Dr. Wordman, Columnist of the US-China Forum

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The biggest highlight in American democracy is the presidential candidate debate. There are usually three debates hosted by television media entrusted by the presidential campaign committee. Voters observe and make judgments and comparisons. After the three debates, the voter votes to choose the candidate he or she thinks is most suitable to be president.

Fifty states in the United States elect their president on the same day every four years on the second day of the first Monday in November (between November 2 and 8). The results of each state's election are converted into electoral votes by each state's laws and then counted by the two houses of Congress to select the president and vice president. This method of counting electoral votes is very concerned with turnout in each state across the country. And turnout, of course, has some correlation with presidential candidate debate ratings and media coverage and commentary.

The 2024 presidential election in the United States is different from previous years in many ways, especially since the two presidential candidates, Biden and Trump, are facing each other for the second time. This debate was decided to be held without the approval of nominations at the party conventions of the two parties. Both candidates have been presidents for one term and have had an impact on the United States and the world, such as trade and tariffs, wars, and sanctions. It will be worrying for anyone to serve as president again. The author therefore pays special attention to Biden-Trump’s first debate. The following are some thoughts of the author.

First, let’s talk about why President Biden and former President Trump agreed to advance debates not only before being nominated but also privately without going through the Presidential Election Committee. This is unprecedented. No one is sure of the true cause, but observers can offer some ideas. Although the two candidates are both leading candidates of the two parties, they each have their concerns and are afraid of changes. Trump is entangled in legal battles, and he desperately needs to rely on media popularity and early positioning of presidential candidates to help delay the lawsuit and push for campaign and fundraising. Biden, under the pressure of lower poll numbers than Trump and questions about his physical condition, needs to prove that he can defeat Trump again. Therefore, under the almost unconditional arrangement of CNN TV station, without a live audience and time pressure, the two held a question-and-answer debate. In this debate, the two men each emphasized that their four years in power were better than the other's and that their domestic economic policies (epidemic prevention, inflation, and employment) were better than their foreign policy and foreign affairs (Afghanistan, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the Israel-Palestine war). Immigration and abortion are also hot topics in the debate, but neither side mentioned the Taiwan issue. This shows that it is not an issue of concern to the American people and is not an issue worthy of debate between the two candidates.

The average viewership of the 90-minute debate hosted by CNN this time was 7.3 million (the highest was 10.5 million at 62 minutes). With 22 simultaneous broadcasts, it was claimed that there were 51.27 million viewers. People watch. This is CNN’s highest ratings in 2024 except for sports programs, but it is higher than the first presidential debate in 2020 (73 million viewers) and the first presidential debate in 2016 (84 million viewers) Much less (30% to 40% less). There were 168.3 million legal voters in the United States in 2020, but only 66% voted for president (111 million votes), and 73 million people watched the first presidential debate (43.4 %). It is estimated that there will be 244 million legal voters in 2024. Based on the 51.3 million viewers of the first presidential debate in 2024, 105.83 million people should vote (Twice the ratings). The Democratic Party is lenient on illegal immigrants and lenient on voter qualifications, but these people are not debate viewers. So, will the debate ratings have a big impact on Biden?

Comments from both parties and observers followed the debate. The author's summary can be summarized as follows: 1. From the overall momentum, Trump performed better than Biden. Although Trump has made exaggerated and false statements, they have long been regarded as Trump’s character and are not surprising. 2. Biden’s physical condition and energy showed problems, which aroused doubts from funders and supporters. The Biden team admitted that the debate performance was poor but presented data to believe that Biden will improve. However, some Texas Democratic congressmen have proposed changing the general. 3. Objective comparison is very difficult, because the divisions in American society are deep, and the two major drawbacks of one-person-one-vote elections are that money can control the media and influence many voters (various radical groups), and many ignorant voters vote regardless of issue (e.g. recent immigrants).

Days after the debate, the Supreme Court justices explained that the president has absolute immunity in the execution of his official duties. This has a great impact on Trump and Biden's race for the White House. First, Trump’s case of inciting crowds to demonstrate in Congress on January 6, 2021, will not be prosecuted before the election. In addition, the president’s official immunity has been greatly relaxed. This will allow Trump to boldly issue executive orders after being re-elected, such as deporting illegal immigrants, increasing tariffs, firing administrative officials, strengthening the power of the Department of Justice, cracking down on drug cartels, establishing the death penalty for human trafficking, and regulating drug manufacturing prices, protect retired veterans, reform the education system, etc. Supporters of Trump welcomed the justice's interpretation, while opponents worried that Trump would become lawless. Of course, it is still too early to determine who will be elected president of the United States. There may still be variables in the next hundred days. The biggest variable may not be in the debate, but in the impulse of ignorant voters, because more than half of the voters may not have watched the presidential candidate debate at all. ! The fact that 66% of voters in the United States voted is considered very high, and many referendums fail to achieve a majority. Like Taiwan's 2024 election, Lai Ching-De was elected with only 24% of the voters' votes.




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Whether it is a free economy or planned economic development, the economic development path seems to always start with cheap labor (labor-centric) then entering industrialization (factory-centric), and then into a phase of advancing technology and innovation (R&D Centric). Take the most advanced economy, the United States as an example, as a colony before it became an independent nation, its economy started with agriculture requiring a heavy labor force. Thus, it imported slaves from Africa to support its labor needs despite the violation of Christian philosophy. After industrialization (1760-1840) occurred in Europe, machine operation and factories came to the new country, a growing United States. With its rich agriculture, forestry, and mineral resources, the U.S. became the largest GDP of the world in 1890 surpassing China (the world’s largest GDP from 1820 - 1870). The U.S. benefited from the two world wars and grew its GDP to become 40% of the world GDP in 1960. American goods were desired all over the world. The U.S. was the principal supplier if not the world factory.
 
Industrialization continued with combustion engines and electronics with rapid advances so that research and development (R&D) became the engines driving technology development. The U.S. was leading in R&D throughout the twentieth century in almost all fields, computerization aided the semiconductor revolution pushed automation and network control, and communication far beyond human labor capability. The expansion in R&D is no longer limited to mechanics and electronics; interdisciplinary interactions have widened the R&D sphere to many areas including supercomputers, high-speed internet, advanced materials, biomedical research, virtualization, space exploration, etc. as well as all sorts of modeling and simulation work in financial engineering taking advantages of large data and past experiences. With fast computing and the accumulation of large databases available for simulating the human brain, human ability (motion, speech, and vision), and machine learning, artificial intelligence has become the next revolutionary wave. However, the broader and more advanced R&D, the more opportunities would require astute selection and focused funding and human effort, since R&D is to explore the unknown, its results can never be guaranteed success. R&D work requires taking calculated selection (risk) and continued human talents and capital supply to beat its odds (often a low percent level).
 
The path of labor-centric (manpower) to factory-centric (manufacturing productivity), then to R&D-centric (advancing technology or discovering new fields, intellectual properties ) seems to be the success path for the U.S. before and including the 20th century, but into the 21st century, the U.S. GDP has been slowing down relative to the fast-growing countries in the world, from 40% (1960) down to 25% or less (2023). Whereas China has gained from 1.75% (1990) to 18.6% in 2021 with a projection to surpass the U.S. in less than a decade. The U.S. has adopted a policy to thwart China’s growth by launching a tariff war and technology sanctions eventually to an all-out anti-China strategy. However, China is the number one trading partner with 120 countries and has essentially become the world factory. Despite the U.S. anti-China stand, many countries including the U.S. allies have a vested interest to consider. Hence, foreign investors continue to invest in China, not only in manufacturing and business but also in R&D. In the last couple of years under the U.S. anti-China policy, China’s economy suffered a negative impact but the U.S. economy was also hurt. The total investment and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) tell a good story of a nation’s R&D and its economy.
 
China received FDI of $163.25B and invested in other countries $130.25B in 2023. Thus, according to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), China's net foreign direct investment in 2023 was $33 billion, which is notably a 30-year low and an 80% decrease from 2022. (China’s FDI was $180.96B in 2021 and $189.13B in 2022, showing a 13.7% drop from 2022 to 2023). The net exchange ($33B) was positive because new investment was greater than outflows and the $163.25B FDI figure represents a significant confidence of foreign investors in China. However, China’s net direct investments in 2023 are down $142.6 billion, which is the second time the country has had a deficit. This is no doubt an indication of China’s current economic challenge. Despite the downturn in net investment figures, R&D activities (foreign joint venture establishing R&D centers) are still striving in China, people expect a high success rate in China just like Silicon Valley has enjoyed that reputation. However, China has more than one ‘Silicon Valley’ distributed in China, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and even Anhui and Sichuan. And more importantly, China has a huge market and appetite for new development. The success of R&D efforts has to be proven by business returns. Recently, The Economist magazine has published an article highlighting China’s R&D potential.
 
The Labor, Manufacturing, and R&D path seems to be a successful model for China so far, however, history did present different outcomes for other countries. Hence, there is no guarantee of success. If one examines the economic development of the G7, their R&D phase did not always pan out, in some cases due to political influence and sometimes simply due to poor management of R&D direction. In the case of the U.S., its economy showed relative weakening at the turn of the 21st century. The terrorist attack may have triggered the U.S. pro-military policy which directed capital away from non-military R&D. In addition, the management of R&D steering away from hard goods manufacturing towards financial engineering and services resulted in creating fewer new job opportunities than taking away more manufacturing-based workforce. This choice also offered the opportunity for China to rise as a world manufacturer. China’s rapid economic growth has brought her to the critical R&D phase of economic development. So far, China has avoided making political mistakes (engaging in military confrontation and costly alliances) but focusing on commerce development based on its manufacturing strength to provide job opportunities and wealth building. The goal of lifting people from poverty and seeking co-development with the world for mutual prosperity has paid off so far.
 
Despite external pressure from the U.S., China is at the juncture of steering its R&D to bring sustainable economic growth. Will China succeed? The FDI trend is an honest indicator.  Let’s watch how China is going to manage its R&D phase by investing in BRI with a co-prosperity goal (hence choices of R&D directions: Green Energy, Electric Cars, Commerce Infrastructure, and Platforms) and by leveraging its huge market and manufacturing base to draw investments to fund its R&D to success.


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The U.S. two-party democracy had a good run in its 250 years of history. When the American Revolution started in 1775 which lasted till 1783, there was no formal political structure like today's two major party system. The 13 North American colonies sought to break away from British rule. The Revolution War drew most American colonists' support which led to the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. The Congress was just a bunch of intelligent political personalities believing in 'freedom' (free from royal British rule) and 'democracy' (self-determination). By 1781, the Articles of Confederation were ratified, forming the Congress of the Confederation; the new nation of the U.S. was gradually formed from 1776 to 1789. The influence of liberalism came to the elites in America from liberalist giant Adam Smith (Scottish, 1723-1790) in much later years. The young American Republic was principally driven by sovereignty issues (free from the monarch) and individual rights, as exhibited in rights to own land, freedom of speech, and press. The American Constitution initially accepted slavery, a major contradiction to liberalism was removed by the Civil War; gradually and slowly the concepts of equality, due process, and voting rights were amended into the Constitution in 18th and 19th centuries.

Wikipedia has a good paragraph on liberalism which correlates well with the evolution of liberalism in the U.S. “Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, constitutional government and privacy rights. Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.” The U.S. as a latecomer in liberalism was able to replace the traditional European norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings, and representative democracy in forming a federation of states. The federation under liberalism ended royal monopolies, and restrictive state trade barriers, and promoted free markets. In contrast, the U.S. did not have or inherit the European political and economic system which led to many conflicts and wars as evidenced by its history. However, the evolution of a new government system in the U.S. had no precedence, it ended with today's two-party system dividing the federation with red and blue color in its 50 states.
 
The liberalism intrinsically never had a complete or well-thought-out political system; even the economic system it offered only philosophy rather than an operational system. The U.S. with its resources, wealth, and fortunate history of smooth nation-building (expansion) has become the leader of the 'liberal' world advocating freedom and democracy and offering its political and economic philosophy ( an evolving system) for the world (against communism). Communism is one form of socialism initially experimented and led by the Soviet Union offering the mostly underdeveloped countries a revolutionary approach of gaining political and economic independence. It turned out the soviet model failed. The collapse of the Soviet Union was certainly due to its economy, but the victory of the Cold War cannot be attributed to the superiority of the Western political system. The strategy of the U.S. allying with communist China (a huge economic market) was the prime reason for the West winning over the economy. Since the Soviet economic collapse (1991), China's economy maintained its fast growth to become the world's second economic power offering economists a turf to debate the power of the Chinese economic system (which they claim is an evolving learning-correcting-adopting system. The fact that the U.S. felt the threat from China was due to the shining economic statistics China had sustained over decades, but its reaction to launch an all-out anti-China policy was wrong in theory and strategy. 
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This year is the U.S. presidential election year. For the first time, the vast majority of American voters have shown little confidence in whom to select. The two major parties, the Democrats and Republicans, each have a senior front-runner candidate (Biden 81 and Trump 78) not able to unite the federation. This casts a serious question: Why don't we have a stable predictable presidential succession process in the U.S. political system? Why are American citizens being locked by the two-party system? There is a new political party, not left, not right, called Forward Party. The reason, we introduce and discuss Forward Party is not because it offers a new political philosophy, rather it is asking the right question: “Do you feel that the legacy parties don't represent you?” This is a very legitimate question, if you do feel that way, then the next question is what can you do about it? Can the Forward Party be the third Party in the U.S. political System? I wish it could, but I would bet you did not think so. Unfortunately, our presidential election (and other elections) is a fund-raising contest. One needs to raise a lot of money to win a race. This is why the Democratic Party can't replace Biden once he has raised a pile of money. That is also the reason that any new party, like Forward Party, cannot run a presidential ticket in 2024. So, the Forward Party must build a party for the future.
 
Citizens must be able to change the course and direction of the electoral process. We voters must demand that the government sets up a third-party campaign account with a basic amount of funds. Whenever citizens are dissatisfied with the candidates of the two major parties, they can contribute to a third-party account to increase their funds. Funds there for debate and primary campaigns are only available to qualified third-party candidates. This mechanism ensures that there are always third-party candidates available. It would be great if the two major parties could win more than half of the votes or more; but if they cannot, then a third party should have a chance to emerge. It may be too late in 2024, but it would be worth pursuing the idea in future U.S. presidential elections. This is a "spare tire" or "insurance" concept that can encourage the two major parties to be more careful in nominating candidates, and at the same time allow voters to express dissatisfaction and look for better alternative candidates. I urge the Forward Party to move in this direction.