicist James S. Bell proved a very remarkable and extremely important theorem (some people have even proclaimed that it is the most profound discovery of science) that showed QT and LHVT do not always make the same predictions.  In other words, we can now do experiments to decide whether QT or LHVT is correct or wrong (or both could be wrong).

Although extremely important, Bell’s Theorem was actually relatively simple to prove in terms of the mathematics used.  The original proof by Bell [3] makes ingenious use of logic but only high school mathematics; other proofs developed by others later all make use of logic and also did not require the use of sophisticated mathematics. [4]  However, the proof does not require to know the detailed specification of the hidden variable theory, but it does require the use of locality, i.e., no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light.  That is why LHVT in Bell’s Theorem applies to all hidden variable theories as long as it is local.  Bell’s Theorem can be shown as an inequality and is therefore also known as Bell’s Inequality.  Although the proof is not long or complicated, we are not including the proof in order to make this article to be of reasonable length, but the proof can be found in, e.g., [4] and [5].

The first people to use Bell’s Theorem to compare the predictions of QT and LHVT were S.J. Freedman and J. F. Clauser in their classic paper in 1972. [6]  The experiment is similar to the setup in the EPR paradox except that photons with spin up or down were replaced by photons with polarization which could have two values – up or down. When the results at the photon detectors were compared, the ups and downs did not match the ways predicted by LHVT, i.e., Bell’s inequality was violated, showing that LHVT is wrong.  However, the experimental results were completely consistent with the predictions of QT.  During the last half century, the result of this experiment has been confirmed by many other experiments, including developing more sophisticated experiments that removed some of the possible ambiguities or so-called loop holes in the Freedman-Clauser experiment  This has removed a lot of skeptics of QT, and more and more people think that QT may be a correct theory, in spite of the fact that its many mysteries seem to contradict our understandings and explanations of how nature behaves.  As a matter of fact, we may even have to accept the fact that Is how nature behaves, or perhaps until another great breakthrough in the future that could possibly provide a better explanation of what we observe.  We now discuss refinements of the Freedman-Clauser experiment.

Refinement and Removing Possible Loopholes in Experiments on Bell’s Theorem: When they were doing their 1972 experiment, Friedman and Clauser were already aware of possible “loopholes” in their experiment.  For example, could it be possible that their laboratory instrument might have been leaking information to each other, after all, the correlated information of the separated photons only showed up after the measurements of the separated photons.  In 1982, Alain Aspect in France refined the experiment by switching the direction of the photons’ polarization every 10 nanoseconds when the photons were already in the air and too fast for the two pieces of laboratory instrument at the two ends to communicate with each other.  But results turned out to be the same, i.e. experimentally LHVT is again wrong and QT is correct. [7]

Another possible loophole was that the polarization directions in Aspect’s experiment in France had been changed in a regular and therefore theoretically predictable fashion that could be sensed by the photons or detecting instruments. Then Anton Zeilinger of Austria in 1992 used random number generators to change the direction of the polarization measurements while the photons were in flight.  The experimental results again confirmed that LHVT is wrong and QT is correct. [8]

This kind of experiments has been done many times in the last several decades, and the winner has always been QT.

By now, scientists have done experiments with entangled particles, and entanglement is accepted as a main feature of QT and is being put to work in cryptology and quantum computing.  An application in cryptology is to send messages using entangled pairs, which can send cryptographic keys in a secure manner, because any eavesdropping will destroy the entanglement, thus alerting the people involved in the transmission that the message has been disturbed.  In 2017, Dr. Zeilinger used this technique with entangled photons beamed from a Chinese satellite called Micius to have an encrypted 75-minute video conversation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Dr. Jian-Wei Pan, one of his former students. [9]

Summary:

Quantum Theory started a revolution in physics, as well as in our business world and our everyday lives. It changed our understanding of nature and our description of the microscopic world at the scale of atoms.  It introduced many unfamiliar concepts, such as particle-wave duality, uncertainty principle, the act of observance can change what one is observing, and the probability interpretation in place of absolute predictability.  These unfamiliar concepts led many people, including physicists, to question whether QT can be a true physical theory, in spite of its huge number of experimental predictions, and many physicists thought that there are hidden variables that we are not familiar with.  Once we can specify these hidden variables, then we should be able to remove many of these mysteries.

But in 1964 James S. Bell proved a very simple theorem that shows all local hidden variable theories (LHVT) cannot make the same experimental predictions as QT.  Experiments in the last half century have repeatedly demonstrated that LHVT is wrong, and QT is correct.  This reduced significantly the sceptism toward QT, but at the same time, it has introduced mind-boggling concepts and questions such as quantum entanglements, spooky action at a distance, does the moon exist when there is no one looking at the moon.  It causes us to wonder what is reality, can we describe or explain reality, or perhaps we are only able to describe the results of experiments, but not always able to describe what went on during the experiments.

We are definitely entering a challenging and exciting time in physics, hoping and waiting for the next breakthrough.  There may not be any more holy quails, including perhaps locality.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics were awarded in October 2022 to A. Aspect, J. F. Clauser, and A. Zeilinger.

Note: Stuart Freedman passed away in 2012, and is therefore not eligible for the Nobel Prize. James S. Bell also passed away in 1990, and was also not eligible for any Nobel Prize after 1990.

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[1] R. P. Feynman, R. B. Leighton, M. Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume 3:  Quantum Mechanics, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Inc., Palo Alto, 1965.  The double-slit experiment is eloquently explained in Chapter 1 “Quantum Behavior.”

[2] A slightly shorter explanation of Ref. 1 can also be found in the article “Wonders and Mysteries of Quantum Physics”:  https://www.dontow.com/2020/09/wonders-and-mysteries-of-quantum-physics/.

[3] J. S. Bell, Physics 1, 195 (1964).

[4] See, for example, the video by Alvin Ash “The EPR Paradox and Bell’s Inequality explained Simply”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f72whGQ31Wg.

[5] “Paradoxes of Quantum Physics, Bell’s Theorem, and What Do Experiments Tell Us”: https://www.dontow.com/2020/12/paradoxes-of-quantum-physics-bells-theorem-and-experimental-confirmation/.

[6] S. J. Freedman and J. F. Clauser, “Experimental Test of Local Hidden-Variable Theories,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 28, 938, 3 April 1972.  This was Freedman’s Ph.D. thesis at the University of California at Berkeley, and Clauser was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley.

[7] A. Aspect, J. Dalibard, G. Roger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 1804, 1982.

[8] G. Weihs, T. Jennewein, C, Simon, H. Weinfurter, A. Zeilinger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 5039, 1998.

[9] J. Yin, et. al, Nature, 582, 501, 2020.

Two persons, one a Chinese citizen and one a Japanese citizen, have done the most to lead this movement so that justice can be restored and history will not be forgotten. These two remarkable people are Tong Zeng (童增) of China and Tamaki Matsuoka (松岡環) of Japan.  This article “10,000 Cries for Justice and Speaking for the Voiceless” is about Tong Zeng. [1] The other article “A Conversation with Tamaki Matsuoka: ‘The Conscience of Japan’” is about Tamaki Matsuoka, and was posted in the June 2022 issue of this website. [2]

Most people in the world have heard about the murder of six million Jews at the hands of Hitler’s Nazis in Germany.  It was a most horrific atrocity that should be taught and remembered in our history books.  While the Jewish Holocaust was taking place in Europe during WWII, an atrocity of equal magnitude was also occurring in Asia at around the same time period. This was the atrocity inflicted by the Japanese military in China, Korea, and other parts of Asia during the period of 1931-1945 when Japan invaded and tried to conquer China and other parts of Asia.   The atrocities were massive and inhumane and consisted of four types:  the Nanking Massacre, sex slaves (euphemistically called comfort women), biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, and slave laborers.

Unfortunately, many people in the world are not aware of this atrocity.  In addition, there are people who deny this part of history and together with certain governments are trying to rewrite history and claiming that such atrocity never happened.  The victims feel that they are voiceless.

In 1990, Mr. Tong Zeng (童增), a young and concerned Chinese, raised the issue that the victims of Japanese atrocities have the right to seek compensation from Japan (from the Japanese government or in the case of slave laborers, also from the Japanese corporations who used the slave laborers). He pointed out that there is a distinction between the case of a government seeking compensation from another government who committed the atrocity and the case of a person seeking compensation from the government who committed that atrocity.  This means that in spite of the gesture of good will of the Chinese government waiving her right to seek compensation from Japan when the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1972, the Chinese government waived only the right of the Chinese government seeking compensation from Japan, it did not waive the right of Chinese citizens seeking compensation from Japan.

Seeking apology and compensation for the atrocities committed by the Japanese military was a long-overdue item for seeking justice and closure that has been buried in the hearts and souls of thousands and thousands of Chinese atrocity victims and their relatives.  Thousands of people wrote to Tong Zeng endorsing and thanking him for his work and wrote to him providing details of the atrocities that they or their family members had experienced.  Within a few years, he had received about 10,000 such letters, and that is why his campaign is called “10000 Cries for Justice.” [3]

The number of letters that Tong Zeng kept on receiving grew and grew.  When they occupied a large part of his office as shown in the photo

Large collection of atrocity victims’ letters in Tong Zeng’s office was a concern that these valuable historical archives could be lost due to fire or theft.

He became concerned that those priceless records of history could disappear as the result of a fire or theft.  So he thought about keeping a digital record of these historical archives. 

As the years passed by, not only that there was no progress from Japan to face up to this part of history, many Japanese government leaders have continued to make comments denying the existence of these atrocities.  Mr. Tong thought that publishing these personal accounts would provide powerful evidence to refute all the false claims made by the Japanese government.  Righting this injustice could be a catalyst to establish genuine friendship between the Japanese people and the Chinese people and true peace between Japan and China, as well as for other countries.  Therefore, having a website of these letters and making them easily available to the whole world became even more urgent.  In January 2014, he found two Chinese American friends in the U.S. to collaborate with him and his team.  They then formed the “10,000 Cries for Justice” team to develop a website that can store these letters digitally and make them searchable and easily available to the whole world.  After working nights and days for over a year and a half, the initial website was announced by this team on July 22, 2015 in a press conference in Beijing.  After working for another two more years, the website was able to contain the 4,000 Chinese letters. Furthermore, about 500 of these letters have been translated into English to make the “Cries for Justice” a bilingual website. [3]

Below we show a sample of such letters:

Nanking Massacre: “I was born here in 1936. When I was a little over one year old, the Japanese Imperialism savagely invaded China, and carried out barbarian Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing. My father Zhang Jilu was killed in this Massacre when he was only 27, and later my two uncles were also killed in bombing by Japanese aircrafts, leaving only my grandparents, my aunt, my mother and myself in the family. In the aftermath of this tragic incident, my grandfather Zhang Chuhai lost three sons, my young mother lost her husband, and I lost my father when I was only a little over one year old, which forced my family to lose livelihood.  Since I was young, my mother tasted untold hardship in begging while holding me on her back. Since I was still young, and my mother was a woman, we were humiliated everywhere. Even if we received one meal, we did not know where the next one would come.” 

Written by Zhang Mingde, Yinchuan City, Ningxia Autonomous Region, 6/2/1992.

Sex Slaves: “In March 1942, the Japanese soldiers came to Jiazhang Village, Xiyan Town and captured my father Hou Yinshai, deputy head of the village, and me. Then, they took off our upper clothes and beat us with sticks. We were bruised all over the body. Afterwards, they took us to Jingui Village and separated me from my father. I was dragged into a room which was then locked and I didn’t know where my father was. At over 11 p.m. that night, someone opened the door and took me to another room. After I entered the room, I saw a black-face officer and realized something bad was going to happen, so I cried out loud, which made the officer angry. He kicked me with leather shoes and dragged me on the bed. Then, he gagged me, stripped off all my clothes and raped me. I just turned 14 and was ruined by them. At dawn, I was taken back to the room where I was first kept. After that, every day from dawn to night, I would be raped by the Japanese for over 20 times.

For over 70 days, I was locked in that painful prison-like room, wasn’t given enough food or water and had to relieve myself in the room, living like an animal. I couldn’t see daylight until I was needed. After over 70 days, I got all swollen up. At last, my family ransomed my father and me with a flock of silver dollars (over 20), a donkey and over 250kg of wheat from my family and over 200 silver coins from my husband’s family. My uncle took a donkey with him to carry me home. We stayed one night at my uncle’s in Gaozhuang and he sent us home the next day. After I returned home, I was so ill that I couldn’t eat or drink. I was seriously ill for over a month. Since then, I have become afraid of dreaming, demented and would have a brain disorder and talk nonsense when I want to talk about important matters or talk too much. My whole life is ruined by the Japanese. Now, I couldn’t even support myself.”

An open letter written by Hou Qiaolian of Yangquan City, Shanxi Province written in Nov. 1992 on behalf of 35 former sex slaves.

Biological/Chemical Warfare: “In 1941 when the Japanese Army invaded Western Yunnan, after Baoshan was conquered, large crowds of residents living in Baoshan and other places in Western Yunnan swarmed to Kunming to avoid slaughter by the Japanese Army. Immediately afterwards cholera broke out in Kunming. At first people thought it was epidemic plague, but soon it spread to the whole city. Those contracted cholera first would have symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea, and soon they died in less than one day. On the streets one could see dead people each day. Back then at the biggest and most famous coffin shop (the boss was surnamed Zhao) on Wenmiao Street in Kunming, all the coffins were sold out.”

To keep the Japanese army from advancing from the Baoshan area of Western Yunnan to Kunming and other parts of China, the Chinese army destroyed the Gongguo Bridge, the only bridge on the Lancang River connecting the Baoshan area and the Kunming area, thus stopping the Japanese invasion of Kunming.

“Since the Japanese Army was unable to cross the Lancang River natural barrier, they burned, killed and looted in Baoshan and other places, persecuted common people.  Afterwards, they spread cholera bacteria in Western Yunnan, therefore the fleeing people of all social circles brought the cholera bacteria to Kunming and spread it around.  …  As mentioned above, the number of civilians suffering direct or indirect damage from the Japanese Army runs to thousands and millions. Newspapers published at that time all carried the story.”

Written by Tang Qingyu, 53 Jingzing Street, Kunming, Yunnan Province, 11/20/1992.

Slave Laborers: “In January 1942, many people including my uncle were captured by the invading Japanese army during a raid in northern Daqinghe, Hebei and sent to Tanggu Camp. Later they were sent to the railway station of Tsukino, Tone, Gunma, Japan. They were forced to labor for 4 years in a ravine 3 km southern of the railway station. They dug a cave every day, which was over 15 km long from east to west and used for hydraulic power generation. They did heavy work every day but ate pig feed and they were always starved. Instead of being provided with warm clothes in winter and thin clothes in summer, they were only given a crotch cloth in a year to work naked. The Japanese foremen often beat the Chinese laborers with sticks and whips and called them morons. My uncle saw with his eyes that many Chinese laborers were beaten to death by the Japanese foremen. The life was inhuman and intolerable. Some laborers committed suicide and some escaped and were caught back, bitten to death by foreign dogs. My uncle was strong before he was captured, but he got weak due to the heavy work. To avoid being beaten by the foremen, he worked hard day and night. There was one time he was too hungry and exhausted in the cave that he blacked out. When he came to himself, he felt great pain in his chest and spit blood. He struggled to get up, thinking about talking to the foremen to take a rest. But unexpectedly, when the wolf-like foremen saw my uncle not working, they started beating my uncle in his head with sticks despite his begging. They didn’t stop until my uncle bled in the head. My uncle was injured, but the foremen didn’t give him treatment or medicine, or food if he didn’t work. So my uncle didn’t have a choice but keep working. The Japanese foremen said, ‘You Chinese people cannot run away. You are just food of Japanese dogs.’  Many Chinese laborers died there of torturing. Also, many laborers were disabled due to the beating and the torturous work and some got blinded. They suffered in Japan until the end of 1945 after Japan surrendered. My uncle Wang Jinsheng and other survivors returned to the Red Cross of Qingdao, China in March 1946 with the help of the American army. Finally, my uncle reunited with the family.”

Written by Wang Genyou, nephew of Wang Jinsheng (deceased), Langfang City, Hebei Province, 7/6/1994.

Settlement Agreement Between Mitsubishi and Chinese Slave Laborers:  As part of the campaign to seek justice for the Chinese victims of Japanese atrocity during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Tong Zeng and others also worked with the atrocity victims to pursue legal actions.  A milestone was reached when Mitsubishi (one of the major Japanese corporations who was involved in the slave labor business) and many Chinese who were former slave laborers for Mitsubishi reached an agreement on June 1, 2016 on the issue of compensation for former slave laborers or their descendants. [5]

The settlement agreement states:

• Mitsubishi admits the historical truth that the human rights of the thousands of Chinese forced laborers were violated and that over 700 such Chinese forced laborers had died during that period
• Mitsubishi offers its sincere apology to all these forced laborers and its deep mourning to those forced laborers who had perished
• Mitsubishi accepts its responsibility of the above historical truth, and as an expression of apology, offers compensation of 100,000 RMB to each Chinese forced laborer or his beneficiary
• In order to keep this kind of mistake from recurring in the future and to help educate future generations, Mitsubishi will contribute 100 million Japanese yen for the erection of a memorial
• Mitsubishi will also contribute 200 million Japanese yen to investigate and to locate other Chinese forced laborers and their beneficiaries who are currently unaccounted for
• Mitsubishi will pay 250,000 Japanese yen for each Chinese forced laborer or his beneficiary for travel and living expenses to attend a memorial service in Japan

As of June 2022, 1,154 former slave laborers of Mitsubishi or their beneficiaries have accepted this settlement agreement, including a handful who witnessed this milestone while they were still alive.  Currently, the oldest survivor is 103 years old.  It was especially gratifying for them to hear that Mitsubishi has accepted its responsibility and has offered their sincere apology.  The Mitsubishi-Chinese slave laborers settlement agreement helps to close the wounds inflicted on many of the slave laborers. [6]

Summary:  Tong Zeng’s more than 30 years of effort and the resulting “10,000 Cries for Justice” website have allowed the voiceless to speak.  In the future, when more resources can be allocated, Tong Zeng and his team plan to translate all the other Chinese letters into English. [7]

References

[1] More information on Tong Zeng and “10,000 Cries for Justice” can be found in an earlier article “10,000 Cries for Justice”: https://www.dontow.com/2015/06/10000-cries-for-justice/.

[2] “A Conversation with Tamaki Matsuoka: ‘The Conscience of Japan'”: https://www.dontow.com/2022/06/a-conversation-with-tamaki-matsuoka-the-conscience-of-japan/.

[3] “10,000 Cries for Justice” website: https://2018.10000cfj.org/?lang=en.

[4] In the early 1990s when the majority of these letters were sent to Tong Zeng, many relatives and Chinese media personnel borrowed many of these letters.  Because at the time copying machines were not readily available to Tong Zeng and other people in China, many of these letters were borrowed and unfortunately, most of them were never returned.  That is why a lot of the letters were lost and Tong Zeng now has only about 4,000 such letters.

[5] “Mitsubishi Materials Apologizes to Chinese World War II Laborers,” by Austin Ramzy, New York times, June 1, 2016.

[6] More information on the Mitsubishi-slave laborers court settlement can also be found at https://2018.10000cfj.org/related-news-en/?lang=en. Note: Covid-19 has also slowed the implementation of this settlement.

[7] The Liaoning Education Press from Liaoning Province has selected 100 such letters and published them in a 3-volume bilingual book Letters to Tong Zeng, Chief Editor-Tong Zeng, Liaoning Education Press, 2020.

She started on this project on her own when she was an elementary school teacher in Osaka, Japan. At first working alone on this project on weekends, holidays, summer breaks with funds initially from her own savings. Eventually, she wrote several books, including the 2002 book The Battle of Nanking – Searching for Forbidden Memories, which was awarded the “Japan Congress of Journalists Prize” that is given to distinguished journalists, and the 2016 book Torn Memories of Nanking that summarized her lifelong work. She also produced numerous documentaries, including the award winning documentary with a title “Torn Memories of Nanjing,” similar to the title of her later 2016 book.

Below is a conversation capturing hours of discussion that I had with Tamaki since we became friends 12 years ago. My questions are in regular font, and Tamaki’s answers are in slightly bigger font in Italics.

“Tamaki, why did you start on this project?”

“I was born in 1947 in Osaka, Japan. I studied history and became an elementary school teacher in 1982. In 1988 after reading several books written by journalists and professors investigating the history of the Nanking Massacre and also a large number of books and popular magazines trivializing or denying the massacre, I realized that there were drastically contradictory assertions about what actually happened in Nanking in 1937-1938. It was then that I decided that I will start my own investigation of that part of history.”

“Did you know that this project would consume you full time for the next 34 years?”

“I certainly did not anticipate that. But once I started, I just can’t put it down, although many times I was overwhelmed with the complexity and difficulty of the task. But I kept working on it, because this part of history is just too important to have left it without a clear-cut conclusion.”

“How did you manage it when you were working full-time as a school teacher and bringing up two young boys?”

“I will be lying to you if I say it wasn’t difficult. Fortunately, I have a very supportive husband, and he helped me out a great deal.”

“The Japanese government has always denied what happened during the Nanking Massacre, and there is a strong right-wing element of the society that looks upon activities like yours as treasonous. Did you feel threatened?”

“Yes, definitely. People in Japan who were trying to revise history started to slander me with condemning labels such as ‘traitor,’ ‘spy for Chinese Communist Party,’ ‘psychopath,’ or ‘a liar who receives bribes.’ Although I can ignore their accusations. But it was devastating to see how my two boys have to hear such accusations about their mother. Moreover, right-wingers have barged into the elementary school where I worked and into our meetings. They constantly attack me on the Internet. We just have to be brave and endure it, knowing in our hearts that we were just speaking the truth.”

“A key part of your accomplishment was that you were able to interview over 250 former Japanese soldiers who were stationed in Nanking during the Nanking Massacre period, and their testimonies correlated with the testimonies of over 300 Nanking Massacre survivors that you also interviewed. How did you accomplish that?”

“In October 1997 we set up the “Nanking Information Hotline” for three days in six Japanese cities (Tokyo, Kanazawa, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima, and Kumanoto). Thanks to the coverage in newspapers and TV about our grass-root initiative, we received a total of 130 calls, 13 of which were from ex-soldiers. Based on the information collected, we started to track down more and more ex-soldiers. When we first visited each of them, in the beginning they all stayed silent regarding the Nanking Massacre. So we put Nanking aside and chatted about the hardships during the war.”

We had to overcome significant cultural and political reluctance to talk about this sensitive subject. It took months or even years of building friendship with these veterans and gaining their trusts in the importance of the project that the veterans were willing to open up and discuss these long-held memories which they had not discussed for over half a century with anyone else (including their immediate family members). Gradually, almost half of them started to talk about Nanking. Over the years, we interviewed more than 250 ex-soldiers.”

“I supposed that with the Nanking Massacre survivors, they were also reluctant to discuss such personal experiences with you?”

“Yes, these were long suppressed terrifying dark memories of the past, including cultural reluctance to discuss being raped and political reluctance to discuss atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers when at times the Chinese government was trying to establish friendlier relationship with the Japanese government. Many times, I can clearly see from their expressions that it was an extremely painful experience for them to relive it. It took weeks, months, or even years to gain their trusts so that gradually more and more of them were willing to talk about it.”

“Can you recall some quotes from your interviews with former Japanese soldiers or Chinese Nanking Massacre survivors?”

“Yes, there are many quotes that I will never forget. Here are some quotes, first from Japanese soldiers, and then from Chinese Nanking Massacre survivors. [1]:

• Tanaka Jiro (29 year-old Japanese soldier): “We dragged all of them (Chinese prisoners) out of the freight train hangar and made them sit down facing the shore. They sat down in knee-deep mud. When the command was given, they were sprayed with bullets at point blank range from machine guns that had been hidden in nearby trenches. They fell down, one by one, like dominoes. Blood-soaked, smoking pieces of flesh and clothing flew up into the air. Light machine guns that had been set up on the wharf took care of the several dozen or so of them who had jumped into the river. The muddy waters were soaked red with blood. What a miserable scene! Will such a wretched scene ever be seen again in this world?”

• Deguchi Gonjiro (23 year-old Japanese soldier): “The day that Nanjing fell, there were mountains of dead bodies piled up outside the walls of the city. I felt something soft beneath my feet. Lighting a match to see what I was stepping on, I realized that the entire surface under my feet was like a carpet of dead bodies. There were dead bodies everywhere. I don’t know which unit was responsible, but they had all been killed by bayonets. There were women and children, but no soldiers.”

• Deguchi Gonjiro (23 year-old Japanese soldier): “What the newspapers often refer to as the ‘Nanjing Massacre’ is an indisputable fact, and people who deny this are lying.”

• Teramoto Juhei (24 year-old Japanese soldier): “The Nanking Massacre happened. I saw it with my own eyes.”

• Itsuki Makio (22 year-old Japanese soldier): “At that time, the Japanese thought of themselves as superior and did not treat the Chinese as human beings.” … “I heard that our company commander had issued an order saying, ‘Once you’re in Nanjing, robbery, rape, and murder are allowed.'”

• Mitani Sho (18 year-old Japanese soldier): “Until now, I had no opportunity to tell my story. After sixty years, I can finally give my testimony. I am extremely grateful. As a Japanese, I often reflect deeply on this episode. Today, however, many Japanese deny that the Nanjing Massacre or military sexual slavery took place. What kind of people are they?

Here are some quotes from Chinese Nanking Massacre survivors:

• Yang Mingzhen (7 year-old Chinese female survivor): “Japanese soldiers came back again that afternoon while my mother and I were lying on the kitchen floor. My father was so weak that he was just lying there. A Japanese soldier came up to my father, opened his eyes with his fingers and thrust a knife into his mouth. Then he came up to my mother and pulled her trousers down. As he wiped the soot from my mother’s face, she bit his hand. Livid, the Japanese soldier hit my mother’s face again and again and then raped her. After that, he started taunting her, twisting the barrel of his gun around inside her vagina. The other Japanese soldier pulled my trousers down and started taunting me, prizing open my still-firm vagina with his fingers. At any rate, they were prepubescent genitals, the genitals of a six or seven-year-old. I screamed out in pain. The Japanese soldier forcibly raped me. He was a beast. The two of them took turns raping my mother and I. Blood flowed in torrents, and it was so painful that I couldn’t even walk afterwards. My genitals became swollen and continued to bleed. Urine would dribble out uncontrollably and flow into my wounds, causing unbearable pain. I still suffer incontinence to this day and am unable to urinate normally. Even now, I still have to use diapers. My parents were killed.”

• Zhang Xiuying (23 year-old Chinese female survivor): “I saw those things with my own eyes. On no account am I telling lies. I hear that there are people and politicians in Japan who say that the Nanking Massacre is a fabrication, but I honestly suffered these kinds of horrendous experiences, even having my daughter burnt to death. I am still enduring hardship in my daily life. I have a crooked finger as a result of the stabbing and I still can’t raise my arm, even sixty or more years later, after that beating with the rifle butt. How can Japanese people still say that the Nanjing Massacre is a fabrication?”

• Zhang Xiuhong (11 year-old Chinese female survivor): “We are all brothers, whether Japanese or Chinese. Please don’t do bad things like the Japanese Army did before. Japan and China want to cooperate in a spirit of friendship. I want young people [in each country] to come together, to study, to work, and to build peaceful nations. Please don’t do anything bad.”

“Besides cultural and political problems encountered, did you run into language problems also?”

“Yes, I did initially. After I learned Chinese, then the Chinese survivors and I felt much closer.”

“Your Chinese is pretty good. And you worked very hard at it since you took over 100 trips to China and spent many weeks and months taking Chinese language lessons. What other problems did you encounter?”

“We encountered another major problem. It was a race against time. Because both the former Japanese soldiers and the Chinese Nanking Massacre survivors were very elderly people who are centenarians. Sooner or later, they will be all gone, and we want to make sure that we have their testimonies before that happens. We were always racing against this time bomb that can explode any moment. Similar situation occurred with the comfort women or sexual slavery issue. Fortunately, we were able to race successfully against this time bomb. We really want to thank them for entrusting their stories to us and into the history books.”

For many years until her retirement as a school teacher, Tamaki had a full-time teaching job and did this in the evenings and weekends. She used her own savings to finance her project. She has been able to recruit and mobilize a group of dedicated volunteers on this mission. In the face of frequent and vicious personal attacks, she has displayed great courage, dedication, and commitment to continue on her mission that has consumed 32 years of her adult life. That led to her earning the namesake “The Conscience of Japan.” It also led to Tamaki Matsuoka’s priceless gift to mankind:  Historical Truth.

It is especially meaningful to mention a quote from Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito of February 23, 2015 “It is important today, when memories of the war are fading, to look back humbly on the past and correctly pass on the tragic experiences and history Japan pursued from the generation which experienced the war to those without direct knowledge.”  We want to emphasize that this should be passed on to all the people of the world.

——————–

[1] All quotes are from the book Torn Memories of Nanking, by Tamaki Matsuoka, ALPHA Education, 2016, ISBN 978-0-9920550-I-1 (paperback). Parts of this English book, plus other material, have previously been published in several other books in Japanese and Chinese by Tamaki Matsuoka.

Peace:

Since the end of WWII, the U.S. has been involved in several major wars that are usually well known to the world, such as the Korean War (1950-1953), the Vietnam War (1955-1975), the Gulf War (1990-1991), the Iraq War (2003-2011), and the War in Afghanistan (2001-2021). Not so well known to the world or to the American public is that the U.S. has also been involved in many other wars [2], such as:

• Laotian Civil War (1953-1975)
• Lebanon crisis (1958)
• Dominican Civil War (1965-1966)
• Cambodian Civil War (1967-1975)
• Multinational intervention in Lebanon (1982-1984)
• U.S. invasion of Grenada (1983)
• Bombing of Libya (1981)
• Tanker War (Persian Gulf) (1987-1988)
• U.S. invasion of Panama (1989-1990)
• First U.S. intervention in the Somali Civil War (1992-1995)
• Bosnian War and Croatian War (1992-1995)
• Intervention in Haiti (1994-1995)
• Kosovo War (1998-1999)
• American intervention in Yemen (2002-present)
• American intervention in the War in North-West Pakistan (2004-2018)
• Second U.S. Intervention in the Somali Civil War (2007-present)
• U.S. intervention in Libra (2011)
• Operation Observant Compass (Uganda) (2011-2017)
• American-led intervention in Syria (2014-present)
• American intervention in Libya (2015-2019)

In addition to these wars, the U.S. has also been involved in numerous regime changes when the people in power in these foreign countries were not in alignment with the positions of the U.S. There has been a large number of regime change activities. [3][4] To mention all these regime change activities will take a much longer article. Below we list only a subset of such regime change activities, especially during the cold war period before the dissolution of USSR to Russia in 1991:

• Replaced the Egyptian monarchy with the Republic of Egypt under Mohamed Naquib and Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt 1952)
• Iranian coup d’etat that replaced the constitutional monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi by the military general Fazlollah Zahed (Iran 1953)
• Guatemalan coup d’etat that with the help of the CIA overthrew the government of President Jacobo Arbenz with a right-wing dictator Carlos Castillo Armas (Guatemala 1954)
• A failed coup d’etat orchestrated by the CIA against Syria (Syria 1956-1957)
• A failed CIA attempt to overthrow the non-aligned and independent President Sukarno of Indonesia (Indonesia 1957-1959)
• Mass protests largely funded by the CIA that ultimately resulted in the India government dismissing the first elected state government in Keral, India led by Namboodiripad of the Communist Part of India (India 1958-1959)
• A coup d’etat from the Kennedy administration that assassinated South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem (Vietnam 1963)
• A failed CIA-back attempt to overthrow President Fidel Castro (Cuba 1959-1962)
• Extensive involvement by the CIA in planning and murdering President Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic 1961)
• U.S. government provided the Indonesian army with thousands of names of alleged Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) supporters and other alleged leftists so that these people can be killed off resulting in the erosion of support for President Sukarno and forcing him out of power and replaced by an authoritarian military regime led by General Suharto. Historian John Roosa in his book Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’État in Indonesia wrote “almost overnight the Indonesian government went from being a fierce voice for cold war neutrality and anti-imperialism to a quiet, compliant partner of the US world order.” This campaign is considered a major turning point in the Cold War, and was such a success that it served as a model for other U.S.-backed coups and anti-communist extermination campaigns throughout Asia and Latin America. (Indonesia 1965-1967)
• U.S. endorsed and supported the coup d’etat that overthrew President Isabel Peron of Argentina and replaced with the US-backed military dictatorship of General Jorge Rafael Videla. (Argentina 1976)
• U.S. provided funding and arms to provide covert support to Nicaraqua’s Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group based in the next-door country of Honduras. As part of the training, the CIA distributed a manual “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War” which instructed the Contras on how to blow up public buildings, assassinate judges, create martyrs, and blackmail ordinary citizens. After many years, the regime change was successful. (Nicaragua 1981-1990)
• U.S. interfered in the internal affairs of Haiti and forced the transfer of power from Raoul Cedras to Jean-Bertrand Aristide (Haiti 1994-1995)

As you can see, the U.S. government has engaged in a large number of wars, declared and undeclared wars. Furthermore, the U.S. government has also engaged in a large number of regime change activities in foreign countries. These regime change activities interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign countries and are not consistent with the self-projected gold standard of the U.S. government.

The purpose of our discussion is not to conclude that the U.S. has engaged in the most number of wars or engaged in the most number of regime change activities in foreign countries. See, e.g., References [5] and [6] for regime change activities by USSR or Russia. The purpose of our discussion is that the actual behavior of the U.S. government does not match at all to the gold standard presented by the U.S. government that it is always working for peace and it is always acting for the best benefits of the people of any country.

Addressing World Problems:

We all know that our world has many critical problems. These critical problems are all important, and some if not addressed properly could result in the end of civilization as we know it. Here are among the major problems:

• Global warming
• Nuclear disarmament
• Hunger
• Health
• Jobs

Global Warming: As the most industrialized country and the richest country in the world, the U.S., together with China the country with the most people and the second largest economy, contribute the most to fossil fuel pollution. We must take the lead to reduce our use of fossil fuel and create alternative energy sources. It is good that we are moving toward electric vehicles, and we are relying more on other alternative energy sources, such as solar power and wind power. But we may not be moving fast enough.

In 2016 the world reached an agreement to address the climate change issue. It is known as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. However, the U.S. under President Trump withdrew on June 1, 2017 from this agreement. After he was defeated in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and replaced by President Biden, the U.S. rejoined the Paris Agreement in February 2021. [7] On an issue of this importance to the U.S. and the whole world, it is really unimaginable and unconscionable that the U.S. would adopt such a position and waste several years of crucial time. It makes the world wonder whether the U.S. can always be counted that it will assume its role, as well as involving in the leadership as the world’s most powerful and richest country.

We should also use our technology prowess to develop new methods to solve climate change related problems. For example, one of the consequences of climate change is that the sea level will rise, and therefore some of the coast land will increase in salinity and therefore may not be able to grow food. However, technology may also be coming to the rescue, because China has shown in recent years that by selecting a type of wild rice that is more resistant to saline and alkali, such land with higher level of salinity can be used to grow rice. [8] As we discuss later in the discussion on “hunger,” China in the last few years has also successfully used new technological technique to transform deserts into fertile land. [9]

Climate change can create devastating droughts. We should also investigate how scientific breakthroughs can create artificial rain as well as other methods to reduce the negative impacts of climate change. Instead of dropping out of the Paris Agreement, the U.S. with its well known research infrastructure and large number of brilliant scientists and engineers should be able to contribute greatly in this effort if our government decides that it is one of our important goals.

Nuclear Disarmament:

People recognize that there is no winner in a nuclear war. As a matter of fact, our civilization may not survive as we know it after a nuclear war. Many countries have dozens or hundreds of nuclear weapons, with the U.S. and Russia having thousands of nuclear weapons. However, detonation of just a few nuclear weapons may already be sufficient to result in calamitous damages to the world. That is why unless the world can agree to getting rid of all nuclear weapons, the next best thing is to commit to a “No First Use” (NFU) policy, i.e., a pledge by a nuclear power not to use nuclear weapons as a means of warfare unless first attacked by an adversary using nuclear weapons.

Currently, the only country with nuclear weapons who has a NFU policy is China. [10] The U.S. with its massive and sophisticated conventional weapons should be willing not to rely on its nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

Hunger:

Current estimate is that about 10% of the world’s people do not have enough food to eat on a regular basis. [11] We need to produce more food for the world, as well as more equitably distribute the food. As we already previously mentioned that new technological advances have recently shown that desert lands can be converted to become fertile fields to grow food, and food can be grown in land immersed with water of high salinity. Again, should the U.S. with its sophisticated research infrastructure and talented pool of scientists and engineers willing to contribute to this effort? Besides addressing technical questions, to address the world hunger problem would also require overcoming many political and social obstacles. Therefore the most important question may not necessarily be the scientific question, but the political question of the commitment of the U.S. government.

Health:

Many countries in our world have a lot of people with poor health, high infant mortality and low life span. To address the health issue of the world, we may be able to learn some lessons from addressing the Covid-19 epidemic. Not only that we need proven medical solutions and skills, we also need political and social commitment, and willingness to sacrifice some individual freedom for the benefit of the larger community. Of course, solving the question of global health is also related to the previously discussed problem of hunger (and associated malnutrition). Again, the most important question may be the political question whether we are willing to make the commitment to work together with the world to address this critical problem.

Jobs:

On a small scale, people need to have jobs to earn enough money to provide for themselves and their family. On the large scale, a country needs to have a vibrant economy to provide enough jobs for its citizens as well as providing an infrastructure for the country’s transportation, communication, education, healthcare, security, etc. Usually by working together collaboratively with other countries, we can complement each other and also increase the outputs of an individual country. Something like a joint or multi country collaboration, similar to a belt and road initiative, can create additional benefits. Instead of fighting among ourselves and criticizing each other and trying to sabotage each other’s contributions, countries should seriously consider how we can work together and complement each other and create teams whose outputs are greater than the sum of individual parts.

Again, the question is whether the behavior of the U.S. government actually matches what it pretends to be. We should look inward and ask whether we are really doing our share, and working together with the rest of the world to right perhaps a mis-directed or wandering ship.

Revisiting the American Dream:

One may raise the following question: The fact that there seems to be an American Dream in the minds of many Americans as well as other people of the world, isn’t that already an existence proof that the American system of government must have been doing things close to what has been advertised. This is a very important question, which we actually have previously discussed in another article in this website. [12] We only have time to summarize the main points of that article:

• The American Dream occurred after the end of WWII, and it occurred in a unique environment of the U.S. in terms of geographic or natural opportunities during most of its existence.
• It offered a vast country with a very small native population.
• If offered a large percentage of the land that was ideal for agriculture and cattle ranging.
• Thus, there was always room to expand and enough resources to share, instead of being a zero-sum situation where one could gain only at the expense of someone else.
• The country actually welcomed more new comers to help develop the vast land.
• As a matter of fact, it was partially due to immigration to the U.S. of so many of the best and brightest from other countries that propelled the U.S. economic engine to become the richest and most powerful country in the world.
• The U.S. is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the East and the Pacific Ocean on the West, providing natural barriers from foreign aggressors.
• It is bordered on the north and the south by two relatively new countries also with a vast land of their own and a small native population.
• Therefore, the U.S. was able to live relatively peacefully without worrying too much about the threat of foreign invasion until WWII. Thus, it could focus its resources and energy internally to develop the country.
• With the above advantages, the U.S. was able to develop into a rich and powerful country. Furthermore, compared with most other countries, it suffered relatively minor damages from WWII.
• This enabled the U.S. to develop for about another 25-50 years before other countries (e.g., first Germany and Japan, and then Korea, India, and China) developed into credible economic competitors. The result was that the U.S. was able to reap great economic advantages all over the world.

This is not to deny that other factors, e.g., its democratic system of government (in spite of many shortcomings pointed out earlier in this article), the American entrepreneur spirit, the creativity and independent thinking of Americans, and the hard work of Americans, also contributed to the success of the U.S. during the first two hundred-plus years of its existence. The point we want to make is that there was almost an ideal geographical or natural environment for the U.S during most of its existence that helped to create the base for the American Dream, and thus propelling the U.S. into the richest and most powerful country in the world.

The important question now is whether the American Dream can be continued in the future? In my opinion, unless drastic changes occur, it will not happen. These drastic changes would need to include:

• The U.S. government and the American people need to reflect and look inward at their country, and not just at what it depicts itself as
• We need to look at not only the positive things, but also at the negative things
• We need to elect leaders who work for the benefits of all the people, and not just for the benefits of those who can contribute the most for campaign elections
• Assess whether each decision has long-term benefits, and not just short-term gains
• We must look within ourselves and ask whether all of us are doing our parts, instead of just placing the blame on others
• We must genuinely care for our fellow citizens of the world, instead of considering them as a country or people we can exploit
• We must keep in mind that we are part of the larger community in which we must work together cooperatively

Unless these changes occur, the American Dream will not be able to continue.

Summary:

The U.S. government always presents itself as a government that is democratic, respects human rights, treats other countries with peaceful intention, and helps to solve world problems. That is the image that the U.S. government and the U.S. mass media depict itself. In reality, the U.S. government doesn’t act that way. It is not a democratic government of working for the benefits of all its people, it treats its citizens differently depending on race, sex, place of origin, wealth, social and political status, etc., it involves in many wars, and instigates numerous regime changes. Not only that it often doesn’t get involved in solving various world problems. It sometimes drops out of critical agreements (e.g., Paris Agreement on Climate Change) and criticizes or even sabotages other countries’ contributions.

We are not saying that the U.S. government is worse than other governments, but it is definitely not the model government that it presents itself as and wants other governments to copy and mimic. We need to have an open mind and allow other governments to try other systems of government and join together cooperatively to address the world’s problems. It is not just everyone for himself, but we are in this together.

[1] “Tale of Two Standards in World Politics – Part I”: https://www.dontow.com/2022/03/tale-of-two-standards-in-world-politics-part-i/.

[2] See, e.g., List of Wars Involving the U.S.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States#21st-century_wars.

[3] See, e.g., United States involvement in regime change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change.

[4] Also, see, e.g., “The U.S. tried to change other countries’ governments 72 times during the Cold War,” Lindsey L. O’Rourke, The Washington Post, December 23, 2016: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/23/the-cia-says-russia-hacked-the-u-s-election-here-are-6-things-to-learn-from-cold-war-attempts-to-change-regimes/. According to the author, of the 72 times, 60 were covert operations and 6 were overt operations. And among the 60 covert operations, only 20 successfully brought the U.S.-backed government to power, and 40 failed.

[5] See, e.g., Soviet involvement in regime change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_involvement_in_regime_change.

[6] See, e.g., Russia involvement in regime change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_involvement_in_regime_change.

[7] “United States Officially Rejoins the Paris Agreement on Climate Change”, February 21, 2021: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/19/969387323/u-s-officially-rejoins-paris-agreement-on-climate-change.

[8] See, e.g., Bloomberg News, 2/19/2022: http://www.dontow.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/By-Bloomberg-News-growing-rice-in-seawater.docx.

[9] Numerous articles on this subject can be found in the web. Here are a few examples: (1) “Regreening the Desert with John D. Liu” – 5/7/2017:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDgDWbQtlKI (47:30); (2) “How China transformed its desert into a fruit growing oasis” – 9/26/2018:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BepMqZ4pFXQ (29:07).

[10] See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use.

[11] See, e.g., https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/world-hunger-facts-statistics.

[12] “Can the American Dream Be Continued?”: https://www.dontow.com/2010/01/can-the-american-dream-be-continued/.

This article summarizes the main points presented in this 9 webinar program.

We believe that the most important question facing the world today is “Whether our world is moving toward war or peace.” Since the U.S. and China are the two most important and most powerful countries in the world today, the relationship between the U.S. and China is key to the question “are we moving toward war or peace”? Let’s see what has been happening in the world?  Almost every day, we hear in mass media reports about all kinds of accusations against China, with respect to Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South China Sea, Diaoyu Islands, Covid-19, etc. At the same time, we also hear all kinds of pronouncements from the U.S. government reiterating all these accusations. Unfortunately, almost all these accusations are essentially false, not based on truth, but on fabrications.

But there are serious implications for these fabricated accusations, especially when they are repeated over and over, many people will believe them and they will buy into this demonization of China.  This increases the tension between the U.S. and China, and will result in serious consequences:

For Chinese Americans: Creates hate crimes against Chinese Americans, and more generally speaking against Asian Americans, as we have clearly seen this past year. It leads to fabricated espionage charges against Chinese Americans, as we have also clearly seen this past year.

For Americans in general: Critical funding will be diverted to the military to meet the fabricated tension, instead of spending on improving our economy, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, fight climate change, fight against the pandemic, improve racial harmony, fight against terrorism and war.

For citizens of the world: Again, critical resources will be diverted to military and war, instead of using such resources to work on global problems like hunger, illiteracy, infant fatality, climate change, terrorism, job creation, and peace.

To understand modern U.S.-China relationship, we need to understand the historical relationship between U.S. and China, and the evolution of that relationship, and how the world has changed during the last 50 years or so.

To understand the historical development of U.S.-China relationship, we also need to understand how China was treated by the foreign powers, including the U.S. Therefore, we need to discuss modern Chinese history, in particular, starting with the 19^th century.

How China is treated by the U.S. is very much related to how Chinese Americans are treated in the U.S.  That is why we also need to discuss the experience of Chinese Americans in the U.S.

That was why the three major topics for this webinar program were chosen to be:

• Modern Chinese History
• Chinese American Experience in the U.S.
• History of U.S.-China Relationship

We now summarize the main points discussed during this webinar program on each of these three topics.

Main Points on the topic “Modern Chinese History”: For the discussion of U.S.-China relationship, we need to discuss modern Chinese history starting with the 19th century, which was a period of unequal treaties that China experienced with almost all of the world’s major powers. The most well known is the unequal treaties with Great Britain starting with the end of the First Opium War (1839-1842) when China was forced to open up a lot of ports to Great Britain, besides paying a large amount of money, and when Hong Kong became a colony of Great Britain. What is not well known is that even though the U.S. was never a war adversary of China during the Opium Wars, the U.S. also obtained many benefits during the Opium Wars, such as having their own political and legal jurisdiction in many ports in China. It also resulted in many Americans making huge fortunes selling opium in China. These people later became financial and industrial pillars of the U.S and major donors to the Ivy League schools. [3] Near the end of the 19th century the encroachment of Japan in China resulted in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894) which China lost, and had to give a huge sum of money to Japan while at the same time conceding Taiwan to become a colony of Japan.

Then in the 20th century during WWII, China was an ally of the U.S. and kept the majority of the occupied Japanese military on Chinese soils which kept these Japanese troops from making more attacks on U.S. troops in Southeast Asia, as well as on the U.S. mainland, besides the attack on Pearl Harbor. Also near the end of WWII, several major declarations by the Allied powers stated that after Japan is defeated in WWII, Japan must return the island of Taiwan to China. This was so stated in the 1943 Cairo Declaration, the 1945 Potsdam Declaration, and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender signed on the U.S. Battleship Missouri on September 2, 1945. However, in 1951 at the San Francisco Peace Treaty which was orchestrated by the U.S. and supposed to decide on the treatment of Japan as the result of Japan’s defeat in WWII. Neither the Republic of China (ROC) nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was even invited to this Peace Conference even though China suffered the most at the hands of the Japanese military during WWII and more than 50 other countries were invited. Contrary to all the previous agreements, the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty did not say that Taiwan should be returned to China, but only stated that Japan should give up Taiwan. This is one of many examples that the U.S. did not acknowledge history and did not follow up on its own agreements, but instead set its own ruled-based order.

Main Points on the topic “Chinese American Experience in the U.S.”: Starting in 1849, a large number (about 24,000) of Chinese workers first came to the U.S. to work on the gold mines. Then from1863-1869, another large number (about 20,000) of Chinese came to help build the first continental railroad. The Chinese workers were instrumental in building the western part of the first continental railroad. Their magnificent contribution is best summarized by Leland Stanford, then governor of California and president of the Central Pacific Railroad, who originally wanted only white workers to work on the transcontinental railroad, said in his report to then President Andrew Johnson: “They were “quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious and economical.” In a stockholder report, Stanford described construction as a “herculean task” and said it had been accomplished thanks to the Chinese, who made up 90% of the Central Pacific Railroad’s labor force. These workers showed their mettle, and sealed their legacy, on the peaks of the rugged Sierra Nevada.” Many thought that Stanford and the Central Pacific Railroad were foolish thinking that it could be done. [4]

However, the Chinese were not even represented at all in the large celebration ceremony in Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869 marking the completion of the First Continental Railroad. This huge oversight of history and display of racial discrimination were not corrected until the May 10, 2019 celebration at the 150 year anniversary of the completion of the First Continental Railroad.

In spite of the great contributions and sacrifices made by the Chinese workers to the development of the United States, the Chinese were discriminated against in every sense of the word, including many massacres. [4] [5] Finally, this led to the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the only law in American history to deny citizenship or entry based on a specific nationality. This law was supposed to last for only 10 years, but it was repeatedly renewed until 1943 when the U.S. and China were allies during WWII.

The discrimination against Chinese Americans continued in the 1950s during the McCarthy era. As a matter of fact, it has never really gone away, and has resurfaced many times, especially prominently with the Vincent Chin murder in 1882, the Wen Ho Lee espionage accusation in 1999, and the recent hate crimes against Chinese Americans, and more generally against Asian Americans in general, as well as a series of arbitrary false espionage charges against many Chinese American professors and researchers.

Main Points on the topic of the “History of U.S.-China Relationship”: As discussed under the topic of modern Chinese history, the U.S. made full use of the unequal treaty treatment of all the foreign powers toward China in the 19th century. So for most of the 19th century, the U.S. took advantage of China’s weakness, and basically exploited China as much as possible.

However, there was a brief period of diplomatic brilliance in the 1860s with the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. Anson Burlingame is unique in diplomatic history. He was appointed by President Lincoln to be the U.S.’s Ambassador to China 1861-1867, and then he was China’s Ambassador to the U.S. and Other Powers 1867-1870. Following Lincoln’s domestic policy of equality of men with the freeing of slaves from the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, Burlingame, together with Secretary of State William Seward, changed the U.S.’s policy toward China from one based on unequal treaties to one based on equality of nations. Arguing that such a policy change in the long term was in the best interest of the U.S., they were successful in persuading the U.S. Senate and President Andrew Johnson to pass the Burlingame Treaty in 1868. If such a policy had continued, we could have a very different world today. In light of the current U.S. government’s hostility policy toward China, the world would definitely benefit from another Anson Burlingame.

However, with the assassination of Lincoln, the early death of Burlingame, and the great change in the political climate in the U.S., the whole reconstruction movement was delayed in the U.S. by about 100 years, so that the emancipated slaves did not make significant gains toward equality until the civil rights movement of the 1950s/1960s. Not only that the Burlingame Treaty was basically repealed in the 1870s, it was then substituted by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

The first half of the 20th century was dominated by WWII and the emergence of the People’s Republic of China. As previously discussed, the U.S. did not recognize history or its previous agreements, but instead pursue its own rule-based order. This led to many current flash points between the U.S. and China, such as Taiwan, Diaoyu Islands, South China Sea.

To support its own rule-based order, the U.S. also continues to create fabrications and create unrest and various umbrella movements to try to weaken and de-stablize China. The most obvious examples are Hong Kong and Xinjiang which were discussed in Webinar 6. [6]

The crux of this webinar program is “China Is Not United States’ Enemy.” That last webinar [7] (Webinar 9 on 11/17/2021) provides many specific arguments that the answer should be no to the question “is China the enemy of the U.S.?” See also the program summary remarks at the end of that webinar. [8]

Let’s all work together harder for peace in order that our children and grandchildren will have a livable world to grow up in. We really have no other alternative.

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[1] “Educational Webinar Program”: https://www.dontow.com/2021/09/educational-webinar-program/.

[2] “China Is Not United States’ Enemy”: You can see the video replay of this 9th and last webinar at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWGqwPibQW8.

[3] See, e.g., James Bradley, The China Mirage:  The Hidden History of American Disaster in China, Little Brown and Company, 2015.

[4] Gordon H. Chang, Ghost of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Continental Railroad, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019.

[5] Iris Chang, The Chinese in America, Penguin Books, 2003.

[6] See the video reply of Webinar 6 on 10/27/2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4vANu9EdSE. In particular, see the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) website for funding they provided to various organizations, such as those fermenting unrest in Hong Kong and Xinjiang: https://www.ned.org/wp-content/themes/ned/search/grant-search.php?organizationName=&region=Asia&projectCountry=China&amount=&fromDate=&toDate=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&search=&maxCount=100&orderBy=Country&start=1&sbmt=1

[7] For the video replay of Webinar 9, see: https://youtu.be/tWGqwPibQW8.

[8] “China Is Not United States’ Enemy” The audio podcast of this summary can be found at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/n07xoft8rhd3jw1/P9c-20211117-Tow%27s%20Closing%20Remarks.mp3?dl=0, and it can also be found at:  https://www.dontow.com/2021/12/china-is-not-united-states-enemy/.