Yet another remarkable dispatch from James Fallows on China’s attempts to navigate the global financial crisis. His conclusions:
(1) the Chinese people are less likely to revolt en masse in bad times than is often suspected. Even now, things are a lot better than ever before. Fallows quotes one Shanxi province party official:
Do you understand? If it had not been for Deng Xiaoping, I would be behind an ox in a field right now. . . . Do you understand? My mother has bound feet!
(2) China has at least a very good shot at achieving a truly innovative economy. Listing several new high-tech firms producing the best voice-recognition software he’s ever seen and some of the world’s most advanced batteries for everything from iPhones to new electric cars, Fallows writes:
In Beijing, in Shanghai, in Shenzhen, and elsewhere, I’ve recently visited companies that are trying to use the disruption of this moment to enter wholly new markets and do what so few Chinese firms have yet done: make high-tech, high-value products that bring high rewards.
These largely mirror my own views. In fact I couldn’t help but notice Fallows’ concluding sentences:
Many Chinese companies will fail or make mistakes under today’s intense pressure. But many are using the moment to prepare for their next advance. The question for Americans to think about is how we are using the same moment.
Here were the final sentences of my economic history of China’s 30-year rise, released during last summer’s Beijing Olympics:
What seems undeniable is that the next hundred years will be a Chinese century. The biggest question for politicians and business leaders in the U.S. is whether, through a recommitment to entrepreneurial capitalism, it will be another American century as well.
