關於 eventually finally ultimately ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

【台美日共同守護印太安全】
　　
美國、日本、台灣三國智庫共同主辦「2020台美日三邊印太安全對話」，包括蔡英文總統、美國前國務院助卿坎博(Kurt Campbell)、前國防部印太安全助理部長薛瑞福(Randall Schriver)、日本前駐美大使佐佐木賢一郎等重要人士都與會。
　　
我也參與三國國會議員的對談，與羅致政委員、陳以信委員、美國聯邦眾議員貝拉(Ami Bera)以及日本眾議員鈴木馨祐，交流2020後的印太及台海情勢與願景。
　　
結果準備厚厚一疊的英文講稿幾乎沒派上用場，講太HIGH不小心就脫稿演出....。無論如何還是提供原本的講稿跟大家參詳，一起來練習英文吧：
　　
　　　　
2020 Taiwan-US-Japan Trilateral Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue

Hello moderator, fellow panelists, I am Taiwan legislator Freddy Lim.

This year, due to the pandemic, we can only conduct this panel online. I’m still very glad to be invited to attend this event and exchange ideas with these great panelists. Here I want to share my views on today’s main topic: “Challenges and Opportunities in the Indo-Pacific Region and the Taiwan Strait in 2020 & Beyond”.

First I want to start with the conventional positioning of Taiwan under the established international order.

After WWII, the international order led by the allies dragged Taiwan into China’s civil war. Since then, Taiwan's been struggling with the “One China” dispute, unable to gain independence and world recognition like many other colonies.

Even though Taiwanese people have built an independent and democratic country after half a century of hard work, now we enjoy freedom and human rights, the international community still isolates Taiwan. One of the main reasons is obviously China.

The established international community viewed China as a huge economic opportunity, a partner that would eventually carry out political reforms and be integrated into modern international order. Under this conventional thinking, the international community is willing to help China ease and suppress many of its unpleasant problems, including the thorny "Democratic Taiwan."

This has reduced Taiwan to merely China’s “Taiwan Problem”. We’re even slandered as the “troublemaker” of the Taiwan Strait; As a result, the respect that Taiwan deserves continues to be shelved, and the active role we can play, the contributions we can make in the international community are also ignored.

However, this established international structure is now changing.

After decades of appeasement policy, and acquiring WTO membership in 2001, China’s various structural changes that the world anticipated have never taken place. On the contrary, China’s been using organized measures, such as bribing, infiltration, and hybrid-warfare, to undermine international norms. It’s worked hard to manipulate and control international organizations, in order to project its influence onto the world. These actions have been even more distinct after Xi Jinping became President of China in 2012.

Internationally, China implemented debt-trap diplomacy on many countries through the Belt and Road Initiative. It established Confucius Institutes around the world, which are basically intelligence operations in the name of culture. Chinese tech giant, Huawei also aids China’s international surveillance. Not to mention China’s relentless expansion in the South China Sea, building military bases, creating man-made islands. This year, it’s even more serious. We witnessed the long time Chinese infiltration into UN organizations. The favoritism towards China helped its cover-up, which led to the dysfunction of WHO, ultimately causing the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Domestically, the Chinese government not only failed to implement any political reforms, but it also created the “Social Credit” system with advanced technology, to surveil and control its own people; In addition, the Chinese government built the notorious “Reeducation Camps” - concentration camps in reality, in Tibet, Xingjian, where human rights conditions were already in a bad shape. Even the Hong Kong people, who were supposed to be protected by the promise of “One Country, Two Systems”, their freedom and human rights were completely destroyed by the Chinese government.

These compelling examples show that there is some serious fallacy in the conventional way of viewing China. All facts point to this: Taiwan is not the problem. China is the problem. China is the troublemaker of the Taiwan Strait. It’s the troublemaker of the Indo-Pacific region. It’s even the troublemaker of the entire world.

Under decades of collective misjudgement, China was allowed to become the most terrifying, largest digital authoritarian government in human history. It’s a new form of dictatorship. As a response, many countries have vastly changed their China policy in recent years, thus the change of international structure.

This brings me to my next point: Give Taiwan the status it deserves. Let us contribute to the international society.

In a new international structure, Taiwan shouldn’t be categorized as “China’s Taiwan Problem”. Instead, we should be one of the key countries for international cooperation, responding to the new type of dictatorship.

Taiwan has faced authoritarian China on the front line for decades. Many countries are now facing the problem of China's infiltration under its United Front programs. Taiwan started dealing with the same problems 10 to 20 years ago. We have gained a lot of experience to contribute to the international community.

Taking the COVID pandemic as an example, Taiwan has studied and analyzed the actual situation and the information provided by the Chinese government with a serious and high-vigilance attitude. Based on our experience and lessons learned from the China SARS epidemic in 2001, we decisively formed a series of epidemic preventive measures. We have handled the crisis with the principle of openness and transparency. Our people have been self-disciplined and willing to cooperate. All of this demonstrates the high level of democracy in Taiwan’s society.

After the domestic epidemic was brought under control, Taiwan has continued to share our epidemic prevention supplies and the experiences on forming epidemic prevention policies with the world.

Although Taiwan was suppressed, even excluded by China in various international organizations in the past, we’ve been doing our best to comply with the norms & regulations of international organizations. We always actively contribute every time we have the opportunity. What I want to say is, all of this proves Taiwan could be a reliable partner in the international community. We are capable of working with other countries to solve major problems. We deserve our seats and participation in international organizations.

Regarding the impact of U.S. change of administration.

Now the U. S. presidential election is over and the administration is currently under transition. Many countries, including Taiwan, are concerned about whether the new U.S. government will change its course on foreign policy, especially its China policy. However, the "Rebalance (of Asia-Pacific Region)" proposed by the Obama administration in 2011, was in fact already a strategic adjustment in response to the rise of China and possible subsequent expansion.

The Trump administration further proposed the Indo-Pacific strategy in 2017 to promote and uphold international law and regulations, aiming to ensure every country has the liberty to be free from oppression and coercion. I believe that both parties in the U.S. understand the root cause of the Indo-Pacific regional problem comes from the Chinese government. Even for the Biden administration, it will have to provide practical responses. Facing the new structure, they can’t just go back to the traditional thinking of the last century.

As for Taiwan, the pro-Taiwan acts in the U.S., such as the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act of 2018, Taiwan Travel Act, Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement, were passed with strong consensus between the Republicans and the Democrats. I believe Taiwan could be a key partner to the international community and play an active role in the free world. This isn’t just the consensus of the two parties in the U.S., but will be the consensus of all democratic countries.

In a progressive aspect, the International community can benefit from a wider recognition of Taiwan.

In recent years, the performance of Taiwanese society in terms of epidemic prevention performance, human rights, gender equality, marriage equality, and open government are actually in line with many progressive ideas and visions. The ideas and visions that many democratic countries have long supported. Therefore, I’m quite optimistic that, after 2020, Taiwan can make even greater progress, on multiple levels and in broader aspects, contributing to the international community.

Finally, I want to emphasize again that to truly resolve regional problems, we need dynamic multilateral cooperation. But this must not be a return to the conventional thinking of the past century, which was "expecting" China to abide by the international order. The outdated thinking had been proved to be a failure. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a series of Chinese infiltration and aggression after its rise in recent years, which became one of the most difficult issues in the world. I believe after 2020, U.S., Japan, and Taiwan can establish a new model of international cooperation through deeper collaboration and communication. And hopefully, this model will maximize the security of the Indo-Pacific region and promote peace, stability and development in the region.

This concludes my speech, thank you all for listening.
Lastly, I’d like to express my gratitude to the moderators, my fellow panelists, and the organizers of this event.
I wish everyone peace and good health. Thank you.

【水世界】的前製設定與現場劇照

WATERWORLD (1995)
In celebration of today’s anniversary of this wet mess/epic. Let’s celebrate the hard work this crew put into bringing this world to life. Water movies are never easy but when it comes to this movie anytime you bring it up and a crew member from it is in earshot, the stories pour out. Not always bad, I know a AC that said he had a blast, he loved the boat rides out and all the camaraderie the crew had to have to get thru it. To all the crew that helped bring WATERWORLD to life, We salute you and thanks for the memories. I personally enjoy this hot mess of a movie, it’s one of the last ones of its kind...done practically...in a way.
let’s take a deepest of dives into WATERWORLD

The director, Kevin Reynolds, knew there would be problems before production had even started, “During pre-production. Because having never shot on water to that extent before, I didn’t really realise what I was in for. I talked to Spielberg about it because he’d gone to do Jaws, and I remember, he said to me, “Oh, I would never shoot another picture on water”.
“When we were doing the budget for the picture, and the head of the studio, Sid Sheinberg, we were talking about it and I said, “Steven told me that on Jaws the schedule for the picture was 55 days, and they ended up shooting a 155 days”. Because of the water. And he sat there for a moment and he said, “You know, I’m not sure about the days, but I do know they went a hundred percent over budget”. And so, Universal knew the potential problems of shooting on water. It’s monstrous.”
The film began with a projected budget of $100 million which had reportedly increased to $175 million by the end of production. The principle photography had overrun for at least thirty days more than originally planned due to one major decision.

Whereas today they would film in water tanks with partially built sets, employing green screens to fake the locations, back in 1995 they decided to build everything full size and shoot out on the ocean.

This causes extra logistical problems on top of those that already come with making a major action blockbuster. Cast and crew have to be transported to sets. The camera boats and sets float out of position and will have to be reset between takes taking up valuable production time.

The first draft of Waterworld was written by Peter Radar, a Harvard graduate who wanted to break into the film business. His contact in the film industry was Brad Kevoy, an assistant to the legendary director Roger Corman.

Roger Corman is best known for making films very quickly on a small budget. He also liked to give young talent a chance to direct and write their own films. Brad informed Peter that if he could write a Mad Max rip off, he would arrange to finance and let him direct the picture.

Radar came back and pitched the idea for what would become Waterworld. Kevoy took one look at him and said,

“Are you out of your mind? This would cost us three million dollars to make this movie!”
So Radar kept hold of the idea and decided to re-write the script but, this time, going wild. He wrote what he wanted to see on-screen, limited only by his imagination, not a real world production budget.

He managed to get the newly written script shown to a pair of producers with whom he had made contact with. They loved it and ironically they passed it onto Larry Gordon. He shared the enthusiasm saying it had the kind of cinematic possibilities he was looking for. A deal was signed on Christmas Eve of 1989.

As further script rewrites progressed, it became clear that Waterworld was too big for the Larry Gordon’s production company to undertake by themselves. In February 1992, a deal was signed with Universal Pictures to co-produce and co-finance the film. This was now six years after the first draft had been written.

Universal had signed director Kevin Reynolds to Waterworld. Whilst he was finishing his latest film, Rapa Nui, pre-production for Waterworld was already underway.

The decision was taken that the largest set for the film, known as the atoll, would be built full size. The atoll was the primary location for film and in the story served as the location for a small population of survivors.

The logic behind this decision was due to the high percentage of live action filming required in this location, as well as a huge action set piece. No sound stage would be big enough to incorporate this number of scenes and it was crucial that we see the mariner sail his boat into the atoll, turn around and set out again. A full-size construction was the only way to go as the use of miniature and special effects would be impractical.

The next problem was deciding where to build this huge set. After much research, Kawaihae Harbour in Hawaii was chosen as the location. The atoll could be constructed in the harbour and rotated when needed thus allowing for open sea in the background. Later towards the end of principle photography, the atoll could be towed out into the open sea for the filming of the big action sequences which would be impractical to shoot in an enclosed harbour.

Director Kevin Reynolds also discussed the possibility of using the same water tank as James Cameron’s The Abyss, which had filmed there around five years ago,

“We had even entertained the notion of shooting at that big nuclear reactor facility where they had shot The Abyss, to use it for our underwater tank. But we found it in such a state of disrepair that economically it just wasn’t feasible. We didn’t have as much underwater work as they did. Most of The Abyss is interiors and underwater and model work, ours is mostly surface exterior.”

The production company had originally envisioned building the atoll by linking approximately one hundred boats together and building upon this foundation, just like the characters in the film. The production crew set out to search Hawaii and get hold of as many boats as possible.

During this search, a unique boat in Honolulu caught their attention. Upon further investigation, they discovered it was built by Navitech, a subsidiary of the famous aircraft production company, Lockheed.

They approached Lockheed with the strange request of figuring out how they could build the foundations of the atoll. Lockheed found the request unusual but didn’t shy away from the challenging. They agreed to design the atoll foundation and Navitech would construct it.

Meanwhile, an 11ft miniature model of the atoll was sent out to a model ship testing facility in San Diego. Scaled wave tanks are used to determine the effects of the open sea on large scale miniature models of new untested ship designs. This would help determine what would happen with the unusual design of the atoll when it was out of the harbour.

The atoll, when finished, was approximately ¼ mile in circumference. It took three months to construct and is rumoured to cost around $22 million. As the atoll would be used out on the open sea, it required a seafaring license. Nothing like this had been done before and after much deliberation, it was eventually classed as an unmanned vessel. This meant that all cast and crew would have to vacate the set whilst it was towed into position. By the end of production, the atoll was towed out to sea a total of five times.

Shooting out on the open sea presented a series of logistical problem as Reynolds describes,

“We had an entire navy, basically – I mean, this atoll was positioned about a mile off-shore in Hawaii, it was anchored to the bottom of the ocean so it could rotate. What you don’t think about are things like, you’re shooting on this atoll to maintain this notion that there’s no dry land, you always have to shoot out to sea. Away from the land. So we chose a location where we had about a 180 degree view of open water. Nevertheless, any time when you’re shooting, there could be a ship appear in the background, or something like that, and you had to make a choice. Do I hold up the shot, wait for the ship to move out, or do we shoot and say we’re going to incur this additional cost in post-production of trying to remove the ship from the background.

And at that time, CGI was not at the point it is now, it was a bigger deal. And so, even though if you’re shooting across the atoll and you’re shooting out onto open water, when you turn around and do the reverses, for the action, you had to rotate the entire atoll, so that you’re still shooting out to open water. Those are the kinds of things that people don’t realise.

Or something as simple as – if you’re shooting a scene between two boats, and you’re trying to shoot The Mariner on his craft, another boat or whatever, you’ve got a camera boat shooting his boat, and then the other boat in the background. Well, when you’re on open water things tend to drift apart. So you have to send lines down from each of those boats to the bottom, to anchor them so that they somewhat stay in frame. When you’ve got a simple shot on land, you set up the camera position, you put people in front of the camera and then you put background in there. But when you’re on water, everything’s constantly moving apart, drifting apart, so you have to try to hold things down somewhat.

And these are simple things that you don’t really realise when you’re looking at it on film. But logistically, it’s crazy. And each day you shoot on the atoll with all those extras, we had to transport those people from dry land out to the location and so you’re getting hundreds of people through wardrobe and everything, and you’re putting them on boats, transporting them out to the atoll, and trying to get everybody in position to do a shot. And then when you break for lunch, you have to put everybody on boats and take them back in to feed them.”

The final size of the atoll was determined by the size of the Mariners boat, the trimaran. The dimensions for the trimaran were finalised very early on in pre-production, allowing all other vehicles and sets to be sized accordingly.

Production required two trimarans boats which are so called because they have three hulls. The first was based on the standard trimaran blueprint and built for speed but also had to accommodate a secret crew below decks.

During wide and aerial shots it would have to look like Costner himself was piloting the boat. In reality, a trained crew could monitor and perform the real sailing of the boat utilising specially built controls and television monitors below deck.

The second trimaran was the trawler boat which could transform into the racer through the use of special practical effects rigs. Both of these boats were constructed in France by Jeanneau. Normally this type of vessel requires a year to construct but production needed two boats in five months!

Normally once the boat had been constructed, Jeammeau would deliver it on the deck of a freighter, requiring a delivery time of around a month. This delay was unacceptable and so the trimarans were dismantled into sections and taken by a 747 air freighter to the dock Hawaii. Upon arrival, a further month was required to reassemble the boat and get them prepared for filming.

sets recreating the inside of the tanker were built using forced perspective in a huge 1000ft long warehouse which had an adjoining 2000ft field. In this field, they built the set of the oil tankers deck, again constructed using forced perspective. Using the forced perspective trick, the 500ft long set could be constructed to give the impression that it was really twice as long.

There’s more to a film than just it’s sets and filming locations. Over two thousand costumes had to be created with many of the lead actors costumes being replicated many times over due to wear and tear.

This is not an uncommon practice for film production, but due to the unique look of the people and the world they inhabit, it did create some headaches. One costume was created with so many fish scales the wardrobe department had to search the entire island of Hawaii looking for anyone who could supply in the huge quantity required.

Makeup had to use waterproof cosmetics, especially on the stunt players. As everyone had a sun burnt look, a three-sided tanning booth was setup. The extras numbering in their hundreds, with ages ranging from six to sixty-five, passed through the booth like a production line to receive their spray tan. The extras then moved onto costume before finally having their hair fixed and becoming ready for the day.

In some scenes, extras were actually painted plywood cutouts to help enhance the number of extras on the set. This can easily be seen in one particular shot on board the Deez super tanker.

Filming on the water is not only a difficult and time-consuming process but also very dangerous. It’s been reported that Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tina Majorino nearly drowned on their first day of filming.

Waterworld’s star Kevin Costner reported having a near-death experience when filming a scene in which the mariner ties himself to his catamaran to survive a storm. The pounding water caused him to black out and nearly drown.

Unbeknownst to most of the crew, Kevin Costner’s stunt double was riding his jet ski across 40 miles of open ocean between his home on Maui and the film’s set on the Big Island. When he didn’t show up for work one day, the production team phoned his wife, who informed them he had already left for work. The stunt double’s jet ski had run out of gas halfway through his “commute” and a storm had swept him farther out to sea. It took a helicopter most of the day to find him. The stunt doubles name was Laird Hamilton.

As well as the logistical problems of creating a film of this scale and on water, they also had to deal with the press who seemed intent on wanting the film to fail. Director Kevin Reynolds discusses the situation,

“It was huge, we were constantly fighting – people wanted to have bad press. That was more exciting to them than the good news. I guess the most egregious example of that that I recall was that the publicist told me that one day…we’d been out the day before and we were doing a shot where we sent two cameras up on a mast of the trimaran and we wanted to do a shot where they tilled down from the horizon down to the deck below. We’re out there, we’re anchored, we’re setting the shot up and a swell comes in, and I look over and the mast is sort of bending.

And I turned to the boatmaster and I said, “Bruno, is this safe?”. And he looks up the mast and he goes, “No”. So I said, “Okay, well, we have to get out as I can’t have two guys fall off from 40 feet up”. So, we had to break out of the set-up, and go back in a shoot something else and we lost another half-day.

Anyway, the next day the publicist is sitting in his office and he gets this call from some journalist in the States and he goes, “Okay. Don’t lie to me – I’ve had this confirmed from two different people. I want the facts, and I want to hear about the accident yesterday, we had two cameramen fall off the mast and were killed”.

And, he goes, “What are you talking about?”. And he goes, “Don’t lie to me, don’t cover this up, we know this has happened”. It didn’t happen! People were so hungry for bad news because it was much more exciting than…they just said it, and you know, it hurt us.”
Upon release, the press seemed to be disappointed that the film wasn’t the massive failure they were hoping it to be. Universal Studios told Kevin Reynolds that one critic came out of an early screening in New York and in a disappointed tone said,

“Well, it didn’t suck.”

It is true that during principle photography the slave colony set sank and had to be retrieved. However due to bad press, the rumour became much bigger and to this day when you mention the sinking set, most people assume it was the huge atoll.

During production, press nicknamed the film “Kevin’s Gate” and “Fishtar”, referring to 1980’s box office failures Heaven’s Gate and Ishtar. Heaven’s Gate failed so badly it led to the sale of United Artists Studio and has become synonymous with failure in Hollywood.

As well as the exaggerated set problems and other various production rumours, there were also difficulties with the script. In a risky move, the film was green lit and moved into production without a finalised script.

The final total is a reportedly thirty-six rewrites. One of the writers involved was Joss Whedon. Joss had worked on many scripts before becoming a director having being at the helm of both The Avengers and the sequel Avengers: Age Of Ultron. He described his experience on Waterworld as,

“Seven weeks of hell”
Everything came to a head just three weeks before the end of principle photography. Kevin Reynolds who was an old friend of Kevin Costner allegedly walked off set or was fired. There was no official statement on what happened.

When Reynolds left the production this event caused many changes to be made. Composer Mark Isham had already composed approximately two-thirds of the film’s score by the time Reynolds left and that event ultimately caused him to leave production. As Mark describes in this interview excerpt,

“Kevin Reynolds quit the film, which left me working for Kevin Costner, who listened to what I had written and wanted a completely different point of view. He basically made a completely different film — he re-cut the entire film, and in his meeting with me he expressed that he wanted a completely different approach to the score. And I said, “oh let me demonstrate that I can give that to you”, so I presented him with a demo of my approach to his approach, and he rejected that and fired me. What I find a lot in these big films, because the production schedules are so insane, that the directors have very little time to actually concentrate on the music.”
Rumours report that Costner took control of production. He directed the last few weeks of principle photography and edited the final cut of the film that was released in cinemas.

Reynolds discusses his surprise at discovering that one of the most famous scenes from what is known as the extended version, was left on the cutting room floor,

“…it would have differed from what you saw on the screen to some extent, and one of the things I’ve always been perplexed by in the version that was released, theatrically, although subsequently the longer version included it, and the reason that I did the film, was that at the very end of the picture, at the very end of the script, there’s a scene when they finally reach dry land and The Mariner’s sailing off and he leaves the two women behind, and in the script they’re standing up on this high point and they’re watching him sail away, and the little girl stumbles on something.
And they look down and clear the grass away and that’s this plaque. And it says, “Here, near this spot, 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary first set foot on the summit of Everest”. And that was in script and I was like, “Oh, of course! Wow, the highest point on the planet! That would have been dry land!”. And we got it! We shot that. And they left it out of the picture. And I’m like, “Whaaat?!”. It’s like the Statue of Liberty moment in Planet of the Apes. And I was like, “Why would you leave that out?”

Written by John Abbitt | Follow John on twitter @UKFilmNerd

If any the crew cares to share any of their experiences on it please comment.
Thanks for reading
If you want more deep dives visit
https://www.facebook.com/groups/crewstories/?ref=share

‘Ways of the World’: Don’t judge by words but by actions (Lee Yee)

The tables are turned as the Sino-US relations have reverted to half a century ago. No, it is even worse.

In 1969, the evil flames of the Cultural Revolution were still burning and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led the blind crowd to shout every day, “Down with American Imperialism, Down with Soviet Union Revisionism.” During that year, there was the Sino-Soviet border conflict between the Soviet Union and China in the vicinity of Zhenbao (Damansky) Island. The border clashes were so serious that the Soviet Union was ready to employ nuclear weapons on China’s nuclear military base. At that time, the Soviet ambassador to the US informed the US National Security Advisor Heinz Alfred Kissinger of this intention, hoping that the US would remain neutral. However, President Nixon categorically rejected as he believed once Pandora's box of nuclear weapons was opened, the entire world would kneel before the polar bear. He opposed the Soviet’s operation and leaked the news to a newspaper for publication. China immediately called “the entire nation to enter a ‘Ready to fight’ mode.” The actions of the Soviet Union were contained and the nuclear disaster did not occur.

The following year, in 1970, Mao Zedong invited American pro-CCP journalist Edgar Snow who made a trip to China for an informal talk. Snow might have been entrusted by Nixon to investigate the possibility of breaking the ice in Sino-US relations. In July 1971, Dr. Kissinger made a secret visit to Beijing and facilitated Nixon’s ice-breaking journey to China the year after, and thus began the China and US strategic interactions.

After the Cultural Revolution, China and the US established diplomatic relations in 1979. In that same year, Deng Xiaoping visited the US. On the plane, he said to his associate, “As we look back in the past few decades, all those countries that were in good relations with the US have prospered.”

China has indeed become rich. The American policymakers and businesses all expected that economic freedom would lead China towards political freedom, but no such thing happened. On the contrary, China’s authoritarian politics became harsher and harsher and finally fulfilled Nixon’s frightful prophecy: fearing that he had created a “Frankenstein” by opening the world to the CCP.

If dictatorship does not carry out political reforms in response to economic needs, then all dictators will eventually become a giant monster. What is more terrifying than any other dictators in history is that the US and the Western world have fattened China. Rich and powerful in military strength, its money and influences have penetrated across the globe, giving rise to a situation of what US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described in his speech last week, “If we don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build...If the free world doesn’t change – doesn’t change, communist China will surely change us.”

Pompeo’s speech not only declared the start of the cold war between the US and China, but also signified that a tougher, close-to-war era is looming.

He quoted President Reagan’s saying, that he dealt with the Soviet Union on the basis of “trust but verify.” When it comes to the CCP, said Pompeo, they must “distrust and verify.” “Trust but verify” means they would trust what one says but also observe how one acts; “distrust and verify” on the other hand, means they do not listen to what the person says, but only watch what the person does. Facing deterioration of the relationship with the US, the CCP keeps saying both parties should resume dialogue. But the US is fed up with dialogues. As Pompeo said, all the dialogues with Yang Jiechi are nonsense.

Comparing with speeches made by Chinese politicians, which are often lacking substance but full of self-praise, what touched me most about Pompeo’s speech was how he acknowledged and reflected on previous policy mistakes. He said, “Perhaps we were naive about China’s virulent strain of communism, or triumphalist after our victory in the Cold War, or cravenly capitalist, or hoodwinked by Beijing’s talk of a ‘peaceful rise.’”

Actually, being naive, triumphalist, hoodwinked, were all one, or all of the mistakes committed by numerous countries, investors, people in the past 50 years. Now Pompeo, openly reflecting on these, suggested that the US has completely awakened. Yesterday, Xinhua News Agency was still mumbling about “China-US cooperation would be a win-win situation; fighting against each other would only lead to a lose-lose one.” From the US point of view, the win-win of working together only means China would win twice; when fighting against each other, it would be lose-lose, losing twice for China.

Over a hundred years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian famous for his studies on the new world’s politics and culture, said, “America is great not because she is cleverer than the other countries, but she is more capable of repairing mistakes she made.” This is down to the fact that the US has sufficient freedom of speech, which China lacks. And it is exactly because China prohibits people from “unwarranted public distortion” of the central government, that it keeps making mistakes, again and again.