Wei, the World：Learn Hillary’s lessons

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Europe

From my seven-year-old nephew to my 97-year-old grandma, almost every educated person in the world knows who Hillary Rodham Clinton is. She divides opinion today even more than Kim Kardashian, after being in the public eye for three decades.

Now Mrs. Clinton is once again stirring the pot, publishing her new memoir “What Happened”. The copy I bought from Amazon has not reached Beijing yet, but it claimed to present her analysis as to why she lost the last election.

Even though the reason could be simple, as simple as “Because Trump happened”. We are still very curious to hear her account.

But after reading reviews from both the conservative and liberal sources, apparently she made every effort to blame the others while refusing to admit that her campaign failed to connect to an important part of the masses, those who felt they were left behind by the changes of America and the changes of the world.

There is reluctance for one individual to admit failure, for a country too.

You could see many examples of that, such as a strong reluctance for some countries to admit that the world has changed; and those things could not be done without the participation of developing and emerging economies.

One example is DPRK nuclear issue. The US is just reluctant to deal with it head-on, does not want to sit down with DPRK to discuss, instead only relying on pressuring others, such as China, to change the picture, which, on its own, of course would not work.

Another example is technologies related to artificial intelligence and other new frontiers are beyond borders. What's crucial is to turn your own countries into an attractive incubator for technologies and talents, not exhausting your ways to prevent global cooperation and information sharing. But the realizations for some countries take a while.

In retrospect, any of these just-mentioned phenomena are not helping a country in the long run. But it seems that short-sightedness is the nature of today’s politics. Sad, isn’t it? It is.

But that is why we need to be here: show them the world has changed, and new voices must be heard. Help them understand in all the ways possible, that things can be done to increase the chances for negotiation and dialogue on the Korean Peninsula, and demonstrate to them the enormous opportunities there would be by sharing technologies and creativity.

They say honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Let us be wise and stay wise.

(Tian Wei is the anchor of CGTN’s World Insight )