Geezer, you don't even live in China anymore but you still come here whine complain and badmouth China?

nnoble, present governments everywhere give many people many good reasons for attitudes and behavior that patriotic control freaks like to call 'disloyalty'. Governments are not gods and don't deserve the blind obedience that they often demand - that is why they like to get into your head (PR, educational indoctrination, etc.) - The Man you most have to worry about is The Man inside your head. He is the guy who throws mobs of 'patriots' against ordinary citizens of a country when their governments do something that they've been taught to dislike, and that, I think, is the problem that has caused the OP to be worried and to bring up the topic of this thread. But The State is never = 'the country'.
Cf. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

I never meant to suggest that loyalty should be interpreted as 'my country right or wrong' which I consider to be a puerile sentiment. But as you yourself state, governments everywhere operate in a similar vain. Since the, relatively recent, advent of the nation state, we all get signed up automatically in one system or another. I merely suggested that hopping from one system to another is fine and reasonable, but if you rant and rave about the place you just left, then it's likely your new host is possibly going to treat you with suspicion. Right or wrong; who is really ever going to completely trust Edward Snowden again?

nnoble: I get your point and agree, but I think the answer to your question (without the 'completely') is: I will, and I think a growing number of people do, as they simultaneously and increasingly learn not to trust the powers that be.

I hesitate to say this out loud but I have a great deal of sympathy for those in the job of governance around the world. Increasingly, individuals are placing conflicting and impossible demands on even the best run administrations.

If the government would pay more attention to their own people's needs things would be much better for all. Look at how India is spending all that money on space exploration when they could use it on their citizens. All the money that China is spending outside could be used to better China's own people's lives, land, water, air, etc.

Yep, all sounds so damn simple doesn't it?

@nnoble: I'll agree to the sympathy you express, to some extent: the basic problem is the impossibility and lack of clarity about fulfilling the demands under the politico-economic system that exists, which most of those in administration usually do not themselves fully understand. Those at the top, however, usually do, and are twisted by the same system into promoting it - and for such people I have neither the time nor the patience...and anyway it remains impractical to try to straighten out their heads when they are the effective agents of oppression, war, mutual paranoia, the ridiculous stereotyping of groups of people as 'enemies', etc. When somebody is beating you over the head, reasonable discussion is not the tactic you need.
A rather ugly chicken-or-egg situation.
@liumingke: Problem is largely the leaders' real conceptions of who 'their own people' are - politicians rarely speak straight on this matter. And all of it needs to be seen on a global scale, not just on some national scale (Indian, Chinese or American), because political power, and above all economics, does not really respect national frontiers - never has, never will, never can.

@macus
I appreciate @geezer's candid, frank, and personally emotional comments precisely because he has repatriated to the USA and precisely because he did live here.

@geezer represents a generally conservative perspective of mainstream USA and that's important to understand in an increasingly global world. The first rule of politics, diplomacy, business, and ultimately war, is to "know your enemy" - which is one of the primary precepts of SunZi's Art of War - and of most Chinese military strategies, as well as political, business, and personal strategies and tactics for managing most kinds of relationships.

I appreciate @geezer and other's honesty and frankness and their taking the time to read or scan my incredibly verbose posts, even when diametrically opposed to my core beliefs, because that helps understand how other people think, which helps develop respect for their perspectives. The world is a large place, full of different cultures, behaviors, and experiences. To strive towards mutually beneficial peace - we need to communicate and learn to understand each other, so we can develop mutual respect, while retaining our personalities, cultures, etc ad infinitum.

When we have mutual respect and understanding, it helps to negotiate mutually beneficial solutions (business & diplomacy/politics), as opposed to blowing each other up (war). I could no more change @geezer or other's philosophies than I can breath life into a clump of dirt, so better I learn to understand @geezer, learn to respect his opinions and how they were shaped and formed, so I'll know how to communicate with people like him - some may say ingratiate - but despite potentially outward appearances, I'm not an ingratiator - I have my own agendas - and I am self-serving, because in my world - it benefits all parties or stakeholders.

Management, politics, marriage, and the art of war means working with the resources you have available and understanding their functional abilities and characteristics - with no illusions.

I have no illusions about my country, nor about China, although I definitely have insane delusions of self-grandeur, depending on one's perspective.

All countries have strengths and weaknesses - however China is a developing nation, albeit rapidly, and the USA is an alleged developed nation, with the unchallenged and unparalleled ability to essentially obliterate the world, not to mention its own people. I expect more from my home country because they have engineered themselves into the world's military and economic leader. I expect a considerably higher degree of maturity and professionalism from my country's leaders of both politics and business, but I see a consistent downward spiral in both behavior and culture, as opposed to consistent growth and improvements in performance - but perhaps my system of performance metrics is flawed (not). The international standard for measuring performance is based on three key areas - financial performance, social impact, and environmental impact. As I said - the key to risk management is to take seemingly impossibly complicated issues and reduce them into manageable chunks, so we can guage performance - assuming projects survive the design and implementation phase.

As doctors should also eat their own medicine - I'm frustrated because US companies and US government officials don't meet up to my expectations if not illusions of what responsible executives and government officials should be, but I have to work with these kinds of resources or learn to manage them for mutual benefit - and it's extraordinarily if not impossibly challenging, frustrating, and wearing on my patience, but negotiating with self-serving, self-inflated buffoons seems to be the status quo.

@geezer criticized me as being pediatric, jingoistic, self-serving, etc - and he may be right - as these are precisely the attributes of the people and companies with which I must negotiate contracts, to get things done. I must also reduce extremely complicated things into simplified pictures and words so that the various stakeholders can easily understand their roles and responsibilities, in exchange for mutual benefit (usually profit, but also can include social and or environmental value)

Never in my life would I or could I have imagined it so difficult if not impossible, to find companies who want to be paid. I can find lots of companies, but they don't seem to want paying contracts. What's with that? When I can't find vendors to pay, projects cannot move forwards, and I don't get paid - and THAT's what makes me angry. Not only am I not getting paid, but jobs aren't being created on both sides of the ocean. Government officials are tasked with looking for trade opportunities, to accomplish this same task - but I've never met a lazier, more irresponsible group of parasites in my life. Part of risk management is knowing when to walk away from either an opportunity or a stakeholder, as the management of such resources is simply not profitable.

The AIIB has clearly illustrated the path for business and politics. While the USA and Japan pursue increasingly militant positions - it is also time for business, finance, and investment to "pivot to Europe, central Europe, and South Asia". China has this ability - even with a 5-7% annual growth. The USA economy in contrast, just contracted about 1% in the first quarter of this year - which is also generally the state of most developed nations economies.

The USA news propaganda machines, in which @geezer is now fully immersed, is ramping up their sensationalist, fear-mongering media to combat this pivot, by consistently pointing to the potential collapse of the Chinese economy - as though that would be allowed to happen in a planned economy.

I've unfortunately, seen this trend developing consistently and steadily for over a decade, both from the inside as a multinational employee, to the outside, trying to negotiate with these large to SME multi-national wannabes.

In this respect, @geezer got me totally wrong - I don't ingratiate myself with governments, banks, or companies, I manipulate them to get my projects done, for mutual benefit.

US firms - they're not looking for mutual benefit, just as the US government doesn't seek solutions for mutual benefit. They seek unilateral, one-sided relationships - self-serving, arrogant, jingoistic, pedestrian, <and I have many more emotionally visceral adjectives) and that's the unacceptable risk - when a key party or stakeholder has rigid, inflexible goals which are not conducive to the business ecosystem as a whole.

Biologically - these kinds of relationships are parasitic (self-serving, destructive to the host) as opposed to parasympathetic (mutually beneficial relationships).

So there you have my philosophy of relationships on governments, businesses, society, and individuals - is the relationship parasitic or parasympathetic.

To somewhat para-state @nnoble - life is complicated, relationships complicated - it takes time, patience, and the correct approach to try to determine and build towards parasympathetic relationships - the key is to filter out the parasites early on in the process, to save time, money, and in many cases, to save the project. This is the art of professional risk management.

The science of risk management is well documented in ISOs and various international project management certification and training tracks, and generally, banks have pretty good documentary processes for screening for financial risks (2008 global financial crisis aside).

Why criticize the USA and glorify other countries - because the USA doesn't have the corner on the market when it comes to innovation. A key example is the famous US Postal Service. It's been operating as a massive government welfare organization ever since UPS jumped into the package delivery market and has been losing blood as each new commercial business gnaws away - from FEDEX to email. One need only look to Asia to see potential solutions of re-engineering that obscene taxpayer support beast - both China and Japan allowed their postal services to expand into the savings and insurance businesses, retirement savings, and a plethora of derivative services spawned from those markets. For over 30 years the USPO has been hemorrhaging cash, but the US government has taken zero collective action to re-engineer this great institution, save if not increase jobs, and make this institution profitable. Japan's postal service is privatizing - at glacial speed - but it's on their roadmap.

The USA suffers from an island mentality and the non-self-serving media propaganda machine to support that doomed philosophy. Both China and Japan once closed their borders and their eyes to the advances and achievements of their neighbors. China was almost militarily overrun by colonialists and colonial-supported drug dealers. Japan was forced to open its trade ports by US gunboat diplomacy. Europe has the current advantage of living in a multicultural, multi-lingual environment - much less island mentality out of that group of countries and potentially riper fields to harvest - as eminently demonstrated by the speed at which the EU, to include the UK, leaped onto the Chine-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Behind all the verbiage is the insistence that if only the government gives ME what I need, then I will pass on the excess being the great saviour I am. I the great saviour do not ask this for myself. Really, I ask all this for you. This is the gospel according to Latou. The problem is that the demands are selfish and riddled with conditions that can never be satisfied. Governments find they have to feed the insatiable demands because the middle-classes have always been most troublesome. They get what they want. The meek shall inherit the earth [later]. I, the self confessed saviour need mine now and I will rant and rave until you heed MY demands.