Flashback to sometime in 1964 in a classroom in UP’s Rizal Hall in Padre Faura… in our Oriental History class. My second year high school class at UP Prep was studying China that day and our history teacher, Miss Angelina Tuano, said something I still remember today. China, she said, is just a sleeping dragon. When she wakes up, the whole world would tremble.
I was all of 14 years old then and didn’t have a clue what she meant. Over 40 years later, as I watch the television news reports on the Beijing Olympics, I am reminded of Miss Tuano’s sleeping dragon, now fully awake and making its presence felt throughout the world.
There is China up in the medal standings with the most gold medals. America the superpower only has half as many golds, most of it on account of one swimmer. You see the Bird’s Nest… you see the water cube and of course that opening ceremony that’s as colorful as anything you can imagine.
Indeed, China has taken a big gamble on a grand entrance to the exclusive club of world powers and has succeeded in demonstrating that it is a power as great as any in the world today. What makes it all so awesome for me is that my first visit to China in the early 1980s was to a very different China. Everyone was dressed alike, males and females, in dark blue or black Mao jackets and everyone or so it seemed was on a bicycle.
Of course I have been to China many times since that first visit and I have seen the tremendous change in the physical look of the cities and the people are no longer a monochromatic blur on two wheels. While I may have felt sorry for them the first time I visited, in my later visits I only felt sorry for ourselves… for having been left behind so dramatically.
I cannot even rationalize that they have moved up economically so fast because they have an authoritarian government. We had one too and our current one is as good as one as Ate Glue no longer cares about public opinion. She does pretty much what she wants to do. And if people get in her way, she ignores or buys them. I can no longer use our so called democracy to explain our lack of progress.
What a great coming out party Beijing 2008 proved to be. It showed what a national leadership imbued with a mission can accomplish. Putting up all those Olympic infrastructure seems daunting enough. But look at those Chinese athletes competing with the best in the world and comfortably settling in among them.
I can only try to imagine the manhours put into training those fine athletes so that when the time came for them to bring honor to Mother China, they will not disappoint. And they didn’t. They won medal after medal and even when they didn’t, the competition they gave the winners was nothing to scoff at. What I saw is government and individuals working together for the greater glory of the motherland. If only our government had credibility so it can happen here.
I was going through the blog of Ricky Carandang and at the discussion on the MOA on Ancestral Domain digressed to what’s going on in China. Of course there was lots of admiration expressed for China as would be expected at this time. But one blogger said “China is not there yet. Let’s use GDP per capita? US.: $13 trillion / 300 million people = $43,333/person; E.U.: $16 trillion / 490 million people (appx.) = $32,653/person; China: $10 trillion / 1.32 billion people (appx.) = $7,575/person.”
On the other hand, one blogger posted Ten Things You Should Know About China, an article of Charles W. McMillion, president and chief economist of MBG Information Services in Washington, DC. Those who want to access it can do so at http://www.tradereform.org/content/view/1040/52/.
For lack of space, we will only pick some key points of what is going on up there at the dragon’s den:
The first important point raised by Dr. McMillion is how “the pace of China’s development accelerated after it was admitted to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Since then, China’s economy has grown four times faster than the US and twice as fast as the rest of the world.”
A few more things were pointed out:
“China is now the world leader in producing computers, mobile phones and most other electronic equipment, as well as a widening array of more traditional manufactured goods. Next year it will likely surpass the US and Japan to become the world leader in auto production. Virtually all autos sold in China are made in China, and although many are foreign brands (Volkswagen, Buick, Toyota), ALL are made in plants where China’s state-owned firms have controlling interest.
“There are now over 600 million mobile phone accounts in China—all in government-owned firms—and they are increasing by as many as 9.5 million per month. Taking advantage of this immense, captive market, China just launched the use of a long-awaited, government-owned telecom standard, TD-SCDMA, to compete at home and abroad with the standards used in the US and the rest of the world.
“Already, more Chinese than Americans use the Internet, and the potential growth — and China’s influence—is enormous. China’s government has shifted its powerful strategic focus for future growth away from manufacturing to high-quality professional services. (My UP friend Ray Altarejos, now a New York-based businessman was just telling me how he is helping them set up call centers in China that will rival what we have here.)
“China’s financial services sector was believed by deregulation extremists to be a basket-case in 2001. Today, the major concern of China’s highly profitable financial services firms is their relatively small holdings of US subprime housing debt. The biggest global financial firms are now eagerly paying premium prices to acquire the legal limit of 20 percent minority “partnership” in China’s financial institutions—just as manufacturing firms have done for the past 20 years. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China surpassed Citigroup last year to become the most highly capitalized in the world. China now has several financial firms in that league.
“An important indicator of China’s modernization is the loss of the long-held US surplus in advanced technology products. Globally, the traditional U.S. surplus in these products turned to a deficit for the first time in 2002. Since then, the US has suffered advanced technology product deficits that are far larger than any past US surplus. China accounts for more than the entire US global deficit in these products—concentrated in advanced machinery and electronics. US import payments for advanced technology products from China are almost four times as much as export earnings.
“Whether in the Olympics or in the competition to create good jobs with a promising future, a winning plan and strategy is usually essential. China has such a plan; the US does not.”
Wow. I guess wherever Miss Tuano may be today, she probably is just as amazed at how the Chinese dragon has indeed truly awakened. If I were younger, I would most likely be trying to learn to speak Mandarin now.
As for more individual freedoms, I think that will inevitably come. A fast growing educated Chinese middle class will see to that happening, sooner than later. Now, if only we can get China to complete the North Rail?
Superpower talk
This is supposed to have been a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Chinese authorities off the coast of Vietnam in South China Sea in October 1980.
Chinese: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
Americans: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision.
Chinese: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Chinese: No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.
Americans: This is the Aircraft Carrier USS MIDWAY, the second largest ship in the United States Pacific Fleet. We are accompanied with three Destroyers, three Cruisers and numerous support vessels. I DEMAND that you change your course 15 degrees north. I say again, that’s one-five degrees north, or counter-measures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.
Chinese: This is a lighthouse. You are on the course to collide with a Vietnamese fishing boat filled with hundreds refugees!
Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]
