Image: Sura Nualpradid / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Tomorrow noon I head for China with a university colleague and 32 students, parents and alumni. Ten frantic days of travel: Beijing, Xi'an (home of the famous clay soldiers), and Shanghai. Why China? Herewith a sneak preview at my half of Saturday's "Generation Gasp" column by way of partial explanation:
THE GENERATION GASP
Column # 20
Are Mandarin Lessons a Good Investment?
By Claire and Jim Castagnera
JIM:
As you are reading this, (God willing) I’m in Beijing. Along with a Chinese colleague on my university’s faculty, I’m leading 32 students on a short-term study tour of China over Spring Break. In a breathless ten days we’ll also do Xi’an, where the famous clay warriors reside, and Shanghai, one of China’s showcase cities.
The People’s Republic of China has been puzzling to us Americans for about as long as I’ve been alive. In 1949, Mao drove Chiang Kai Shek off the mainland and onto Formosa, now Taiwan. When I was a grade school kid, Kennedy and Nixon debated the fate of Quemoy and Matsu, two tiny islands owned by Taiwan that the “Reds” shelled on every major Chinese holiday.
Some ten years or so later, Nixon visited China, gave Mao a hearty handshake, made funny faces while trying to eat Chinese cuisine and, basically, reopened China. In another ten years, Mao’s successor, Deng, started the Middle Kingdom down the path of capitalism.
The (now) 1.3 billion Chinese have, by and large, responded to the capitalist call with enthusiasm and success. Here’s a little test. I’ll betcha that every one of you is – right now, as you read your Times News – wearing something or using something that was made in China. An awful lot of good American manufacturing jobs went to China. The Peoples Republic holds a frightening amount of America’s national debt.
As consumers, we Yanks benefit from China’s success every time we shop in Wal-Mart. As workers, we can only see China as a threat.
That’s not to say the Chinese don’t have troubles of their own. Their cities are cheek to jowl with hicks from the countryside in search of a better life. Those left behind are said to resent their country lots. Privatization has left a few fabulously wealthy and more than a few poorer and less secure than under pure Communism. (Hmm… that doesn’t sound so different from here in the States, does it?)
Some worry that China’s dynamic growth has blown a great big bubble that will pop one of these days.
Me? I think that the two superpowers of the 21st century will be – already are? – Uncle Sam and Confucius. Whether we are friends or mortal foes, we are stuck with one another.
China recently launched its first aircraft carrier, and Former Secretary of Defense Gates is talking a lot these days of reorienting our armed forces from the Middle East to the Pacific Rim and current Secretary Leon Panetta seems to agree. So do I, for whatever it’s worth. Good idea.
Maybe Mandarin is a good language choice for the younger generation. Sure looks that way to me.
More of my views:
1. We've done all that we can for the Middle East. Now, either the Arab Spring succeeds or it fails. John McCain is wrong about intervening in Syria. We should distance ourselves as much as possible from the Middle East and North Africa.
2. At the same time we should do all that we can to free ourselves of dependency in Mid-East Oil. Obama is wrong about not building the new pipeline. We also need all the natural gas my home state of Pennsylvania can give us. (Clean energy is a lovely dream, but we are harnessed to fossil fuels for the rest of this old man's lifetime... at the very least.)
3. Uncle Sam needs to match China measure for measure on all fronts... economic, diplomatic, military.
And so, off to China with 33 other souls to see what we can learn that might help.
Meanwhile, I'll be off the air... no blogging, no email. I'll resurface, God willing, on Monday, March 19th.
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