Would the US and its allies be happier to have China just be their sweatshop and under their influence? While the US has slapped sanctions on anything to do with Huawei Technologies Co., even pressured its like-minded allies to do the same, Huawei Technologies Co. founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei has called the iPhone a good product, and said he would oppose any plans to ban Apple products in China – a lesson in graciousness. Talking to a manufacturing executive in China last year, I asked her how her business had been affected by the pandemic and the US tariffs, expecting her to be bitter. She said the pandemic was under control and that work was slowly resuming. She expressed hoped that the US would recover soon too, because just China doing well was not enough – the situation would improve only if the rest of the world were doing well too. Throughout its history, China’s priority has always been to feed its people. Today while the US and its like-minded allies talk about countering China’s rise, China is talking about finding ways to cooperate. The US and its allies say China’s behaviour is aggressive and a threat, but they are the ones sending military planes and ships to China’s doorstep and surrounding China with their military bases , while China has never sent its military close to, say, Hawaii, the nearest US territory. The US and its allies use Hong Kong and Xinjiang as an excuse to wield the rod. I must admit I do not have full information about the Uygurs’ situation, although I do know China is not using any policy they have not used on the ethnic Chinese and in the rest of China to lift people out of poverty, like the one-child policy. Would the critics call it “genocide” of China’s own people? Democracy is being eroded in Hong Kong, the US and its allies say, but Hong Kong never had democracy under the British as a colony for 156 years: how can you lose something you never really had? Xinjiang’s EU trade is booming, despite political concerns over forced labour What about loss of freedom of the press in Hong Kong ? The European Parliament has called for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing and sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials in response to Apple Daily ’s closure . How many of them can read Chinese, and how many have actually read the contents of this paper published in Hong Kong, and not just what was fed to them in English by anti-government elements? B. Kwan, North Point