Suggested Answers to the Third Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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*****
Chapter 4 – One Child

Question 1

Does Dan Wang posit that when Deng Xiaoping succeeded Chairman Mao and began turning China into a country led by engineers, Deng and his engineers (p. 95) “were gripped, however, by a misbegotten scientism (per the Oxford English Dictionary, thought characteristic of scientists), which used straight-line projections to predict catastrophe if China did not diminish its population”???

Answer 1

Yes.

Question 2

Were our organization’s members already aware that the “one child per couple” policy produced severe grief to the population, virtually each of whom now believed that, as a result, “there would be nobody to sweep her/his grave” at the annual Qingming Festival???!!!

Answer 2

Absolutely!!!

Question 3

In 2023, did Xi Jinping swing population engineering back to Chairman Mao’s birth promotion??? Had Chairman Mao’s reasoning been (p. 97) that a large population would deter imperialist invasion??? Was his slogan “Ren duo, li liang da” (with people come power)???

Answer 3

Yes – Yes – Yes.

Question 4

Who was Thomas Malthus???

Answer 4

He authored a famous book entitled “An Essay on the Principle of Population” which posited that population growth will outstrip food supply.

Question 5

BTW, are you struck by the obvious comparison between the faulty thinking of the Chinese engineers blindly following Malthus re population outstripping food supply – and U.S. President Jimmy Carter, a nuclear-engineering grad of the U.S. Naval Academy no less, who blindly followed what might be viewed as “Malthus applied to the future availability of fossil fuels”???

Answer 5

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Jimmy Carter famously fixated on the idea that the amount of fossil fuel in the earth is finite and ignored the fact that only a rounding error of 1% was being produced and that, inter alia --

• the ability to produce a far greater percentage of oil & gas from existing reservoirs would increase exponentially;
• the ability to drill in deeper off-shore waters would increase exponentially;
• it might occur to zillions of non-producing countries that they should begin exploration;
• zillions of locked-in natural gas could be unlocked by fracking;
• etc., etc., etc.

Jimmy Carter apologists can NOT salvage his reputation by making the laughable claim that he was worried about global warming and wanted to usher in CLEAN nuclear power.

Do you think the U.S. Naval Academy should try to salvage its own reputation by revoking Jimmy Carter’s engineering degree???!!!

Question 6

Was Song Jian a missile scientist who headed the Chinese one-child policy development and its implementation which began in 1980??? Were his calculations (like Jimmy Carter’s) disastrously based on NO IMPROVEMENT IN TECHNOLOGY???

Answer 6

Yes and Yes.

Question 7

Did the one-child policy produce the easily-anticipated mountains of abortions, sterilizations, infanticide, foreign adoptions, etc., etc.???

Answer 7

Absolutely!!!

Question 8

Was Song Jian embarrassed that his home province of Shandong, in general, and Shandong’s Guan County, in particular, ranked at the bottom for family planning – producing a policy of ZERO BIRTHS FROM MAY 1 TO AUGUST 10, 1991, accomplished by forced abortions regardless of circumstances and known in history as “THE CHILDLESS HUNDRED DAYS” and also as “THE SLAUGHTER OF THE LAMBS”???

Answer 8

Yes!!!

Question 9

Was most of the infanticide throughout China directed at female babies because rural families (and China was still primarily agrarian) preferred males???

Answer 9

Yes.

Question 10

Does Dan Wang credit the “lawyerly societies” of Western countries which are “obstructionist” (vs. “constructionist” per his book’s over-riding thesis) with rejecting population-control policies???

Answer 10

Yes.


*****
Chapter 4 Addendum – Extinguishing Buddhism in China

Question 11

Does Dan Wang ignore the facts that of the world’s 4 major religions (defined as more than 1 billion adherents – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism) – China was the world’s largest Buddhist country and communist suppression of Buddhism has caused Buddhism to plummet to approximately 500 million adherents???

Answer 11

Yes.

Question 12

BTW, aren’t all 4 major religions based on a version of The Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do onto you”???

Answer 12

Yes.

Question 13

Can Dan Wang perhaps be pardoned because he is focusing on the post-Mao engineering “constructionist” society of China vs. the American lawyerly “obstructionist” society???

Answer 13

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 14

But isn’t it worth mentioning that even though China is still busy extinguishing the last embers of Buddhism in Tibet and the still-raging Islamic forest-fire among the Uyghers of Chinese Turkestan, aka Sinkiang Province – China has become a society severely lacking in morality??? After all, what about all those forced abortions and sterilizations in just one field of policy???

Answer 14

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 15

And doesn’t the one-child policy deal a “body blow” to Buddhism which is so closely related to ancestor worship???

Answer 15

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 16

Re that close relationship, wasn’t more than 90% of the Japanese population at the time of World War II simultaneous Buddhist and Shinto??? And isn’t Shintoism simply the Japanese name for ancestor worship??? Which, of course, would involve taking care of the graves of ancestors such as involved in China’s annual Qingming Festival (reference Question 2)???

Answer 16

Yes – Yes – Yes.

Question 17

So despite Dan Wang’s failure to mention Buddhism, wasn’t China’s one-child policy a de facto “knockout punch” to Buddhism from which Buddhism has not recovered in the wake of the revocation of the one-child policy???

Answer 17

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!


*****
Chapter 5 – Zero-Covid

Question 18

Did Dan Wang live in China “through all three years of the zero-Covid strategy China pursued to stomp out the highly-transmissible virus”??? Moving from Beijing to Shanghai at the end of the first year???

Answer 18

Yes and Yes.

Question 19

Does he say that the first year “the country felt like a realm of serene calm,” in the second year “it still felt pretty good,” and “in the third year, everything went to smash”???

Answer 19

Yes.

Question 20

Was any person entering China (p. 133) confined for 2-3 weeks in an government-designated quarantine hotel???

Answer 20

Yes.

Question 21

To enter a public space, e.g., office, restaurant, etc. (p. 134), was one required to produce her/his phone which had recorded where s/he had been (presumably as far back as the Covid germination period)???

Answer 21

Yes.

Question 22

Does Dan Wang describe (p. 135) a story that went viral until censored about an 8-month pregnant woman who miscarried while bleeding heavily on a hospital lawn pleading to be let in??? Was she denied entrance because a several-hours-to-process PCR test could not be completed before she miscarried??? BUT THE ZILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION IGNORED BY DAN WANG -- WHAT IF SHE HAD HAD COVID: WOULD SHE THEN HAVE BEEN LEFT TO MISCARRY ON THE HOSPITAL LAWN (AND WHY COULDN’T THERE HAVE BEEN A COVID WING IN THE MATERNITY WARD???)???

Answer 22

Yes, he does describe the story.

Yes, she was denied care.

Re the zillion-dollar question - What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 23

AND SOME MEGA-ZILLION-DOLLAR QUESTIONS THAT COME READILY TO MIND --

(A) WERE THERE NO EMERGENCY ROOMS IN CHINA BECAUSE OF THE NECESSITY TO EMPLOY A SEVERAL-HOURS-TO-PROCESS PCR TEST???
(B) DITTO NO AMBULANCE SERVICE BECAUSE, INTER ALIA, THERE WERE NO EMERGENCY ROOMS FOR THEM TO SERVICE???
(C) WHY COULDN’T PATIENTS REQUIRING EMERGENCY CARE BE ADMITTED TO A COVID WING OF THE EMERGENCY ROOM – EVEN IF THEY HAD TO BE LEFT THERE AFTER THE PCR TEST PROVED NEGATIVE BECAUSE THEY MIGHT HAVE CONTRACTED COVID DURING THE FIRST 3 HOURS THERE???
(D) WHY COULDN’T THERE HAVE BEEN COVID AND NON-COVID WINGS OF THE EMERGENCY ROOM, THE MATERNITY WARD, ETC., ETC., -- WITH THE PATIENT SWEARING AN OATH WHETHER S/HE HAD COVID WITH SEVERE CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR SWEARING FALSELY???
(E) ETC., ETC.???

Answer 23

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 24

Does Dan Wang then devote 12 pages to describing the horrors of the third-year lockdown of Shanghai in 2022???

Answer 24

Yes.

Question 25

Does he record (p. 150) that China’s top disease-control official announced the year before Covid hit that “SARS-like outbreaks will not occur again because…”??? Does Dan Wang opine that he failed to factor in the weaknesses in China’s political system???

Answer 25

Yes and Yes.

Question 26

Does Dan Wang then record (pp, 155-164) how he and his wife escaped to relatively-Covid-free Yunnan province??? Does this remind you of how we read that Prof. Niall Ferguson (husband of Ayaan Hirsi Ali) contracted Covid during his globe-trotting and in response, on 3/15/2020 Ferguson flew with his wife and two youngest children to Montana, where they would ride out the pandemic in rural isolation???

Answer 26

Yes, Dan Wang and his wife escaped to Yunnan.

And yes, that should remind you of how Prof. Niall Ferguson, his wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali and two children sought sanctuary in rural Montana.

Question 27

Does Chapter 5 (Zero-Covid) close with 5 pages (164-169) on how in the third year (ref. Q-19) “everything went to smash???!!!

Answer 27

Yes.

Question 28

Does Dan Wang mention (p, 165) that throughout the three Covid years, “the government made it difficult for people to buy ibuprofen, Advil, and other fever reducers for fear that people might disguise their fevers to avoid detection”???!!!

Answer 28

Incredibly!!!


*****
Chapter 6 – Fortress China

Question 29

Does Chapter 6 address Chinese who have rùn from China (rùn being a Chinese word meaning “to moisten” but becoming slang using its English meaning to run or escape)???

Answer 29

Yes.

Question 30

Do wealthy Chinese who want to rùn go to Japan, while the hoi polloi go to Thailand???

Answer 30

Yes, according to Dan Wang.

Question 31

Does Dan Wang finally address religion in general (and Buddhism in particular) vis-à-vis those who ràn (is that the proper conjugation for the Chinese slang term?) to Thailand???

[NB: “Chapter 4 Addendum – Extinguishing Buddhism in China” above on Dan Wang’s studiously ignoring Chinese suppression of Buddhism.]

Answer 31

Briefly.

Question 32

Does Dan Wang claim (p. 175) that Xi Jinping doesn’t really care about Chinese per se rùnning or foreign expats leaving – BUT he doesn’t want rich people taking their money out of the country???

Answer 32

Yes.

Question 33

Does Dan Wang mention (p. 176) that many rùnning Chinese came through America’s open Southern border???

Answer 33

Yes.

Question 34

After himself rùnning from China to Yale Law School’s faculty, does Dan Wang reflect on China’s techies’ ability to compete with Silicon Valley because of over-regulation motivated by political control and national security???

Answer 34

Yes.

Question 35

On p. 183, does Dan Wang make a reference to the “2008 financial crisis” displaying his ignorant acceptance of the common wisdom, because our organization had not yet tutored the Presidents of the 12 Regional Federal Reserve Banks regarding the true cause and how their duty required them to prevent another meltdown about to be caused by supposedly “offshore” funds in non-resident Singapore subsidiaries of US multi-national companies that had exported American jobs to China (supposedly “offshore” but long since loaned to the chump American companies that had NOT exported jobs to China)???

[Please see our 12/26/2017 letter to each of the 12 Regional Federal Reserve Banks in our posting entitled “Will The Fed Permit Another Meltdown Caused By Offshore Funds” at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1685&sid=3db9c74e8 ... fed3d757bc.]

Answer 35

Yes.

Question 36

Does Dan Wang assert (pp. 184-185) that despite the faults of engineers (vs. obstructionist lawyers), many of which are described above, Xi Jinping is doubling down on promoting engineers and on social engineering???

Answer 36

Yes.

Question 37

Could the remainder of Chapter 6 be entitled “Quo Vadis” (i.e., where are you going?) which Dan Wang dirccts at Xi for his third five-year term as President which began in 2023??? Does Dan Wang have a lot (23 pages worth) of interesting speculation???

Answer 37

Yes and Yes.


*****
Chapter 7 – Learning To Love Engineers

Question 38

Does Chapter 7 open with 11 pages about Dan Wang’s family and ancestors???

Answer 38

Yes.

Question 39

Does it then spend 6-plus pages on Dan Wang’s favorite NYC neighborhood (though he has never lived in NYC) and his attempts to get his parents to move there???

Answer 39

Yes.

Question 40

Does he finally get down to business for 9 pages of opining on “Quo Vadis, America”???

Answer 40

Yes.