now flounders. There are terrible tensions and unrest sweeping across the Middle East - what many refer to as the Arab Spring that started in February this year. This has convulsed many Mediterranean countries in a quagmire of anger and killing .
The United States is heading
towards recession and is deep in debt. Poverty looms ahead for many. Tere are protests on Wall Street. Te share markets slumps and continues to slump. Only China, and to a smaller extent Russia, appear richer and with fewer problems. It seems that the world’s richest lists, measuring wealth painstakingly compiled by FORBES magazine annually, now feature Russian Oligarchs and Chinese multibillionaires. Meanwhile, statistics reveal the RICH are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. Te Middle Class, once the bulwark of the world’s economic systems - people like you, my dear readers and I, us all are being increasingly squeezed!
last year’s Extravaganzas. And I told everyone to be sure to get out of the markets by August this year. Te stock market crashed after August
I said all this to you at
by Standard and Poor’s. Are the scenarios of 2011
2nd after the USA’s debt rating got downgraded
reflecting the changing energies of Period 8? Will China emerge as the world’s new superpower? Will China take over the role
the United States has assumed all this while? I have been asked this many times. Going around the globe talking about feng shui and about destiny analysis, I am frequently asked if this is going to happen?
WE ARE AFTER ALL IN THE PERIOD OF 8? Honestly, I do not have a straight answer. As I write this, news has just come in that the great STEVE JOBS has died (see our tribute story on this brilliant man of our times elsewhere in the magazine) and my first thought is – Can China produce a man such as Steve Jobs – a man whose brilliance and creativity has single-handedly changed the way we all live, work, play, listen to music – do anything at all… such visionary brainpower can only emerge within a system that breeds it. Can China produce a Steve Jobs? It is hard to say. I struggle to
answer. Living in Malaysia, I have a foot in both Western and Chinese cultures. I am very lucky because I live not just amongst fellow Chinese here but also among Indians and Muslims whose cultural backgrounds have influenced and shaped my judgements. I adore the genuine kindness and family closeness of my Malay friends and I try to emulate them – really, I have observed they are incredibly caring of their extended family and I really respect this that I see in them. And I absolutely love the depth of the Indian traditions, their passion in their beliefs and their beautiful Gods and Goddesses.
So I must confess I am not
a diehard Chinese patriot – my patriotism is firmly directed towards my own wonderful country where news from around the world flow freely to us so we can form balanced judgements. I am mindful of the increasing might and power of China, for it looms strongly. But I also embrace the sophisticated niceties and super excesses of Western culture. I was educated under the British Colonial education system and have been forever grateful for this. My primary and secondary education was in the Convent and I was taught by the most wonderful Irish nuns, so underlying the motivation to excel, we were also taught morals and civics.
The Chinese system of educating its young is through rote learning. Children are taught to copy and to memorize. In past decades, China’s phenomenal growth was fueled by it becoming the world’s manufacturing base. China was and is amazing at copying everything the rest of the world makes. China can make everything and anything better, stronger, cheaper and faster than anyone else. No one could compete with the phenomenal productivity of China. And it was not just in retail goods they excelled. China was also great at copying every technological advance and breakthrough made by the inventors and designers of the West! In recent years, they had become SO good at copying they could even create artificial milk, fake medicinal herbal roots, manmade eggs, and meat buns (stuffed with cardboard) to name a few! Creativity was “inspired” by the greed for higher profits. Incidents like these created such big scandals that Chinese- made food products and medicines are now viewed with suspicion despite ferocious action taken by the authorities against the unscrupulous business people responsible.
www.fswmag.com
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 | F ENGSHUIWORLD
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