“People are blessed and don’t know it” sounds like a cliché, but truly grasping it is anything but easy.
China’s Victory Day parade rolled out world‑leading new weapons that left foreign political and military circles stunned, and it stirred pride across China too. Yet next to one young Iraqi’s reaction, that pride felt almost restrained.
Tears on Tiananmen
He’s in his twenties and his Arabic name is Amin Obadi, but Chinese audiences know him as Fang Haoming, a Beijing‑based correspondent for Chinese Arabic TV who took a Chinese name.
Cameras caught him covering his face in tears as the parade concluded, and when interviewed afterward he admitted he was overwhelmed, saying he couldn’t calm down for a long time and that once the doves and balloons were released, he just couldn’t stop crying.
He added that he wished the Middle East could finally find peace — He especially hope people in the Middle East can live like the Chinese do.
If his own country had such military armament, he said, it wouldn’t be living under the shadow of war. And with China inviting so many partners to co‑develop, he hoped the world could become one family — just like the slogan on Tiananmen proclaims: “Long live the great unity of the world’s peoples.”
The Contrast of Peace and War
The Middle East he comes from is still riven by conflict today, and Iraq — invaded by the US in 2003, which toppled Saddam Hussein — never truly rebuilt in the 14 years that followed despite elections and a sustained American military presence.
His words inevitably summon memories of China more than a century ago, when in 1894 the Qing fought Japan with modern German‑built battleships like Dingyuan and Zhenyuan — only to see them sunk soon after hostilities began and to suffer a crushing defeat that forced the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki.
Who would have imagined that a century on, China would develop military capabilities that shock the world — not only far outpacing Japan, but formidable enough to counter the United States — such that if conflict erupted tomorrow in the Asia‑Pacific, it’s hard to envision America winning.
Stability Before Strength
China carved this path through brambles and hardship, and the crucial ingredient was political stability and a sound environment that allowed over four decades since 1978 to focus relentlessly on economic development — the long road to prosperity and strength.
At the parade, some fellow attendees from industry shared hard‑earned lessons about investing overseas: for lagging regions, the West once dangled preferential tariffs, and with low labor and production costs, manufacturers were lured to build plants.
But as one seasoned industrialist put it, overseas investment boils down to the “PEST” equation: P for political stability, E for economic conditions, S for social conditions, and T for industrial technology — and P trumps everything, because without stability, nothing else matters.
When Instability Burns Capital
Building a factory in a developing country easily means pouring in hundreds of millions to construct facilities and buy machinery, and only after a decade of operation — once the equipment has fully depreciated — can the investment be counted as a win.
The catch is obvious: if turmoil erupts three to five years in, the whole bet can go up in smoke.
Several industrialists pointed to Madagascar: a decade or two ago, many firms built plants there, but after the large‑scale unrest in 2009, long‑term political turbulence took hold — a HKD 300 million‑level investment was wiped out, the factory shut, and even the machinery couldn’t be recovered.
Many, having swallowed a Western narrative, judge development chiefly by “democracy and freedom,” but too often that’s just a tool to prop up pro‑US regimes, and importing such systems doesn’t guarantee long‑term political stability.
Once politics destabilize, investments vanish, scars remain, and capital doesn’t come back — as seen in recent years in Myanmar, where half the country has fallen into rebel hands and factory investors have taken painful losses.
The Air We Breathe
Political stability is like air — invisible when present, suffocating by its absence — and it brings to mind Warren Buffett’s blunt reminder at his May shareholder meeting. Asked by a Shanghainese attendee how to face setbacks, he said: “You were born in the best era China has seen in a thousand years; you waited in the womb for thousands of years and were born today — how lucky you are; don’t dwell on the bad, focus on the beauty of life.”
For Chinese born today, that good fortune is real.
Lo Wing‑hung
Bastille Commentary
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