Banner and scarf of the New Eight Banners Network The golden sun with 24 rays symbolizes the entire mankind co-existing in 24 time zone all over the One World of Peace and Freedom. The red triangle symbolizes mankind's progress towards enlightenment. The white and green arrow heads symbolize mankind's progress towards spiritual purity and sustainable economic prosperity. The blue wedges symbolize mankind's exploration of the outer space and the ocean.
Build Back The World Better and Promote A Harmonious Global Community
Manifesto of The New Eight Banners for The One World of Peace and Freedom
Edward Locke Saturday, July 1, 2023 Los Angeles, California
The New Eight Banners for the One World of Peace and freedom is a bilingual (English and Chinese) community service website. My goal for creating this website is to share with both Mainstream American and Chinese-American communities, liberal, democratic and progressive points-of-view, news reports based on objective facts and healthy social values, and free from bias and prejudice, partisanship and ideological fanaticism, as well as cartoons, illustrations and other artworks reflective of above values.
For the Chinese language content, this website is intended to: (1) provide useful information for new immigrants from China to better integrate themselves with America’s mainstream communities (White, Jews, African-, Latino-Americans); (2) encourage new immigrants from China to contribute to America’s social, economic, technological and scientific progress in a liberal, democratic and progressive direction, through healthy personal lifestyle, sustainable economic development, and socially responsible, rational, moderate, and pragmatic participation in America’s democratic political process; and (3) promote mutual understanding and cooperation between American and Chinese nations.
For the English language content, this website is intended to: (1) provide objective, non-biased information on important issues in the complicated relations between the United States and China, and (2) provide ethical and practical ideas on the solutions of important issues of real differences and potential conflicts between the United States and China, based on the ideas of mutual understanding and mutual benefits. To guarantee fairness, neutrality and political independence, the New Eight Banners website will not accept any form of financial supports from governmental institutions from any country or region (including the United States and the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan), or political groups, or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or foundations promoting bias, prejudice, far-left or far-right extremist partisanship and ideology. This website will sell advertisement spaces to businesses, organizations and institutions, but the positions of its editorials and opinion articles on politics, economics or cultures will be solely based on the principles of objectivity, fairness, honesty, neutrality and rationality, and not be affected by the positions of the advertisers. This website will also include sections on interfaith partnership, social and professional events, STEM and innovation, arts and culture, diet, fashion, habitat, animals, consumer product design and others related to socially responsible, healthy and ecologically sustainable lifestyle. The philosophy of the above website is aligned with America’s great heritage of liberal, democratic and progressive values and practices, from Jeffersonian democracy in the early years after the American Revolution, Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Emancipation, through Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Era achievements, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Harry Tuman’s Fair Deal, Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights Movement, John F. Kennedy’s War on Poverty and Alliance for Progress, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, to Jimmy Carter’s Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 and Habitat for Humanity, and Obama Care. This website also will celebrate the great religious and cultural values of charity, volunteering, public service, DIY self-help and mutual assistance, racial and cultural integration or “melting pot,” of the American and other peace-loving nations the world over, as embodied by the Heroes of the Mankind listed in my K12 STEAM education reform website (SCHOLAR STEAM K12 Plus.
This website will also celebrate the cultural diversity in modern societies, especially the unique heritage of the Manchu people, their tradition of coalition building, promotion of peace, reconciliation, and harmony among peoples of difference races, ethnicities, social classes and political factions. As a Tungustic-Altaic people sharing linguistic and possibly ancestral roots with Mongolians, Koreans and Japanese, Manchu people lived in northeastern part of China and southeastern part of Russia 400 years ago. They number around 15 million people in China today and constitute around 0.8% of China’s population. In 1644, the Manchu people’s armed forces, the Eight Banners of 200,000 men and women, established the first multi-ethnic Chinese Empire named the Great Qing, after defeating Chinese warlords from Ming, Da Xi and Da Shun dynasties which controlled a total of 3 million soldiers, through promotion of socially emancipatory progressive reforms that gained the support of the majority of Chinese people. The Manchu people unified five separate political entities, i.e., Manchuria, Han-China Proper, Mongolia, Eastern Turkistan, and Tibet, into a single multi-cultural and multi-racial Great Qing Empire of China, mostly by political and diplomatic means but in a few cases, through military campaign. The Manchu people came from the integration of the ancient Jurchen tribal communities, Mongolians and Han-Chinese who escaped political oppression and economic exploitation from Han-China Proper to Jurchen-controlled areas in Manchuria. According to the Qing dynasty’s official historical record, The Researches on Manchu Origins, the ethnic name Manchu came from Mañjuśrī, a Buddhist Bodhisattva (a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings). The Manchu people also promoted China’s modernization in the last ten years of Qing Dynasty, as well as China’s integration into the international community in the last three decades, since the normalization of Sino-American diplomatic relations, after so many decades of Chinese Civil Wars and social chaos.
Due to complicated political reasons, Manchu people suffered from prejudice and discrimination since 1911, after the Last Emperor of the Qing Dynasty abdicated. Unfairly blamed for the misery of the Chinese people since the Opium War, the Qing Government was branded as “the Imperial Court of the Devils from the Ocean” although it fought hard to defend Chinese people’s interests during the Era of Imperialism when most of areas in Asia, Africa and South America were colonized by European powers; and Manchu people were branded as “alien invaders” to be excluded from China’s politics, especially from employment in government and armed forces. This institutionalized discrimination existed in Mainland China till 1949 (before the collapse of the Nationalist Government and the founding of the People’s Republic of China), and in Chinese Province of Taiwan till 1980s (before Taiwan’s democratization).
During the so-called Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Manchu people’s traditional cultural heritage suffered a serious blow and a lot of artifacts have been destroyed by the ultra-leftist Red Guards. Although institutionalized anti-Manchu discrimination has finally ended in China’s Mainland and Taiwan, discrimination at grassroot level continues up to the present time amongst Han-Chinese conspiracy theorists trying to blame Manchus for China’s social problems.
Due to prejudice and discrimination, a lot of Manchu people have to hide their ethnic identity in order to live peacefully among Han-Chinese who constitute more than 90% of Chinese population. In the last 30 years, after China’s opening up to the outside world, many historical issues have been re-evaluated and China’s intellectual circles, both mainstream and non-mainstream, started to recognize the great contributions to China made by the Manchu people and the Manchu-led Great Qing Dynasty. This website will publish stories about the Manchu people and their contributions to mankind, which have been previously ignored and buried by racist and xenophobic Great Han-Chinese ultra-nationalists, for political and ideological reasons. I write on the subjects of digital technologies used in engineering graphics, product design, graphic design and art; I am well-trained through graduate-level education and Associate degree and certificate programs from community colleges in the Greater Los Angeles area. I also write opinion papers on the subjects of civil rights, social justice and world peace. The New Eight Banners website include several Sections, each containing several webpages filled with content materials (new reports, opinion articles); and these webpages could be accessed by clicking the items on the Navigation Menu.