Dreams of world domination.

I asked a Chinese English language student what he most wanted, the other day. His answer was discomfiting to stay the least.


"I would like the power to give China many advanced weapons. Then China would grow more powerful and all the world would respect China. Then everyone would have to learn to speak Chinese. That would make me very happy."


I almost shuddered at his words. If this is the dearest wish and profoundest dream of a random Chinese student, I wonder if the world is really safe from an ascendant China. Dreams like his don't come from nowhere - they are born in a social milieu which fosters such thinking. Perhaps America is right to be worried about the rise of China.

Recently, America issued its annual report on China's militarization. China reacted angrily saying that it portrays China in a false light and that China's weapons are for defensive purposes only. It also stated that it "interfered in our internal affairs". This is a reference to Taiwan which China believes is an internal matter but which Taiwan and the rest of the world believe to be an external matter.

Most telling, perhaps, about the student's dream is that the dream of power was not for him, personally, but for his nation. He wanted China to be ascendant, but not himself. This is a very Chinese answer, I think, in which the individual is subsumed into the mass of the people of the republic.

I didn't share my thoughts on his comment with the young man concerned: I just observed his ardent expression of the desire for military power for his motherland and wondered whether the world is sleeping, as a new Dragon awakes.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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