It's very important that the government is close to the business community and that we understand their concerns. But at some point, the government needs to be a government.
In 1853, American warships bullied Japan out of centuries of virtual isolation and into the modern world. The threat of force compelled Japan, like India and China before it, to accept trade agreements that were economically ruinous and eroded national sovereignty.
Despite Japan's desires and efforts, unfortunate differences in the ways that Japan, England, the United States, and China understood circumstances, together with misunderstandings of attitudes, made it impossible for the parties to agree.
I knew I wanted to shoot in Japan early on. Years ago, we did a Japan segment in "The Community Project," and at the time I felt it was one of the better Japan segments ever captured.
Japan used to beat China routinely in wars. You know that, right? Japan used to beat China, they routinely beat China. Why are we defending? You know the pact we have with Japan is interesting. Because if somebody attacks us, Japan does not have to help.If somebody attacks Japan, we have to help Japan.
All economically well-off nations have used what has been dubbed 'cheque-book diplomacy,' and China does so, too. Apart from funding government-to-government lending, China has also been able to create global companies and global brands that have contributed to Chinese soft power.
Japan, Europe, [and] America probably [are] better than last year [2015], not China.
Revolutionary war is an antitoxin that not only eliminates the enemy's poison but also purges us of our own filth. Every just, revolutionary war is endowed with tremendous power and can transform many things or clear the way for their transformation. The Sino-Japanese war will transform both China and Japan; provided China perseveres in the War of Resistance and in the united front, the old Japan will surely be transformed into a new Japan and the old China into a new China, and people and everything else in both China and Japan will be transformed during and after the war.
I think China thinks information technology is less important than we think it is in the US, economically, and more important politically. And so Chinese internet companies are extremely political, they're protected behind the great firewall of China, and investment in Alibaba is good as long as Jack Ma stays in the good graces of the Chinese communist party. Alibaba is largely copying various business models from the US; they have combined some things in interesting new ways, but I think it's fundamentally a business that works because of the political protection you get in China.
The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can't do that.
The government needs to send out a message to the business community that 'we are on your side.'
I have done business in China for 25 years, so I know that in order to get China to cooperate with us, we must first actually retaliate against their cyber-attacks so they know we're serious. We have to push back on their desire to control the trade route through the South China Sea through which flows $5 trillion worth of goods and services every year.
Some may argue that countries like Japan and China improved economically without English, but they, too, are learning English fast.
We're working better with China than we ever have. We are determined to take care of South Korea, which is why we have our mission there, working and that, as well. And then we're going to continue to take care of Japan. The entire international community isolate North Korea and let them know that this nuclear tests not acceptable.
Americans whisper the word Alzheimer's because their government whispers the word Alzheimer's. And although a whisper is better than the silence that the Alzheimer's community has been facing for decades, it's still not enough. It needs to be yelled and screamed to the point that it finally gets the attention and the funding that it deserves and needs.
The world may view India more benignly, but it does more business with China. It courts China; it needs China. Look at the genuflecting Europeans and the fork-tongued Americans!