Fearing China

During my school years and on into my adulthood, we were told China was to be feared as a communist power intent on taking over the world. First the fear was that Chinese soldiers would pour out of China in numbers too overwhelming to comprehend. Our nuclear weapons seemed the only way to compensate for their superior troop numbers. Then they got nuclear weapons.

Korea never became the Chinese gateway to the world. The Vietnamese had no intention of allowing China to pass through their country. Himalayan nations to the north of China were stomped, but that gateway only led to the USSR, which was fine with us.

Then during the Nixon years, tensions were eased by, of all things, ping pong. An international match was arranged in China, and the US ping pong players opened our gateway to Communist China.

As China has developed into an oddball hybrid of the marketplace and communism, American fears about China have turned from military to economic. As our government continues under the control of the corporate management mentality, China is seen as a competitor for profits and as a competitor for diminishing oil stocks. Our liberals and progressives see China as undermining our labor standards, violating human rights of its political dissenters and oppressing its northern neighbors.

As GW Bush reads the eyes of Chinese President Hu, most Americans will now discount his opinion of what he sees, remembering his misread of Pootie Poot’s Russian eyes. There is much worthwhile to negotiate with China. Too bad the Bush administration is fronting for America, but hopefully that will soon be changing, for the better.

President Hu is visiting this country for four days. He is spending the first two in my neighborhood, checking in on Starbuck’s, Boeing and Microsoft, and dining at the home of Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, who lives just up the Lake from me. Alright, he lives on the lakeshore and I live 10 minutes from the lakeshore, but I could be there for dinner in 20 minutes. Wouldn’t that dinner conversation be something, between the richest man in the world and the leader of the most populous communist nation? What do you suppose they will discuss?

I expect Bill will prompt jet lag to kick in as he begins to tell about his vision of all the wonders the future holds in integrated, diverse nano-technology for a Microsoft enabled global hegemony. What if I was there? What would I have to say? What if you were invited; what would you say or ask?

I would like to ask Bill a question, but I wonder if he would be capable of honestly considering it. The question is, “How do you think the world in general, and the world of computers in particular, would be different today if you had never been born?"

But I would rather spend my face time with Hu. Bill has had more than enough chance to expound through the years, but Hu is virtually unknown to me. I would be interested in hearing his analysis of the current situation, in China and worldwide, and his vision of a realistically achievable better world. A NY Times article [registration required] said Hu confided recently that four problems are consuming all his time and energy: political corruption; unrest among displaced farmers; a widening wealth gap; and severe pollution. Sounds like a forthright list to me, and one with which Americans should identify. I would tell Hu he might as well discuss these problems with me, because when he meets with George Bush, he will quickly learn Bush does not comprehend the existence and significance of such problems.