China Motivational Quotes

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. I want to grow really old with my wife, Annie, whom I dearly love. I want to see my younger children grow up and to play a role in their character and intellectual development. I want to meet still unconceived grandchildren. There are scientific problems whose outcomes I long to witness—such as the exploration of many of the worlds in our Solar System and the search for life elsewhere. I want to learn how major trends in human history, both hopeful and worrisome, work themselves out: the dangers and promise of our technology, say; the emancipation of women; the growing political, economic, and technological ascendancy of China; interstellar flight. If there were life after death, I might, no matter when I die, satisfy most of these deep curiosities and longings. But if death is nothing more than an endless dreamless sleep, this is a forlorn hope. Maybe this perspective has given me a little extra motivation to stay alive. The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

Its substance was known to me. The crawling infinity of colours, the chaos of textures that went into each strand of that eternally complex tapestry…each one resonated under the step of the dancing mad god, vibrating and sending little echoes of bravery, or hunger, or architecture, or argument, or cabbage or murder or concrete across the aether. The weft of starlings’ motivations connected to the thick, sticky strand of a young thief’s laugh. The fibres stretched taut and glued themselves solidly to a third line, its silk made from the angles of seven flying buttresses to a cathedral roof. The plait disappeared into the enormity of possible spaces. Every intention, interaction, motivation, every colour, every body, every action and reaction, every piece of physical reality and the thoughts that it engendered, every connection made, every nuanced moment of history and potentiality, every toothache and flagstone, every emotion and birth and banknote, every possible thing ever is woven into that limitless, sprawling web. It is without beginning or end. It is complex to a degree that humbles the mind. It is a work of such beauty that my soul wept... ..I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.

Only those who have tasted the bitterest of the bitter can become people who stand out among others. -Guanchang Xianxing Ji

I used to think the most important thing for a reporter was to be where the news is and be the first to know. Now I feel a reporter should be able to effect change. Your reporting should move people and motivate people to change the world. Maybe this is too idealistic. Young people who want to be journalists must, first, study and, second, recognize that they should never be the heroes of the story. ..A journalist must be curious, and must be humble. --Zhou Yijun

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct.

In stark contrast, China’s startup culture is the yin to Silicon Valley’s yang: instead of being mission-driven, Chinese companies are first and foremost market-driven. Their ultimate goal is to make money, and they’re willing to create any product, adopt any model, or go into any business that will accomplish that objective. That mentality leads to incredible flexibility in business models and execution, a perfect distillation of the “lean startup” model often praised in Silicon Valley. It doesn’t matter where an idea came from or who came up with it. All that matters is whether you can execute it to make a financial profit. The core motivation for China’s market-driven entrepreneurs is not fame, glory, or changing the world. Those things are all nice side benefits, but the grand prize is getting rich, and it doesn’t matter how you get there.

We inter-change ideas. You can stay in the United States and inspire people in Indonesia. You can stay in Ghana and inspire people in Turkey. You can stay in Nigeria and inspire people in cote'd voire. You can stay in Senegal and inspire people in China and vice versa.

A good life is doing what you love as much as you can and doing what you must as much as you should

If money could motivate the merchants of England to cross death-defying oceans and enter the interior of China at great personal risk of the loss of life, could not the love of Christ motivate the missionaries to do the same for the sake of the gospel?

The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance. There seemed nowhere to hide my lack of correct emotion except the shoulder of the woman in front of me, one of the student officials, who was apparently heartbroken. I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately. As so often in China, a bit of ritual did the trick. Sniveling heartily she made a movement as though she was going to turn around and embrace me I pressed my whole weight on her from behind to keep her in her place, hoping to give the impression that I was in a state of abandoned grief. In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had led to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery to which the Chinese population had been subjected. For what? But Mao's theory might just be the extension of his personality. He was, it seemed to me, really a restless fight promoter by nature, and good at it. He understood ugly human instincts such as envy and resentment, and knew how to mobilize them for his ends. He ruled by getting people to hate each other. In doing so, he got ordinary Chinese to carry out many of the tasks undertaken in other dictatorships by professional elites. Mao had managed to turn the people into the ultimate weapon of dictatorship. That was why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB in China. There was no need. In bringing out and nourishing the worst in people, Mao had created a moral wasteland and a land of hatred. But how much individual responsibility ordinary people should share, I could not decide. The other hallmark of Maoism, it seemed to me, was the reign of ignorance. Because of his calculation that the cultured class were an easy target for a population that was largely illiterate, because of his own deep resentment of formal education and the educated, because of his megalomania, which led to his scorn for the great figures of Chinese culture, and because of his contempt for the areas of Chinese civilization that he did not understand, such as architecture, art, and music, Mao destroyed much of the country's cultural heritage. He left behind not only a brutalized nation, but also an ugly land with little of its past glory remaining or appreciated. The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. Weeping for Mao was perhaps just another programmed act in their programmed lives. Yet the mood of the nation was unmistakably against continuing Mao's policies. Less than a month after his death, on 6 October, Mme Mao was arrested, along with the other members of the Gang of Four. They had no support from anyone not the army, not the police, not even their own guards. They had had only Mao. The Gang of Four had held power only because it was really a Gang of Five. When I heard about the ease with which the Four had been removed, I felt a wave of sadness. How could such a small group of second-rate tyrants ravage 900 million people for so long? But my main feeling was joy. The last tyrants of the Cultural Revolution were finally gone.

Like I told you, I’m not interested. I think the party is mostly a means of advancing one’s career anyway.” “Exactly, and your decision not to join is a political decision.” “Well, then my political decision is to not be political." “Exactly, that’s a political statement. You are expressing your opinion about current politics. Except you are political, everything we do is political…” “It’s a practical decision, not a political one… We don’t have to analyze everyone’s lives for motives.” “I wasn’t saying it’s wrong… I was just pointing out that your life says something about your politics whether you think about them or not. You can either just let that happen or you can think about the kind of choices you want to make.” “I’d like to continue to make my choices because they fit my life rather than out of some sense of ideology… In my experience ideology is a lot like religion; it’s a belief system and most people cling to it long after it becomes clear that their ideology doesn’t describe the real world…” “That’s as pure a description of an applied political theory as any I’ve ever heard.

Many of the issues that motivated Obama—growing the American economy, combating climate change, forging new rules to govern trade and commerce among nations—depended upon cooperation in Asia. While the Middle East represented the past—its religious wars, American-backed autocrats, Iranian revolutionaries, terrorist threats—Asia seemed to represent the future. It helped that the people and governments in Asia wanted to deepen relations with “the United States, in part because of their concerns about the largest emerging power in their neighborhood: China

Throw in the valley’s rich history of computer science breakthroughs, and you’ve set the stage for the geeky-hippie hybrid ideology that has long defined Silicon Valley. Central to that ideology is a wide-eyed techno-optimism, a belief that every person and company can truly change the world through innovative thinking. Copying ideas or product features is frowned upon as a betrayal of the zeitgeist and an act that is beneath the moral code of a true entrepreneur. It’s all about “pure” innovation, creating a totally original product that generates what Steve Jobs called a “dent in the universe.” Startups that grow up in this kind of environment tend to be mission-driven. They start with a novel idea or idealistic goal, and they build a company around that. Company mission statements are clean and lofty, detached from earthly concerns or financial motivations.

Challenges also helped combat the final most difficult barrier of all—motivation. There was a sense of immediacy. Users either chose to participate in the fun challenge while it was trending today or risk missing out. Participation also gave people a sense of being part of a wider community.

Normally, the easiest way to [use money to get more money, i.e. capitalism] is by establishing some kind of formal or de facto monopoly. For this reason, capitalists, whether merchant princes, financiers, or industrialists, invariably try to ally themselves with political authorities to limit the freedom of the market, so as to make it easier for them to do so. From this perspective, China was for most of its history the ultimate anti-capitalist market state. Unlike later European princes, Chinese rulers systematically refused to team up with would-be Chinese capitalists (who always existed). Instead, like their officials, they saw them as destructive parasites--though, unlike the usurers, ones whose fundamental selfish and antisocial motivations could still be put to use in certain ways. In Confucian terms, merchants were like soldiers. Those drawn to a career in the military were assumed to be driven largely by a love of violence. As individuals, they were not good people, but they were also necessary to defend the frontiers. Similarly, merchants were driven by greed and basically immoral; yet if kept under careful administrative supervision, they could be made to serve the public good. Whatever one might think of the principles, the results are hard to deny. For most of its history, China maintained the highest standard of living in the world--even England only really overtook it in perhaps the 1820s, well past the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Parent and Teacher Actions: 1. Ask children what their role models would do. Children feel free to take initiative when they look at problems through the eyes of originals. Ask children what they would like to improve in their family or school. Then have them identify a real person or fictional character they admire for being unusually creative and inventive. What would that person do in this situation? 2. Link good behaviors to moral character. Many parents and teachers praise helpful actions, but children are more generous when they’re commended for being helpful people—it becomes part of their identity. If you see a child do something good, try saying, “You’re a good person because you ___.” Children are also more ethical when they’re asked to be moral people—they want to earn the identity. If you want a child to share a toy, instead of asking, “Will you share?” ask, “Will you be a sharer?” 3. Explain how bad behaviors have consequences for others. When children misbehave, help them see how their actions hurt other people. “How do you think this made her feel?” As they consider the negative impact on others, children begin to feel empathy and guilt, which strengthens their motivation to right the wrong—and to avoid the action in the future. 4. Emphasize values over rules. Rules set limits that teach children to adopt a fixed view of the world. Values encourage children to internalize principles for themselves. When you talk about standards, like the parents of the Holocaust rescuers, describe why certain ideals matter to you and ask children why they’re important. 5. Create novel niches for children to pursue. Just as laterborns sought out more original niches when conventional ones were closed to them, there are ways to help children carve out niches. One of my favorite techniques is the Jigsaw Classroom: bring students together for a group project, and assign each of them a unique part. For example, when writing a book report on Eleanor Roosevelt’s life, one student worked on her childhood, another on her teenage years, and a third on her role in the women’s movement. Research shows that this reduces prejudice—children learn to value each other’s distinctive strengths. It can also give them the space to consider original ideas instead of falling victim to groupthink. To further enhance the opportunity for novel thinking, ask children to consider a different frame of reference. How would Roosevelt’s childhood have been different if she grew up in China? What battles would she have chosen to fight there?

Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission (now called the Overseas Missionary Fellowship) believed that if money could motivate the merchants of England to cross life-threatening oceans and enter the interior of China at great personal risk of loss of life, could not the love of Christ motivate missionaries to do the same for the sake of the gospel?

Since the very beginning of the Communist regime, I had carefully studied books on Marxism and pronouncements by Chinese Communist Party leaders. It seemed to me that socialism in China was still very much an experiment nad had no fixed course of development for the country had yet been decided upon. This, I thought, was why the government's policy was always changing, like a pendulum swinging from left to right and back again. When things went to extremes and problems emerged. Beijing would take corrective measures. Then these very corrective measures went too far and had to be corrected. The real difficulty was, of course, that a state-controlled economy only stifled productivity, and economic planning from Beijing ignored local conditions and killed incentive. When a policy changed from above, the standards of values changed with it. What was right yesterday became wrong today, and visa versa. Thus the words and actions of a Communist Party official at the lower level were valid for a limited time only... The Cultural Revolution seemed to me to be a swing to the left. Sooner or later, when it had gone too far, corrective measures would be taken. The people would have a few months or a few years of respite until the next political campaign. Mao Zedong believed that political campaigns were the motivating force for progress. So I thought the Proletarian Cultural Revolution was just one of an endless series of upheavals the Chinese people must learn to put up with.

Unlike later European princes, Chinese rulers systematically refused to team up with would-be Chinese capitalists (who always existed). Instead, like their officials, they saw them as destructive parasites—though, unlike the usurers, ones whose fundamentally selfish and antisocial motivations could still be put to use in certain ways. In Confucian terms, merchants were like soldiers. Those drawn to a career in the military were assumed to be driven largely by a love of violence. As individuals, they were not good people, but they were also necessary to defend the frontiers. Similarly, merchants were driven by greed and basically immoral; yet if kept under careful administrative supervision, they could be made to serve the public good.29 Whatever one might think of the principles, the results are hard to deny. For most of its history, China maintained the highest standard of living in the world—even England only really overtook it in perhaps the 1820s, well past the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Lest some might gather an impression that this story is an exposé, I wish to say I have no intention of such. If I had chosen to write an exposé, I could have taken fiendish delight in doing a dilly fifteen years ago, when even our government was not too certain about things that went on. But to make one man’s story interesting to others he must run into good and bad situations. I have long since discovered that there is no such thing as bad people. There are just two kinds of people, because people are people. There are those who know and those who don’t know. And I don’t wish you to think I have any intention of shoving onto a few the entire blame for China becoming communistic instead of something else. In a way, even though I didn’t make a fortune like some of the others, and my main motives were not greed and power, I honestly feel that I am guilty along with them. And even though my main crime was ignorance, which is a by-product of emotional immaturity, I deserve to be included with the China gang.

The road north out of central Lusaka quickly transitions from a world of impressively broad avenues and fancy new commercial districts to a stop-and-start tour of desolate, overcrowded slums. There, half-dressed young men sit around glumly, seemingly lacking the motivation in the face of persistently high unemployment to even bother looking for work. When at last one reaches the highway that leads north to the Copper Belt it is the oncoming traffic that makes the strongest impression. It consists mostly of van after jam-packed van full of poor Zambians. They are overwhelmingly young and desperate to get off the land and they arrive in the capital with dreams of remaking their lives in the big city. When most people think about China’s relationship with Africa they reduce it to a single proposition: securing access to natural resources, of which Africa is the world’s greatest storehouse. As one of the top copper-producing nations, Zambia, a landlocked country in southern Africa, is doubtlessly a very big part of that story.

Lest some might gather an impression that this story is an exposé, I wish to say I have no intention of such. If I had chosen to write an exposé, I could have taken fiendish delight in doing a dilly fifteen years ago, when even our government was not too certain about things that went on. But to make one man’s story interesting to others he must run into good and bad situations. I have long since discovered that there is no such thing as bad people. There are just two kinds of people, because people are people. There are those who know and those who don’t know. And I don’t wish you to think I have any intention of shoving onto a few the entire blame for China becoming communistic instead of something else. In a way, even though I didn’t make a fortune like some of the others, and my main motives were not greed and power, I honestly feel that I am guilty along with them. And even though my main crime was ignorance, which is a by-product of emotional immaturity, I deserve to be included with the China gang. My only hope is that we didn’t louse up the future generations too greatly, so that they may have a chance in the years to come.

[...]Many of those friends were self-declared socialists - Wester socialists, that is. They spoke about Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Salvador Allende or Ernesto 'Che' Guevara as secular saints. It occurred to me that they were like my father in this aspect: the only revolutionaries they considered worthy of admiration had been murdered.[...]ut they did not think that my stories from the eighties were in any way significant to their political beliefs. Sometimes, my appropriating the label of socialist to describe both my experiences and their commitments was considered a dangerous provocation. [...] 'What you had was not really socialism.' they would say, barely concealing their irritation. My stories about socialism in Albania and references to all the other socialist countries against which our socialism had measured itself were, at best, tolerated as the embarrassing remarks of a foreigner still learning to integrate. The Soviet Union, China, the German Democratic Republic, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cuba; there was nothing socialist about them either. They were seen as the deserving losers of a historical battle that the real, authentic bearers of that title had yet to join. My friends' socialism was clear, bright and in the future. Mine was messy, bloody and of the past. And yet, the future that they sought, and that which socialist states had once embodied, found inspiration in the same books, the same critiques of society, the same historical characters. But to my surprise, they treated this as an unfortunate coincidence. Everything that went wrong on my side of the world could be explained by the cruelty of our leaders, or the uniquely backward nature of our institutions. They believed there was little for them to learn. There was no risk of repeating the same mistakes, no reason to ponder what had been achieved, and why it had been destroyed. Their socialism was characterized by the triumph of freedom and justice; mine by their failure. Their socialism would be brought about by the right people, with the right motives, under the right circumstances, with the right combination of theory and practice. There was only one thing to do about mine: forget it. [...]But if there was one lesson to take away from he history of my family, and of my country, it was that people never make history under circumstances they choose. It is easy to say, 'What you had was not the real thing', applying that to socialism or liberalism, to any complex hybrid of ideas and reality. It releases us from the burden of responsability. We are no longer complicit in moral tragedies create din the name of great ideas, and we don't have to reflect, apologize and learn.

President Obama concluded his speech with this thought: It may seem sometimes that America is being held to a different standard. And I’ll admit the readiness of some to assume the worst motives by our government can be frustrating. No one expects China to have an open debate about their surveillance programs or Russia to take privacy concerns of citizens in other places into account. But let’s remember, we are held to a different standard precisely because we have been at the forefront of defending personal privacy and human dignity. As the nation that developed the internet, the world expects us to ensure that the digital revolution works as a tool for individual empowerment, not government control. Having faced down the dangers of totalitarianism and fascism and communism, the world expects us to stand up for the principle that every person has the right to think and write and form relationships freely, because individual freedom is the wellspring of human progress.

The core motivation for China’s market-driven entrepreneurs is not fame, glory, or changing the world. Those things are all nice side benefits, but the grand prize is getting rich, and it doesn’t matter how you get there.

Good nutrition and regular exercise combine to offer more health per person than the sum of each part alone. We also know that physical activity has an effect on emotional and mental well-being. Much has been said about the effect physical activity has on various chemicals in our bodies, which in tum affect our moods and our concentration. And experiencing the rewards of feeling better emotionally and being more mentally alert provides the confidence and motivation to treat ourselves to optimal nutrition, which reinforces the entire cycle. Those who feel good about themselves are more likely to respect their health by practicing good nutrition. John Robbins has done more than any other person to bring this issue to the front of American consciousness, and I strongly recommend reading his most recent book, The Food Revolution. Our food choices have an incredible impact not only on our metabolism, but also on the initiation, promotion and even reversal of disease, on our energy; on our physical activity, on our emotional and mental well-being and on our world environment. All of these seemingly separate spheres are intimately interconnected. I have mentioned the wisdom of nature at various points in this book, and I have come to see the power of the workings of the natural world. It is a wondrous web of health, from molecules, to people, to other animals, to forests, to oceans, to the air we breathe. This is nature at work, from the microscopic to the macroscopic.

an action is good when it promotes interests, material or spiritual, as intended by the actor in his motive; and it is bad when it injures interests, material or spiritual, as intended by the actor in his motive.' According

I guess I came up from a middle class background... more or less. Get through school, find a job you can tolerate, do your work. Don't rock the boat. But then I watched that Jack Canfield movie. And he said I can have anything. ANYTHING! Just put it on the vision board. Ask, believe, receive. I started to drink in college, and eventually it was time to join AA. They told me about a loving, powerful God. Well that's even better. At some point I started looking for this Higher power, and started tuning into Joel Osteen. Explosive Blessings! Wow. Now my expectations are REALLY high. Once in a while some asshole says something about getting a job, and I tell the fucker to go back to China. "Get a job" is not in the 12 steps. Fuck off.

We typically see ourselves as more benign than we are, and are quicker to attribute malign motives to potential adversaries

To Have and Have Not” It was during 1937 that Ernest Hemingway wrote the novel “To Have and Have Not” about Harry Morgan, a fishing boat captain who ran contraband between Havana and Key West. Things didn’t go well for Morgan as he sank ever deeper into debt. Hemingway’s book continued with Harry Morgan running his boat between Cuba and the United States, carrying revolutionaries to Cuba and smuggling Chinese immigrants and rum into Florida. The depression during the early 1930’s and the hunger experienced by the “Conchs” of Key West was Morgan’s motive for ferrying his illegal cargo between the two countries. When Ernest Hemingway moved to Cuba early in 1939, he took his boat the Pilar across the Straits of Florida to Havana, where he first checked into the Hotel Ambos Mundos. Shortly thereafter, Martha joined him in Cuba and they initially rented, and later in 1940, purchased a home for $12,500. Located 10 miles to the east of Havana, in the small town of San Francisco de Paula, they settled into what they called Finca Vigía, the Lookout Farm. After a difficult divorce from Pauline, Ernest and Martha got married on November 20, 1940. Even though Cuba had permanently become their home, they sought writing assignments overseas, including one in China that Martha got for Collier’s magazine. Returning to Cuba just prior to the outbreak of World War II, he convinced the Cuban government to outfit his boat with armaments, with which he intended to ambush German submarines. As the war progressed, Hemingway went to London as a war correspondent, where he met Mary Welsh. His infatuation prompted him to propose to her, which of course did not sit well with Martha.

Motives are not only the fine china of plausible desires and honest hurt. They are also the steel and high explosives of all-consuming self-will.

She may seem closed off, guard up, Wall of China around her, but really she wants you to liberate the guard, shatter the wall, and unravel her madly.

Bull in a China Shop The metaphor “bull in a china shop” appropriately describes how a clumsy (or socially awkward) person can sometimes find themselves in a quite delicate position. Have you ever been in a social situation where it was prudent to bite your tongue, smile and nod, choose your words carefully, or remain silent all together? One in which, if you didn’t—it could cause damage?” “You can be a bull. And you can be in the china shop. But, just don’t break anything! Even the biggest, baddest, most boorish bull can skate carefully through a china shop with dignity and grace if he exercises mindfulness and consideration.

ON MARCH 26th GitHub, an American-based website for programmers, began to suffer what it says is its biggest ever denial-of-service attack. The means and apparent motive were just as noteworthy: the Great Firewall, China’s web-filtering infrastructure, was used. The assault seems to have been intended to persuade GitHub to drop content the Chinese authorities object to, including the Chinese-language edition of the New York Times. The attackers’ identities will probably never be confirmed. But the rules of online engagement with China have taken a nasty turn. As its nickname suggests, the

For years, President Obama and his top officials vehemently denounced China for using its surveillance capabilities for economic advantage while insisting that the United States and its allies never do any such thing. The Washington Post quoted an NSA spokesperson saying that the Department of Defense, of which the agency is a part, “ ‘does engage’ in computer network exploitation,” but “does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including ‘cyber’ ” [emphatic asterisks in the original]. That the NSA spies for precisely the economic motive it has denied is proven by its own documents. The agency acts for the benefit of what it calls its “customers,” a list that includes not only the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but also primarily economic agencies, such as the US Trade Representative and the Departments of Agriculture, Treasury, and Commerce:

Marco Polo’s father, Niccolò Polo, traded with the Persians who were known to the early Europeans. These early Persians came from the province of Fârs, sometimes known in Old Persian as Pârsâ, located in the southwestern region of Iran. As a people, they were united under the Achaemenid Dynasty in the 6th century BC, by Cyrus the Great. In 1260, Niccolò Polo and his brother Maffeo lived in Constantinople, now Istanbul, Turkey. After the Mongol conquest of Asia Minor, the Polo brothers liquidated their assets into tangible valuables such as gold and jewels and moved out of harm’s way. Having heard of advanced eastern civilizations the brothers traveled through much of Asia, and even met with the Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, who later became emperor of China and established the Yuan Dynasty. Not being the first to travel east of Iran, they had heard numerous stories regarding the riches to be discovered in the Far East. Twenty-four years later in 1295, after traveling almost 15,000 miles, they returned to Venice with many riches and treasures. The Polo brothers had experienced a quarter century of adventures on their way to Asia that were later transcribed into The Book of Marco Polo by a writer named Rustichello, who came from Pisa in Tuscany, Italy. This was the beginning of a quest that motivated explorers, including Christopher Columbus, from that time on.

value of life is based on greed and selfish motives. It is time for African Christians to know and teach that the SAVIOR has a lot in common with Africans while he was on this earth. He was born, raised, and died in a colony. He drank the bitterness of rejection, and experienced the life of a refugee. He went through betrayal, loneliness, homelessness, misunderstanding, insult, disrespect, hunger, injustice, suffering, and death. If we want him to be truly a Savior of Africans, the Christ of Africa should not be devoid of the crown of thorns and the cross. He is not only a Savior from grief, but he is a brother who understands suffering and who can understand Africans. To be known by the crucified Christ as we should be known is a beginning of restoration of lost identity, of renewal and being human.

This book reveals the complexity of nurses’ motivations for joining. It probes how humanitarian nursing within a Quaker-based organization challenged nurses’ perception of their role as purveyors of Western-based knowledge and standards, even as they confronted questions of medical ethics and unfamiliar cultural practices. The Gadabout nurses’ narratives are not solely about what happened to them and how they reacted to the challenges. Rather, they are about how men and women as categories of identity have been constructed within the gendered mainstream historiography, particularly the international relations discipline.1 The China Convoy suggests that nurses’ voices should be taken more seriously, not only within the scholarly literature but also within the contemporary policy formation process. Nurses have been and will remain key to the delivery of humanitarian assistance. It is my hope that this book will open avenues of scholarly inquiry within the history and practice of humanitarian nursing.

The Misbâh has chapters on “knowledge” (- ilm, ch. 62), “certain knowledge” ( yaqîn, ch. 88), “wisdom” (hikmah, ch. 99), and “ignorance” ( jahl, ch. 77). The chapters are spread over the whole, work seemingly without any clear motivation justifying their insertion in the particular places in which they are found. “Jafar” starts, of course, with the praise of knowledge as he does with the blame of ignorance whose progress is darkness42 and whose recession is light. He is concerned with clarifying the particular aspect of knowledge that is referred to in such common traditions as the search for knowledge being a duty, the search for knowledge to be extended even as far as China,43 and the knowledge about one’s soul being the knowledge of the Lord.44 In the first case, the knowledge intended is the knowledge of the fear of God and of certainty (- ilm at-taqwâ wa-l-yaqîn); in the sec- ond, the knowledge about (ma- rifah) the soul/self which includes the knowledge about the Lord; and in the third (where this last knowledge is particularly speci- ed), the knowledge that requires acting in accordance with it and which is “sincere devotion” (ikhlâs). The theme of the necessity of acting with sincere devotion is then elaborated by means of statements castigating useless knowledge and stressing the fact that just a small amount of knowledge supports a large amount of life-long work. An inscription found and deciphered by Jesus and a revelation received by David likewise indicate the need for action. “Knowledge” is the only way leading to God. The true “knower” is identi- ed by his prayers, his piety, and his actions, and not by his appearance, his pre- tensions, and his words. True knowledge has always been sought in the past by those possessing intelligence, devotion (nusk), modesty (bashful- ness, hayâ), and the fear of God (khashyah); today it is sought by men not possessing any of these qualities. Statements concerning the qualities required of teachers and students conclude “Jafar's chapter on knowledge. Knowledge, for “Jafar,” is the result of introspection, a response within the individual to the divine. But it is also the result of a process of teaching and studying, and it must - find expression in relevant human activity. The whole would seem to be a mixture of moderate Shîah views of revealed and inspired knowledge and the “orthodox” concern with the methodology of the transmission of traditions and their practi- cal legal signi- cance.

Value your life. Your life was not made in China

This will change. China is not weighed down or motivated diplomatically or economically by human rights in its dealings with the world. It is secure in its borders, straining against the bonds of the First Island Chain, and now moving around the globe with confidence. If it can avoid a serious conflict with Japan or the USA,

This will change. China is not weighed down or motivated diplomatically or economically by human rights in its dealings with the world. It is secure in its borders, straining against the bonds of the First Island Chain, and now moving around the globe with confidence. If it can avoid a serious conflict with Japan or the USA, then the only real danger to China is itself.

Of course, they had ulterior motives, as most career politicians do. The Green New Deal is less about the reduction of fossil fuel and more a progressives’ letter to Santa with a list of all the gifts the liberals want for Christmas. If they couldn’t stand up to AOC, good luck with standing up to China and North Korea.

In the second year of the Trump presidency, I attended a dinner of American hedge funders in Hong Kong. I was there as a guest speaker, to survey the usual assortment of global hot spots. A thematic question emerged from the group—was the “Pax Americana” over? There was a period of familiar cross-talk about whether Trump was a calamitous force unraveling the international order or merely an impolitic Republican politician advancing a conventional agenda. I kept interjecting that Trump was ushering in a new era—one of rising nationalist competition that could lead to war and unchecked climate change, to the implosion of American democracy and the accelerated rise of a China that would impose its own rules on the world. Finally, one of the men at the table interrupted with some frustration. He demanded a show of hands—how many around the table had voted for Trump, attracted by the promise of tax cuts and deregulation? After some hesitation, hand after hand went up, until I was looking at a majority of raised hands. The tally surprised me. Sure, I understood the allure of tax cuts and deregulation to a group like that. But these were also people who clearly understood the dangers that Trump posed to American democracy and international order. The experience suggested that even that ambiguous term “Pax Americana” was subordinate to the profit motive that informed seemingly every aspect of the American machinery. I’d come to know the term as a shorthand for America’s sprawling global influence, and how—on balance—the Pax Americana offered some stability amid political upheavals, some scaffolding around the private dramas of billions of individual lives. From the vantage point of these bankers, the Pax Americana protected their stake in international capital markets while allowing for enough risk—wars, coups, shifting energy markets, new technologies—so that they could place profitable bets on the direction of events. Trump was a bet. He’d make it easier for them to do their business and allow them to keep more of their winnings, but he was erratic and hired incompetent people—so much so that he might put the whole enterprise at risk. But it was a bet that enough Americans were willing to make, including those who knew better. From the perspective of financial markets, I had just finished eight years in middle management, as a security official doing his small part to keep the profit-generating ocean liner moving. The debates of seemingly enormous consequence—about the conduct of wars, the nature of national identity, and the fates of many millions of human beings—were incidental to the broader enterprise of wealth being created.

America has all the ingredients for sustained economic and military strength over many generations. But a fight for leadership in Asia will require not only massive resources but also a measure of national will that is difficult to summon unless the stakes are existential. And the problem for those who want to see America take on this contest against China is that the United States is one of the most secure nations on earth, and therefore has no powerful motivation to do so.

The idea of Sukhāvatī certainly grew out of a concept of a material paradise, but early on it became allied with an elevated spiritual and ethical outlook, the teaching of the Buddha as rescuer, in which Amitābha Buddha, lord of Sukhāvatī, saves those who meditate upon him. Classical Buddhism taught that salvation must occur by one's own efforts ("self-power"). Those who had lost hope in salvation through their own efforts flocked to the new teaching of salvation through the power of another, i.e., of Amitābha Buddha. At first, people attracted to this new teaching were probably motivated by a desire to escape from suffering into what was conceived of as a materially satisfying land. But Sukhāvatī was soon linked with the idea of good and evil, and those who sought to be reborn in Sukhāvatī did so out of despair at their own evil. A good example of such a thinker iS Shinran (1173–1262 C.E.), the Japanese priest who founded the True Pure Land (Jōdo Shin) sect. Modern Pure Land thought resembles Christianity in many ways—the strong monotheistic coloration, salvation through the Buddha (God), the concern with good and evil rather than with suffering and pleasure. In the mid-twentieth century, Kamegai Ryōun, a Jōdo Shin sect priest, converted to Christianity on the grounds that the Jōdo Shin sect was preparing the road leading to Christianity. It certainly seems possible that in its two thousand years, Pure Land thought has been influenced by Christian ideas (by the Christian Nestorian sect of Ch'ang-an in east-central China, for example).

Silicon Valley’s and China’s internet ecosystems grew out of very different cultural soil. Entrepreneurs in the valley are often the children of successful professionals, such as computer scientists, dentists, engineers, and academics. Growing up they were constantly told that they—yes, they in particular—could change the world. Their undergraduate years were spent learning the art of coding from the world’s leading researchers but also basking in the philosophical debates of a liberal arts education. When they arrived in Silicon Valley, their commutes to and from work took them through the gently curving, tree-lined streets of suburban California. It’s an environment of abundance that lends itself to lofty thinking, to envisioning elegant technical solutions to abstract problems. Throw in the valley’s rich history of computer science breakthroughs, and you’ve set the stage for the geeky-hippie hybrid ideology that has long defined Silicon Valley. Central to that ideology is a wide-eyed techno-optimism, a belief that every person and company can truly change the world through innovative thinking. Copying ideas or product features is frowned upon as a betrayal of the zeitgeist and an act that is beneath the moral code of a true entrepreneur. It’s all about “pure” innovation, creating a totally original product that generates what Steve Jobs called a “dent in the universe.” Startups that grow up in this kind of environment tend to be mission-driven. They start with a novel idea or idealistic goal, and they build a company around that. Company mission statements are clean and lofty, detached from earthly concerns or financial motivations. In stark contrast, China’s startup culture is the yin to Silicon Valley’s yang: instead of being mission-driven, Chinese companies are first and foremost market-driven. Their ultimate goal is to make money, and they’re willing to create any product, adopt any model, or go into any business that will accomplish that objective. That mentality leads to incredible flexibility in business models and execution, a perfect distillation of the “lean startup” model often praised in Silicon Valley. It doesn’t matter where an idea came from or who came up with it. All that matters is whether you can execute it to make a financial profit. The core motivation for China’s market-driven entrepreneurs is not fame, glory, or changing the world. Those things are all nice side benefits, but the grand prize is getting rich, and it doesn’t matter how you get there.

Startups that grow up in this kind of environment tend to be mission-driven. They start with a novel idea or idealistic goal, and they build a company around that. Company mission statements are clean and lofty, detached from earthly concerns or financial motivations.

What does it really mean to ‘maximize impact’?” he began. “When people speak in this way, it’s often nothing but a thin disguise for ego, for vanity. If you truly look within yourself, can you say for sure that what motivates you is not ego? It’s a question you must ask your own heart, and whatever you do, don’t try to lie to yourself.

Master Hsing Yun now uses a wheelchair to get around, but his mind remains clear and sharp. Partway through our meal, he turned to me with a blunt question. “Kai-Fu, have you ever thought about what your goal is in life?” Without thinking, I reflexively gave him the answer I had given to myself and others for decades: “To maximize my impact and change the world.” Speaking those words, I felt the burning embarrassment that comes when we expose our naked ambitions to others. The feeling was magnified by the silence emanating from the monk across the table. But my answer was an honest one. This quest to maximize my impact was like a tumor that had always lived inside of me, ever tenacious and always growing. I had read widely in philosophy and religious texts, but for decades had never critically examined or doubted this core motivating belief within me.

Business ambition is only part of what motivates China’s entrepreneurs.

Confidence, resilience, grit, mind-set, personality traits, social skills, and motivation have been found to be at least as important as cognitive skills in the workplace.

Socialism in Chinese style’ is in fact a phrase coined to save the face of the Chinese Communist leaders who do not have the courage to acknowledge openly that socialism has failed in China. They hope to revitalize the State-owned industries with methods of management copied from capitalist countries and to use market forces as a substitute for central planning while retaining State ownership of those industries. They want the Party-appointed managers, who are bureaucrats on fixed salaries, to achieve the same degree of expertise and commitment as the entrepreneurs of private industries in the West. They want the workers to work much harder and more competitively for bonuses and small increases in pay but reduced welfare benefits. And they hope everybody will be motivated by patriotism to achieve increased productivity and profit for the State but at the same time to remain honest and incorruptible.

Prosperous non-white nations such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea would be very desirable destinations for Third-World immigrants, and if those countries opened their borders, they would quickly be filled with foreigners. They keep their borders closed because they know they cannot have the same Japan or Taiwan with different people. Israel, likewise, is determined to remain a Jewish state because Israelis know they cannot have the same Israel with different people. In 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved tough measures to deport illegal immigrants, calling them a “threat to the character of the country.” Linguistically, culturally, and racially, Japan is homogeneous. This means Japanese never even think about a host of problems that torment Americans. Since Japan has only one race, no one worries about racism. There was no civil rights movement, no integration struggle, and no court-ordered busing. There is no bilingual education, and no affirmative action. There is no tyranny of “political correctness,” and no one is clamoring for a “multi-cultural curriculum.” When a company needs to hire someone, it doesn’t give a thought to “ethnic balance;” it just hires the best person. No Japanese are sent to reeducation seminars because of “insensitivity.” Japan has no Civil Rights Commission or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It has no Equal Housing Act or Voting Rights Act. No one worries about drawing up voting districts to make sure minorities are elected. There are no noisy ethnic groups trying to influence foreign policy. Japanese do not know what a “hate crime” would be. And they know that an American-style immigration policy would change everything. They want Japan to remain Japanese. This is a universal view among non-whites. Those countries that send the largest numbers of emigrants to the United States—Mexico, India, China—permit essentially no immigration at all. For them, their nations are exclusive homelands for their own people. Most people refuse to share their homelands. Robert Pape, a leading expert on suicide bombing, explains that its motive is almost always nationalism, not religious fanaticism. Whether in Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Chechnya, Kashmir, the West Bank, Iraq, or Afghanistan, its main objective is to drive out occupying aliens. It is only Western nations—and only within the last few decades—that have ever voluntarily accepted large-scale immigration that could reduce the inhabitants to a racial minority. What the United States and other European-derived nations are doing is without historical precedent.

I did not understand what a cosseted life would do to the spirit of enterprise of a people, diminishing their desire to achieve and succeed. I believed that wealth came naturally from wheat growing in the fields, orchards bearing fruit every summer, and factories turning out all that was needed to maintain a comfortable life. Only two decades later, when I had to make an outdated entrepôt economy feed a people, did I realize we needed to create the wealth before we can share it. And to create wealth, high motivation and incentives are crucial to drive a people to achieve, to take risks for profit, or there will be nothing to share.37

journalist Sabine Pamperrien noted that German support for China tended to emanate from two distinct camps—‘left-wing politicians and publicists’, often fuelled by anti-Americanism; and powerful businesspeople who don’t want to see their ‘flourishing trade’ with China impeded by concerns over human rights.196 These two need not necessarily contradict each other. For some, sympathy for nominally left-wing regimes and profit motives go hand in hand. Few embody this mix better than former chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Schröder is mainly known in Germany for having sold out to Russia after leaving office in 2005, and for becoming chairman of the board of the state-owned oil giant Rosneft in 2017.197 But he is also firmly in Beijing’s orbit, so much so that in 2009 Der Spiegel published a photo of him literally hugging a panda.

The course of human history has always moved in the direction of greater freedom. And there’s a reason for that—because it’s in our nature to push for it,” Ryan told me. “If we were just plastic like [some] people think, this wouldn’t be happening. But somebody stands in front of a tank in China. Women, who’ve been denied autonomy, keep advocating for rights. This is the course of history. This is why ultimately human nature, if it ever realizes itself, will do so by becoming more autonomous.

The plotters had to know that if Pearl Harbor were attacked, the Soviet Union would be the first to be suspected, and that the Americans would certainly retaliate with overwhelming nuclear force. The solution was to devise a plan that shielded the Soviet Union from blame for the attack. The only other country with the motive and capability to accomplish such a horrible deed was Red China. By tricking the United States into a massive retaliatory attack on China, the USSR could simultaneously weaken the Americans and eliminate Mao, without spending a dime from its depleted treasury.

Metaphysicians hold that all the different kinds of things in the universe and all their characteristics have been the same ever since they first came into being. All subsequent changes have simply been increases or decreases in quantity. They contend that a thing can only keep on repeating itself as the same kind of thing and cannot change into anything different. In their opinion, capitalist exploitation, capitalist competition, the individualist ideology of capitalist society, and so on, can all be found in ancient slave society, or even in primitive society, and will exist for ever unchanged. They ascribe the causes of social development to factors external to society, such as geography and climate. They search in an over-simplified way outside a thing for the causes of its development, and they deny the theory of materialist dialectics which holds that development arises from the contradictions inside a thing. Consequently they can explain neither the qualitative diversity of things, nor the phenomenon of one quality changing into another. In Europe, this mode of thinking existed as mechanical materialism in the 17th and 18th centuries and as vulgar evolutionism at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In China, there was the metaphysical thinking exemplified in the saying "Heaven changeth not, likewise the Tao changeth not", [4] and it was supported by the decadent feudal ruling classes for a long time. Mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism, which were imported from Europe in the last hundred years, are supported by the bourgeoisie. As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes. Thus materialist dialectics effectively combats the theory of external causes, or of an external motive force, advanced by metaphysical mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism. It is evident that purely external causes can only give rise to mechanical motion, that is, to changes in scale or quantity, but cannot explain why things differ qualitatively in thousands of ways and why one thing changes into another. As a matter of fact, even mechanical motion under external force occurs through the internal contradictoriness of things. Simple growth in plants and animals, their quantitative development, is likewise chiefly the result of their internal contradictions. Similarly, social development is due chiefly not to external but to internal causes.

Metaphysicians hold that all the different kinds of things in the universe and all their characteristics have been the same ever since they first came into being. All subsequent changes have simply been increases or decreases in quantity. They contend that a thing can only keep on repeating itself as the same kind of thing and cannot change into anything different. In their opinion, capitalist exploitation, capitalist competition, the individualist ideology of capitalist society, and so on, can all be found in ancient slave society, or even in primitive society, and will exist for ever unchanged. They ascribe the causes of social development to factors external to society, such as geography and climate. They search in an over-simplified way outside a thing for the causes of its development, and they deny the theory of materialist dialectics which holds that development arises from the contradictions inside a thing. Consequently they can explain neither the qualitative diversity of things, nor the phenomenon of one quality changing into another. In Europe, this mode of thinking existed as mechanical materialism in the 17th and 18th centuries and as vulgar evolutionism at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In China, there was the metaphysical thinking exemplified in the saying "Heaven changeth not, likewise the Tao changeth not", and it was supported by the decadent feudal ruling classes for a long time. Mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism, which were imported from Europe in the last hundred years, are supported by the bourgeoisie. As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes. Thus materialist dialectics effectively combats the theory of external causes, or of an external motive force, advanced by metaphysical mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism. It is evident that purely external causes can only give rise to mechanical motion, that is, to changes in scale or quantity, but cannot explain why things differ qualitatively in thousands of ways and why one thing changes into another. As a matter of fact, even mechanical motion under external force occurs through the internal contradictoriness of things. Simple growth in plants and animals, their quantitative development, is likewise chiefly the result of their internal contradictions. Similarly, social development is due chiefly not to external but to internal causes.

This puts diplomats in an uncomfortable position in their own capital. Their government looks to them to explain foreign behavior and motivations but easily confuses their description of unpalatable foreign views with sympathy for those views. Foreign realities usually contradict popular domestic narratives. Failure to embrace these narratives is often mistaken for disloyalty. Politicians tend to misperceive diplomats’ desire to keep lines of communication open as “clientitis” or appeasement. And efforts by diplomats to change government policies to make them more effective by adapting them to local realities naturally pit them against those in the policy establishment who came up with these policies and remain committed to them. (Excerpt from One China, Two Freemans)