Figure DI-2. Belt and Road Initiative and Build Back the World Better photo-illustration for Los Angeles Collegian..
My Goal for Creating a Professional Website for Communicating My Points-of-Views to Mainstream and Chinese American Communities I am interested in enrollment in Journalism 101 to learn professional skills, for my private bi-lingual (English and Chinese) community service website, The New Eight Banners (https://n8b.weebly.com). 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, progressive and democratic direction, through healthy personal lifestyle, sustainable economic development, and socially-responsible, rational, moderate, and pragmatic participation in America’s democratic political process; (3) promote mutual understanding and cooperation between American and Chinese nations. The philosophy of the website is in line with the Manchu peoples’ tradition of coalition building, promotion of peace and harmony among peoples of difference races, ethnicities, social classes and political factions. A Tungustic-Altaic people sharing linguistic and ancestral roots with Mongolians, Koreans and Japanese, Manchu peoples principally lived in northeastern part of China and southeastern part of Russia 400 years ago; and they number around 15 million people in China today, and constitute 0.5% 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. The Manchu people unified five separate political entities, i.e., Manchuria, 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 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). I am a writer on the subjects of digital technologies used in engineering graphics, product design, graphic design and art, well-trained through graduate-level education and specialized courses 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. I have previously published articles in L.A. Collegian; but I need this course to learn, in a systemic way, the rules of journalistic writing, which are very different from “normal” or scholarly English I have learned before. These rules will be very useful for the above-mentioned website I am still working on. Hopefully, this course could help me to become a better communicator. My strength is in my understanding of history and current affairs, and in my skills of creating graphics for mass media, such as digital photography, photo-illustration and cartoons with Adobe Creative Suite tools and traditional mediums such as markers, charcoals, color pencils, watercolor, acrylic and oil painting. I have received comprehensive training in these fields through certificate programs from LACCD campuses. I have working experience with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. My shortcoming is in writing professional quality news reports. This course could help me improve my journalistic writing quality by overcoming this shortcoming. Communicating with the public: Constructing my own social service website (The New Eight Banners for the One World of Peace and freedom, https://n8b.weebly.com/). This is a bilingual (English and Chinese) community service website. My goal for creating this website is to communicate to both Mainstream American and Chinese-American communities, liberal, democratic and progressive points-of-view, based on objective facts and healthy social values, and free from bias and prejudice, partisanship and ideological fanaticism. 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), 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 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. The above website also will celebrate the great religious and cultural values of charity, volunteering, public service, 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, https://scholarsteamk12plus.weebly.com/a-new-vision.html).