It taken longer than planned- the guys in college that learned Chinese as their "language" requirement are 45 years old now- but if Bob Says So...I'd give it a go!

Date:   11/10/2005 11:40:36 AM ( 19 y ago)

COMMENT: China - Wide Open for Business.

Dear A-Letter Reader:
President George Bush will be here in Beijing next week, staying
at the same hotel I'm at now, the St. Regis. Our Sovereign Society
group beat him by a week, but we're both here for similar reasons;
this is where the world economic action is these days.

I've done some editorial grumbling in the past few days about the
lack of freedom in the "Middle Kingdom," as past ruling dynasties
chose to call the land that they saw as the center of the entire earth.

But the question for America, the only real world power, as imperfect
as we are, is whether we should work with China, or somehow treat it
as an adversary.

We should do both -- but in a realistic fashion.

Yes, we should do all we can to convert China to freedom and
democracy. And Pres. Bush plans to raise legitimate questions
of religious freedom and human rights while he is here. So long as
the entrenched bureaucrats of the Chinese Communist Party cling
to their brutal, oppressive ways, we should keep pressing for
liberty for their people.

But America can do far more to promote liberty in China with the
carrot than the stick.

It is difficult for me to express the enormous change that has
occurred here since I visited for 10 days way back in 1979. When
I shook hands with Deng Xiaoping in the Great Hall of the
People back then, little did I know what a profound revolution
that little man had loosed upon his nation.

I went shopping in Beijing today and the experience was very
much like being in Hong Kong 25 years ago (or today).
Not only are there high end shops selling every leading US
and European fashion, hundreds of mall stalls were manned
by Chinese eager to sell you anything and everything. Street
vendors are everywhere hawking their wares, from DVDs to
cell phones. Instead of tanks in Tiananmen Square, there is a
near constant gridlock of BMWs, Mercedes, VWs and bicycles.

US President Calvin Coolidge once said: "The business of America
is business." That's true about China today in spades. It looks to
me that the free market spirit is alive and well here. It manifests
in the thousands of autos and SUVs clogging the streets
of Beijing, a city of 14 million, where people are as well or better
dressed than the US or the UK. This is no longer the backward
China of my yesteryears. This is a new, dynamic economic force.

If Americans and the Chinese play their cards right, this could
be the beginning of a beautiful friendship -- and what's left of
"Communism" will die the inevitable death it deserves.

That's the way that it looks from here in China.
BOB BAUMAN, Editor


Play the Yuan!


 

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