The www.dontow.com is the website of Don M. Tow. It contains articles in three topical categories (or pages): Political/Social Commentary, Taiji, and Other Topics. Currently, a new release of this website is published usually every three months. The website also has a fourth category “Soccer” about the soccer book that I published in 2006.
Any article in a particular category can be accessed via the corresponding category on the menu bar at the top of the page. Any article in a particular release can be accessed via the corresponding release on the right sidebar.
This website began in October 2006, and the website has been redesigned twice, once in October 2008, and the second time in November 2009.
Due to WordPress is no longer supporting the “theme” (Modern Style) I have used for my website for more than the past 15 years, I will need to choose another WordPress theme in the future. At that time, changing the “theme” will change the structure and appearance of my website.
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This was an editorial opinion by Chow Chung-yan, Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on 6/26/2026. I am reprinting this article.
“Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, published the sayings of Confucius in his colonial newspaper and today’s sculpture recognising that ancient Chinese age is carved into the face of the United States Supreme Court very proudly,” said US President Donald Trump in Beijing last month.
[Of all the presidents of the U.S., such a positive comment coming from President Trump, who has been very critical of China, must be true and meaningful. This comment was not part of the original editorial comment by Mr. Chow, it is an added comment by me.]
It took two-and-a-half centuries for an American president to explicitly acknowledge the profound Chinese impact on the US founding fathers. Trump’s recent declaration could be a historical first. Unless archival evidence surfaces to suggest otherwise, he is the first US president to formally recognise this intellectual gap on the world stage.
This admission stands in stark contrast to our current geopolitical discourse. Today, Western political commentary frequently depicts China as the ultimate cultural and ideological antithesis to the West. Yet, a deeper dive into history reveals that ancient Chinese philosophy did not just sit on the periphery of Western thought; it actively inspired both the European Enlightenment and the American founders.
To see this connection hidden in plain sight, one need only look at the architecture of American democracy itself. Sitting atop the East Pediment of the US Supreme Court building is a monumental trio of ancient lawgivers: Moses, Solon and Confucius.
Sculpted by Hermon MacNeil in the 1930s under the direction of architect Cass Gilbert, these figures were chosen to represent the core foundational pillars of American jurisprudence. MacNeil wanted to trace the lineage of American law. He included Confucius because he believed that true justice must prioritise collective civic virtue and social harmony over mere individual rights. Today, this statue of Confucius sits directly above the window of the chief justice’s office suite, serving as a silent, historic guardian watching over the highest judicial seat in America.
The Supreme Court pediment, however, is merely the physical manifestation of a deep intellectual current. While it would be a stretch to suggest that Thomas Jefferson sat down with The Analects to draft the Declaration of Independence, the structural parallels between ancient Chinese thought and American revolutionary ideals are unmistakable.
Then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and then state councillor Dai Bingguo applaud beside a portrait of former US president Thomas Jefferson during the signing of a memorandum of understanding on clean energy and climate change in Washington on July 28, 2009. Photo: EPA
Both Jefferson and Franklin were avid consumers of literature detailing Chinese governance. The declaration’s foundational premise that “all men are created equal” was a radical departure from the rigid British aristocratic class system. Historian Martin Powers, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, argues convincingly that the American founders did not construct their democratic and egalitarian frameworks in an intellectual vacuum. His research shows that both Jefferson and Franklin drew immense inspiration from Chinese political structures, particularly the concept of a merit-based state apparatus.
Jefferson championed what he termed a “natural aristocracy”, an elite class defined strictly by virtue, education and talent, rather than an “artificial aristocracy” anchored to birthright and inherited wealth. Franklin took this critique of inherited status a step further by directly citing Chinese tradition. Defending his opposition to hereditary honours, he wrote: “Thus among the Chinese, the most ancient, and from long Experience the wisest of Nations, honour does not descend, but ascends.” In the Chinese model, honours were granted to parents based on the achievements of their children, a concept that completely inverted European feudal logic.
Even the iconic American phrase “the pursuit of happiness”, traditionally credited to John Locke or the Greek philosopher Epicurus, heavily mirrors the Confucian and Mencian doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven. Mencius argued that the ultimate legitimacy of any government rests on a singular metric: its capacity to secure the tangible well-being and contentment of its populace. This philosophy remains the bedrock of Chinese governance today.
Furthermore, Mencius asserted that if a ruler fails this test and oppresses his people, he loses the Mandate of Heaven, giving the populace a legitimate right and moral duty to overthrow him. The rhetorical echo in the Declaration of Independence is striking. Jefferson writes that when a government becomes destructive to the people’s safety and happiness, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”.
People perform a commemoration ceremony for ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius and Mencius’ mother, in Zoucheng, Shandong province, on May 6, 2019. Photo: Xinhua
These ideological alignments are no historical accident. The American founders were children of the European Enlightenment – a movement that was deeply, unabashedly infatuated with China. During the 17th and 18th centuries, a massive wave of “Sinophilia” swept across Europe. Philosophers desperately seeking to reform societies fractured by religious warfare, monarchical corruption and clerical dogma looked to the East. As detailed accounts from Jesuit missionaries flooded the continent, Enlightenment thinkers weaponised Chinese philosophy as a blueprint for a rational, secular civilisation.
Voltaire was so captivated by these ideas that his writing desk, still preserved in the Paris Museum, was ornately decorated with Chinese landscapes. He viewed Confucianism as the purest expression of Deism – a belief in a rational creator grounded in human ethics and reason rather than divine revelation or the threat of eternal damnation. Similarly, Francois Quesnay, the leader of the French Physiocrats and a foundational mentor to Adam Smith, was so famously obsessed with Chinese governance that he was nicknamed the “Confucius of Europe”. Quesnay looked directly to the Daoist concept of Wuwei (action through inaction) as he formulated the economic doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism.
However, by the late 18th century, Europe’s intellectual romance with China began to curdle. The onset of the Industrial Revolution granted Western powers unprecedented military and technological dominance. A new generation of thinkers, typified by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, began rewriting global history. China was abruptly reframed – no longer an enlightened utopia of merit and reason, but a stagnant, frozen pool of “Oriental despotism”.
From that pivotal moment onwards, the West adopted the posture of a stern schoolmaster, attempting to reform China through trade, diplomacy or gunboat warfare. China’s foundational contributions to the Enlightenment were systematically minimised, forgotten and buried under a narrative of Western exceptionalism.
Admittedly, the early views held by Voltaire, Quesnay and Franklin were somewhat romanticised – but no more so than contemporary idealisations of the Magna Carta or Athenian democracy. By the time of the First Opium War in 1839, internal decay and centuries of self-imposed isolation had indeed left China vulnerable and corrupt. The myth of absolute Western cultural superiority became so pervasive that generations of Chinese intellectuals accepted it wholesale, leading to radical 20th-century movements aimed at completely eradicating traditional Chinese heritage.
Today, however, the pendulum is swinging back. Scholars and citizens are beginning to recognise the folly of completely dismissing a centuries-old civilisation. As the US approaches its historic 250th anniversary, there is a timely opportunity for thinkers on both sides of the Pacific to unearth these forgotten intellectual roots. By looking past modern political theatre and recognising the shared philosophical DNA that built the modern world, the oldest surviving and newest superpowers might finally foster a relationship rooted in genuine mutual respect.
Chow Chung-yan began his journalistic career at the South China Morning Post and rose to become Editor-in-Chief in 2025. He has been running the SCMP’s day-to-day news
With Trump in his second term as the President of the U.S., he has taken many actions that may be questionable from a legal perspective. Even if they are legal, they are definitely not for the benefits of the whole country, but only for the Republican Party and often for the benefits of Trump and his family.
Trump has manifested in his second term as the worst of himself. Not only that he is not serving as the President of the whole nation, he has manifested himself as the president of the Republican Party, and more specifically as the head of that part of the Republican Party that aligns fully with themselves and not the party representing the whole country. He has abandoned those who are not wealthy, he has abandoned those who are not as well established financially or as healthy or compensated by health insurance including government established health insurance. He has reduced funding for the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps) and for the Afforded Care Act (ACA), the comprehensive healthcare reform that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010. and commonly referred to as Obamacare.
His policies benefit the rich and those who can support themselves if they are faced with medical problems. He has abandoned the majority of the people who are not among the country’s wealthy class, he has diminished those government policies that can help the country’s poorer classes.
I think that there are two general policies that govern Trump’s presidency, especially his second term. He knows that the policies he plans to implement will not be popular, perhaps resulting in a lot of unrest. He wanted to have his military police under him to handle the public unrest. Since normally the police is under the state or local governments, he wanted his own police under his control. That was why he wanted the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to serve as his military police.
Secondly, he also knows his policies may be very unpopular and he may not be rated highly and knows that he may not have a lot of followers under his party and that is why he is creating the ground work for questioning various voting results. He also knows that he can unleash his conservative ultra rightish click of followers who tried to rise up to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. Many of these followers were arrested and sentenced to prison, but Trump pardoned them, and he may reuse them in the future. He is preparing to overrule whatever election results will turn out in the future. He is more than a dictator who plans to overthrow whatever popular voting will turn out.
This is Trump’s one two punch: (1) Military police with ICE under his control, and (2) preparing to question and overthrow popular elections using whatever means necessary.
In my last update I provided in early part of June 2026, now i want to provide an update around July 10, 2026. There are two major issues. One is that in the last several weeks, i have lost my appetite. The second issue is that in the last several months, because of my lack of consistent training, i can no longer do my Taiji forms (e.g, the Yang Stype Taiji 24 Form) properly.
First, let me discuss the first issue. After discussing with my primary physician Dr. Xu. She prescribed a medicine Megestrol Acetate 40 Mg taken twice a day that hopefully may increase my appetite (although. Dr. Xu already warmed me that that medicine may not do the trick). It is too early to determine whether that medicine would do the trick. Since it is not doing any harm, I will continue with that medicine. Related to the first issue is my self imposed restriction on my diet, e.g., no orange juice and no ice cream, which I found might have contributed to my loss of appetite. So I decided to remove that restriction and see whether my appetite may return. We should know in the next few weeks.
The second issue is that I can no longer stay steady when doing my Taiji forms. For example, I want to practice doing the Yang Stype Taiji 24 Form, which I used to be able to do. However, because I haven’t practiced it for several months, I can no longer do it with a steady pace. I have a tendency to be unable to keep my feet and hands steady and in a position to keep my feet and hands oriented in a particular manner to maximize the rotation of the hip (and therefore maximize the power from the forms I am doing). Hopefully with consistent practice, I can recover my previous steadiness. This will just take more and more practice; so time will tell.
June 2026Comments Off on New Update On President Trump, and U.S.-China Relationship
In the last issue I wrote even though you could see the shortcomings in his first term as the President of the U.S., these shortcomings became so obvious in his second term that you have to be blind not to notice them. President Trump failed miserably to lead the U.S. in many important categories:
price increases
job losses
decline in the job market
domestic peace
world peace
reputation of the U.S. as the premier country in the world
What is especially sad is that President Trump and his whole administration’s assessment of the U.S and the world around him is constantly changing. Because of this, you cannot argue with him, because he never has a real position. His arguments are not based on facts or normal logic. He considers only positions that are only similar to his. He cares so much on what can enrich him and his family. He doesn’t care about you when you don’t see things the way he sees things. He ignores the world around him, and retreats from important world pursuits such as the 2025 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, even doing otherwise could lead to a non-survivable world.
Basically he is running the U.S. based on his own wishes, and on those wishes he is also trying to run the world. He is trying to run the U.S. without a well-thought-out plan with the support from other Americans. Sooner or later, his plan will fail, and it will be up to the rest of America to bail out his plan.
This was what I wrote earlier this year, after he has been in office for about a year in his second term. The situation has gotten significantly worse. On February 28, 2026, Trump started a major war against Iran, which has continued to today, This included the assassination of many of the Iranian leadership. This war has resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and resulted in large increases in gasoline prizes.
Trump doesn’t have a plan for this war, and doesn’t consult with other leaders, and tries to run the country and the world with his thoughts from the top of his head at that moment. He and his family are enriching themselves. He is constantly criticizing those with opinions which are not similar to his. He doesn’t take into consideration the thoughts of others, especially the thoughts of others whose opinions are not similar to his. This is clearly seen by the rest of the country and the world. That is why his approval ratings by Americans have fallen to the lowest point, but he continues in the same way. Unfortunately we have to suffer the consequences. For these reasons, the reputation of the U.S. has fallen significantly during the year and a half of President Trump’s second term as the President of the U.S.
Trump has also filed a $10B lawsuit against the U.S.’s Internal Revenue Service. In a recent announcement, Trump may settle his lawsuit against IRS by agreeing to a $1.8B fund to compensate his allies, possibly including those who rioted against the U.S. government in 2021. It is unclear what will be the outcome of this lawsuit and settlement. But it has raised many red flags, and it may undergo many changes. Trump may also be able to keep the IRS from auditing his past taxes.
Now I want to discuss U.S.-China relationship. But we must first remind ourselves of the history of modern China, especially the history within the last 200 years. Within this past century, China has revolutionized the country. Unlike the poor impoverized country of the mid-19th century that was picked on as the sick man of Asia by other countries of the world, China has stood up. It has basically eliminated poverty for the country as a whole, and has significantly raised the standard of living for the whole country. It has almost become the world’s factory and is the world’s second largest economy. It has also become the leader in the world in many categories, such as patents, university rankings, and college student assessment. For example, the US News Best Global Universities rankings show that Chinese universities are in the world’s top ten in 22 subject areas, including materials science and engineering. The results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) indicate that Chinese students consistently maintain a position in the global top three in the core competency assessments of reading, mathematics, and science. Furthermore, China has become the world’s second most powerful country, just behind the U.S.
However, many people in the U.S., including many politicians, have a lot of negative thoughts about China. Either these came from their previous thoughts and impressions. They think of the old China and think of all the bad things that can happen in China; they think of the lack of freedom in a communist China. They think of all the previous treaties that were imposed on China, independent of whether these treaties were right or justified. They think that the people in China must not be happy.
But recent international surveys showed that the happiness of people in the Chinese mainland has largely increased in recent years, with one of the survey reports suggesting that Chinese people are among the happiest in the world. The Global Happiness 2023 Report, released by multinational market research and consulting firm Ipsos (ref.1) ahead of the International Day of Happiness on March 20, in 2023, showed that Chinese people are the happiest among the 32 countries and regions sampled, with 91 percent of Chinese respondents saying they are generally happy, 12 percent increase from a decade ago. The analogous data in the U.S. shows that the happiness index was rated at 76% in 2023, with a minus 7% decrease in the last 10 years.
Although one may not believe in the absolute accuracy of these specific market research data, there is no doubt that market research data do show that people living in Mainland China are generally happy and not living miserably. This is not to deny that there may also be problems in China.
So there seems to be a disconnect between reality and what many Americans and politicians think of Mainland China and Taiwan. To address this issue, first, people need to know the history of China, and understand that Taiwan has always been a part of China. If it weren’t for the intervention of the U.S., Taiwan would have been part of China since 1949 or 1950, and there would be no question whatsoever about the independence of Taiwan.
They need to understand that their impressions of China are outdated and wrong, and sometimes purposedly misrepresented by our government and the mass media. Why do U.S politicians have such feelings and allegiance toward Taiwan? First, it is related to our sometimes purposedly misinterpretation of history, sometimes to some twisting of history so that it is closer to what we want, and sometimes to outright ambition to get what we want. It is true that Taiwan currently produces the world’s best semiconductors and chips. People should just acknowledge that as a fact, instead of trying to become partial owners of that, It is time for the U.S. to wake up from reality and face the world.
Why sell massive arms to Taiwan to defend Taiwan from China? If you know the history of China, there is no reason for that at all. Furthermore, that could lead to the destruction of Taiwan and the deaths of millions of Chinese in Taiwan and Mainland China.
We should stop the continued interference on the internal affairs of China. Let China be China and work collaboratively with China to improve the welfare of humankind.
————————————-
References
According to the March 29, 2023 international market research ipsos report, Chinese people are the happiest in the world. Although some people may not be aware of the organization lpsos, it is actually a large French (headquartered in Paris) world-wide organization that has done many surveys of public opinions in the U.S. and the world. As a matter of fact, lpsos often uses general market research data produced from the gallup poll.
A South China Morning Post Editorial “How Chinese philosophy influenced US founding fathers”
This was an editorial opinion by Chow Chung-yan, Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on 6/26/2026. I am reprinting this article.
“Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, published the sayings of Confucius in his colonial newspaper and today’s sculpture recognising that ancient Chinese age is carved into the face of the United States Supreme Court very proudly,” said US President Donald Trump in Beijing last month.
[Of all the presidents of the U.S., such a positive comment coming from President Trump, who has been very critical of China, must be true and meaningful. This comment was not part of the original editorial comment by Mr. Chow, it is an added comment by me.]
It took two-and-a-half centuries for an American president to explicitly acknowledge the profound Chinese impact on the US founding fathers. Trump’s recent declaration could be a historical first. Unless archival evidence surfaces to suggest otherwise, he is the first US president to formally recognise this intellectual gap on the world stage.
This admission stands in stark contrast to our current geopolitical discourse. Today, Western political commentary frequently depicts China as the ultimate cultural and ideological antithesis to the West. Yet, a deeper dive into history reveals that ancient Chinese philosophy did not just sit on the periphery of Western thought; it actively inspired both the European Enlightenment and the American founders.
To see this connection hidden in plain sight, one need only look at the architecture of American democracy itself. Sitting atop the East Pediment of the US Supreme Court building is a monumental trio of ancient lawgivers: Moses, Solon and Confucius.
Sculpted by Hermon MacNeil in the 1930s under the direction of architect Cass Gilbert, these figures were chosen to represent the core foundational pillars of American jurisprudence. MacNeil wanted to trace the lineage of American law. He included Confucius because he believed that true justice must prioritise collective civic virtue and social harmony over mere individual rights. Today, this statue of Confucius sits directly above the window of the chief justice’s office suite, serving as a silent, historic guardian watching over the highest judicial seat in America.
The Supreme Court pediment, however, is merely the physical manifestation of a deep intellectual current. While it would be a stretch to suggest that Thomas Jefferson sat down with The Analects to draft the Declaration of Independence, the structural parallels between ancient Chinese thought and American revolutionary ideals are unmistakable.
Both Jefferson and Franklin were avid consumers of literature detailing Chinese governance. The declaration’s foundational premise that “all men are created equal” was a radical departure from the rigid British aristocratic class system. Historian Martin Powers, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, argues convincingly that the American founders did not construct their democratic and egalitarian frameworks in an intellectual vacuum. His research shows that both Jefferson and Franklin drew immense inspiration from Chinese political structures, particularly the concept of a merit-based state apparatus.
Jefferson championed what he termed a “natural aristocracy”, an elite class defined strictly by virtue, education and talent, rather than an “artificial aristocracy” anchored to birthright and inherited wealth. Franklin took this critique of inherited status a step further by directly citing Chinese tradition. Defending his opposition to hereditary honours, he wrote: “Thus among the Chinese, the most ancient, and from long Experience the wisest of Nations, honour does not descend, but ascends.” In the Chinese model, honours were granted to parents based on the achievements of their children, a concept that completely inverted European feudal logic.
Even the iconic American phrase “the pursuit of happiness”, traditionally credited to John Locke or the Greek philosopher Epicurus, heavily mirrors the Confucian and Mencian doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven. Mencius argued that the ultimate legitimacy of any government rests on a singular metric: its capacity to secure the tangible well-being and contentment of its populace. This philosophy remains the bedrock of Chinese governance today.
Furthermore, Mencius asserted that if a ruler fails this test and oppresses his people, he loses the Mandate of Heaven, giving the populace a legitimate right and moral duty to overthrow him. The rhetorical echo in the Declaration of Independence is striking. Jefferson writes that when a government becomes destructive to the people’s safety and happiness, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”.
These ideological alignments are no historical accident. The American founders were children of the European Enlightenment – a movement that was deeply, unabashedly infatuated with China. During the 17th and 18th centuries, a massive wave of “Sinophilia” swept across Europe. Philosophers desperately seeking to reform societies fractured by religious warfare, monarchical corruption and clerical dogma looked to the East. As detailed accounts from Jesuit missionaries flooded the continent, Enlightenment thinkers weaponised Chinese philosophy as a blueprint for a rational, secular civilisation.
Voltaire was so captivated by these ideas that his writing desk, still preserved in the Paris Museum, was ornately decorated with Chinese landscapes. He viewed Confucianism as the purest expression of Deism – a belief in a rational creator grounded in human ethics and reason rather than divine revelation or the threat of eternal damnation. Similarly, Francois Quesnay, the leader of the French Physiocrats and a foundational mentor to Adam Smith, was so famously obsessed with Chinese governance that he was nicknamed the “Confucius of Europe”. Quesnay looked directly to the Daoist concept of Wuwei (action through inaction) as he formulated the economic doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism.
However, by the late 18th century, Europe’s intellectual romance with China began to curdle. The onset of the Industrial Revolution granted Western powers unprecedented military and technological dominance. A new generation of thinkers, typified by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, began rewriting global history. China was abruptly reframed – no longer an enlightened utopia of merit and reason, but a stagnant, frozen pool of “Oriental despotism”.
From that pivotal moment onwards, the West adopted the posture of a stern schoolmaster, attempting to reform China through trade, diplomacy or gunboat warfare. China’s foundational contributions to the Enlightenment were systematically minimised, forgotten and buried under a narrative of Western exceptionalism.
Admittedly, the early views held by Voltaire, Quesnay and Franklin were somewhat romanticised – but no more so than contemporary idealisations of the Magna Carta or Athenian democracy. By the time of the First Opium War in 1839, internal decay and centuries of self-imposed isolation had indeed left China vulnerable and corrupt. The myth of absolute Western cultural superiority became so pervasive that generations of Chinese intellectuals accepted it wholesale, leading to radical 20th-century movements aimed at completely eradicating traditional Chinese heritage.
Today, however, the pendulum is swinging back. Scholars and citizens are beginning to recognise the folly of completely dismissing a centuries-old civilisation. As the US approaches its historic 250th anniversary, there is a timely opportunity for thinkers on both sides of the Pacific to unearth these forgotten intellectual roots. By looking past modern political theatre and recognising the shared philosophical DNA that built the modern world, the oldest surviving and newest superpowers might finally foster a relationship rooted in genuine mutual respect.
Chow Chung-yan began his journalistic career at the South China Morning Post and rose to become Editor-in-Chief in 2025. He has been running the SCMP’s day-to-day news