by 
PARIS — Somewhere in the Kunlun mountain range that roughly divides China proper from China's puppet state of Tibet lies the imaginary paradise of Shangri-La, where life is a dream, everyone's prosperous, and people seem to live -- smiling all the while -- forever.
If you're a devotee of the business media, this description often seems to describe China itself, a place where the central government caters slavishly to foreign investors while keeping its natives content by steadily improving their standard of living, and managing the economy at a reliable and seemingly eternal growth rate of 8 (that's eight!) percent a year.
This rosy outlook also prevailed recently at the University of Wisconsin, which organized an expert panel featuring the university's leaders in reaching out to China. The university has opened an office in Shanghai and has appointed a Chinese woman named Huang to coordinate its Chinese outreach.
Ms. Huang was the only Chinese person on the UW's China panel. Others included the school's provost, the head of the College of Letters and Science, and an alumnus just back from a visit to China with his teenage granddaughter (who had a great time and bought a ton of souvenirs).
Lacking interest
The panel lamented the lack of interest among UW students in Shangri-La -- er, China -- despite the wealth of opportunity to be had there, both educationally and commercially. An air of glowing optimism encompasses both academia and the business community, who perceive no end to the Chinese boom. China is as stable as the price of gold. China is gold!
Who knows? Maybe the Board of Directors at Pollyanna LLC., is right. However, one expert conspicuous by his or her absence from the UW panel was the head of the political science department. Nor was there anyone from the history faculty familiar with the smooth, untroubled course of 20th-century Chinese history beginning with, say, the Boxer Rebellion and including the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, the rise of the Kuomintang and the Chinese Republic under Sun Yat-sen, followed by 23 years of civil war interrupted by the bloody occupation of the Japanese, followed by Mao's tyranny, the separation of Taiwan, the Cultural Revolution, and the massacre at Tiananmen Square.
Not a peep about that stuff -- just a tranquil, happy, no-longer-Red China poised to become the world's leading economy, without a hitch or a wrinkle, around 2023.
I was tempted to dim the sunny mood at the UW forum by mentioning that Tibetan monks keep setting themselves on fire in protest of Chinese rule, but I demurred. Here was a group not susceptible to complexity or ambiguity. The mood was more like an old-time Praise-the-Lord camp meeting, or an Amway recruiting session, than an intellectual exchange.
Soviet simile
Despite our presence in the bowels of an American university, and despite the fact that every American university fairly seethes with political controversy all the time, our evening of Chinese boosterism contained nary a whisper about Chinese politics. Nobody broached the vaguest suggestion that China, like the former Soviet Union, is a patchwork of disparate regions, cultures, and religions covering 56 distinct ethnic groups, 24 languages, and 3,700,000 square miles.
Nobody seemed to wonder if maybe, someday soon, this whole jury-rigged nitroglycerine truck might hit a pothole and go kaboom.
No one suggested that, if presented with a feasible pretext, one or more of China's outlying districts -- Tibet, say, or Inner Mongolia -- might decide they're more Tibetan or Mongolian than they are Chinese, and opt for self-determination, perhaps even violently. No one on the UW panel (or Chinese business expert I've talked with) seemed to recall that the chore of turning a few million openly hostile Croats, Serbs, Kosovars, Montenegrans, Herzegovinians, Bosnians, and Slovenians into docile Yugoslavians only worked because everybody was too scared of Marshal Tito to start shelling the infidels across the street. And no one paused to count (15) the number of sovereign states that broke from the Soviet empire once Russia was no-longer-Red.
It's hardly inconceivable that with the right trigger -- perhaps even before 2023 -- politics in China could cease to be quite so tightly managed, businesslike, and... well, Communist as they are today. The trigger could be another batch of flaming monks, another Beijing purge of Falun Gong religionists, the desecration of a Uighur Koran by a Han soldier, perhaps a famine among the earthquake victims of Sichuan, or maybe just one too many New York Times headlines praising the Dalai Lama as a swell guy.
China ain't, after all, Shangri-La. And politics has a way of boiling to the surface, after which it tends to upset the best-laid economic programs of the sort of people who don't like to bother their little heads with politics.
Related posts:
Isn't this type of attitude common in ivory tower settings that have their own favored world-view?
Ariella:
My impression at the forum is that we were observing an ivory tower within an ivory tower. The group inside the University trying to develop contacts with China seems to be focused within the business administration realm. If they had tapped the intellectual resources in the History, Journalism and Poli-Sci departments, the discussion would have been more complicated, nuanced, controversial, and fun.
Benjamin
@Benjamin, but perhapd not quite as rosy and self-affirming. Much as we like to believe in universities as bastions of knowledge that would contribute to the search for truth, there are also plenty of agendas at work within the ivy-covered walls of the ivory towers.
Ariella:
You're right. The clash of agendas was obvious, if only by the absence of knowledgeable faculty who were neither invited nor present in the audience. But let's not forget my other point — that this ivory-tower optimism among the UW panel is common in the business and investment communities, who seem to see no political complications brewing for them in a vast, diverse nation whose politics are barely understood by most of us who stand on the outside looking in.
Benjamin
It seems China is allowing more individuals to become wealthy citizens and they don't necessarily need to be party officials or criminals like they are in other communist blocks. Maybe that mentality will enable China to avoid a hard correction.
I spent a few weeks in China a few years ago and it is certainly a place lacking quite a few of the problems that we have in the USof A, no question about that. And the economy there is growing and a lot of folks are getting rich, and a middle class is having enough money to spend on things besides food. China certainly does have a lot going for it, no question about that.
BUT one day I saw some things that reminded me of the other truth:CHINA IS A COMMUNIST-RUN POLICE STATE! The fact that it is not a Stalin type police state is fortunate for the rest of the world, that is for certain. And the folks who get up and go to work every day are allowed to do that with a minimum of interference. And the may even prosper. But it is still a police state, and while I was there the news came out that three businessmen were hanged for economic crimes (against the state?), which is a bit different from the way justice is delivered here in the US.
So while we can certainly do business with China, and get along with them, we need to remember that they do have a different agenda, so that we should not be just like them.
Willam K:
Calling today's China a Communist-run police state is a simplification that does no credit to the complexity of the state of China's current political transition. It is definitely a repressive state, with restrictions on speech, religion, assembly, travel and association that are alien to our Western traditions.
However, please note that neither the university speakers of whom I wrote, nor the vast majority of Western businessmen dealing with China, nor I, no any sane person I know is advocating that other nations emulate the Chinese political or economic models. It is the task of free nations to bring China closer to our way of living, speaking, thinking, doing business and even worshipping than the other way around.
Meanwhile. our best strategy is to keep open our contacts with China. The more we know about China, the less we have to fear.
Benjamin
Ned, my intention is still to caution everybody to the hard fact that while much of China seems to be very similar to what we are familiar with, which makes us more comfortable in dealing with them, that underneath that layer is still a police state.
I suppose that all of those people you mention are not advocating that we copy Cina's political system, but it is clear that on many occasions those in the acedemic realm are fairly detached from reality about political issues.
My point is that we must be aware at all times that regardless of how congenial the relationship may appear to be, and how nice and decent those that we are dealing with are, that there is a fundamental difference in the system beneath it, which is willing and able to rise up and cause all manner of “discomfort” for us. It is not the individual people, it is the government.
Good point! I think we should all be grateful to Bill for a refreshing dose of obviousness.
At one point in my career it was stated by others that what made me so great was that “I had an acute grasp of the obvious”. I was never certain about how sincere that compliment was, but I did solve a few problems with that grasp.
@Jennifer you end with the quote that ends, “These aren't the kinds of people you can hire from Monster.com.” In general, Monster.com is more favored for for generalist. Tech specialists are often hired through more specialized boards like Dice. But I'm wondering if the risiing prominence of LinkedIn makes it useful for this kind of hiring, as well.
It will be interesting to observe how companies will leverage capital investment and technology to help with the counterfeit component problem.
In reality, there are many manufacturers who are aware that the products they make do include some of the counterfeit parts. It is irrelevant whether they themselves initiated to buy a counterfeit or the distributor supplied a counterfeit and they did not argue because it was must cheaper. Surely NDAA will bring those manufacturers in the compliance umbrella thereby increasing quality of end-product.
Eldredge, this NDAA will only increase the cost of production to the manufacturer and may ultimately lower their already low profit margins. However, having said that, it is definitely a move towards purifying the economy from illegal channels. Surely the counterfeit manufacturers do no good to the economy as they are not even the tax payers.
@WaqasAltaf – Quite right…but I suspect the cost will be passed on to consumer, since all manufacturers have to comply with the NDAA.
In cases where there is room for price increase due to less fierce competition, the manufacturer might be able to get away with the burden and transfer it to the customers but in cases of competitive markets, its profit margins are likely to reduce.
I am not sure how broadly this will be accepted unless the system is policed feverishly and severe punitive measures are put in place. It is a tricky problem but one that really needs addressed however.
“In reality, there are many manufacturers who are aware that the products they make do include some of the counterfeit parts. It is irrelevant whether they themselves initiated to buy a counterfeit or the distributor supplied a counterfeit and they did not argue because it was must cheaper.”
Waqas, I think only small and medium scale industries will entertain such things. Most of the products from such industries are of medium quality and hence adding counterfeit components won't matter much. But for high quality products, it can degrade the performance at various scenarios.
Can we prevent the crime before even knowing how they are going to do it? Law enforcement will always be one step behind… Sadly.
When something goes global its diffcult to control when and where things go wrong. Every country has different laws when it comes to counterfeiting. Some advanced countries take it seriously but in many countries its not even considered crime and the law fights can go for years. That is the whole reason why nothing concrete can be done.
“Can we prevent the crime before even knowing how they are going to do it? Law enforcement will always be one step behind… Sadly.”
Roques, prevention is possible, but things are happened because of negligence and irresponsibility from the screening department. If needed, they can easily filter out counterfeit components at initial stage itself.
Eldredge,WaqasAltaf – I agree. I think costs will come down to the consumer, but like you said, I hope this does also compel a closer look at part and device quality, which at the end of the line, means the consumer also gets a better product.
FlyingScott – That is always one of the key questions with these kinds of legislation. One is “how much will this be enforced?”, and another is “how much can I get away with before I'm caught?”
I'm with @SP “Every country has different laws when it comes to counterfeiting.”
This is a major stumbling block. The electronics industry play in global, hyper-interconnected economy, but yet is subject to hundreds of different provincial laws. Perhaps, though, with US backing this, other governments will require similar checks. But it will be a slow process to get uniformity around this worldwide.
Hopefully it will benefit the customer in terms of quality of their goods by at least legitimately eliminating the counterfeit devices.
We're at a wishing well. We also know that just because the US suggests something to the world, it doesn't necessarily mean they'l oblige or follow.