Waltz for Two
By
S Pasricha
Assumption: “That is one reason why the National Intelligence Council, in its 2008 predictions for the world in 2025, said that China will shortly be the world’s second largest economy and will surpass the United States as the world’s largest sometime after 2030.” (Karabell, 2009, p. 288)
The first half of the 20th century saw Britain bankrupt and in need of financial help from the United States, in order to rebuild from two wars and the Great Depression. The capitalist USA agreed only with interest causing America to become the great power of the time. A new leaf turns with a new century. The US, now, is in need of help to balance its budget and finances. It is China who comes to the rescue. Will China do an “America” as it did to Britain?
Little China
The older generation, particularly the generation of my parents based on how I have experienced them, see the world as polar opposites. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Black and white. Male and female. Democrat and Republican. Capitalist and Communist. Democracy and Authoritarian. My generation, however, sees differently. For us, there are many answers, many options, and many choices. Ultimately, there is a compromise. Perhaps this is why, in our time, the possibility of Superfusion (Karabell, 2009) is not repulsive. Should I say not surprising? Let me say why and how.
I have a love-hate relationship with China, since working for a Chinese Financial Company in Asia as a writer for their corporate handbooks as required by the Security Exchange Commission. I loved the Confucian work-ethic of reciprocity or the golden rule. People worked hard; no one was late or absent. Everyone rendered good work. The goal was to improve as “In Confucianism, human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavor especially including self-cultivation and self-creation.” At the same time, I did not like the value of conformity and obedience that the Chinese culture demanded. There was no room for individuality and identity in the family or in the workplace.
As a young female, I was down the ranks in the etiquette of “relationships” – an internal codified rule of rituals in Confucian culture. I was not allowed to speak to my elders/bosses unless spoken to. I was not allowed to look into their eyes, eyeball to eyeball, or to explain myself, to argue back, for the times when I did not conform to the norm. The environment was highly restrictive for me. I was expected to do my work well and follow the rules; in return I got paid. I hated myself so much to the point of self-disgust for denying myself in favor of the survival of the group at a time when I was struggling to figure out who I am. In spite of this, I cannot say that the Chinese psyche is ineffective. It is in fact the Chinese Tai Pans or businessmen, the rich upper 4 to 10% who have invested in the Philippine economy, are employing majority of the Filipinos and providing opportunities to the middle class.
The Tai Pans have fused into Philippine society so well that if you look closely they are running every kind of show – from retail to fast food to banking. This is replicated in every Chinatown located in the heart of each megacity in the world, where clusters of Chinese immigrants create their own sub-group that is authentically Chinese yet fused with the local culture. I argue that it is in the Chinese nature to be inter-dependent yet wary of a marriage of partners or a waltz for two.
Big China
While Superfusion sees the marriage of two great powers in the new economy, in the macroeconomic level, China may have been successful in Superfusion with America because of three reasons – culture, media and history.
Culturally, based on the values of Confucianism, the Chinese rely on the wisdom and care of their elders. The elders or the leadership dictate the terms on which decisions are made with a degree of pragmatism. “It is tempting to impute to Chinese leaders an unusual degree of wisdom and foresight. They seem to have absorbed the lessons of thousands of years of ups and downs, and distilled those experiences into a pragmatic realism that respects the status quo as a necessary barrier against chaos yet admits the necessity of change as the only guarantee of ultimate stability.” (Karabell, 2009, p. 10)
In the media, the press was blind to the waking of a sleeping giant. For years, there were news of Monica Lewinsky, the rise of technology, to 9/11 terrorist attacks, but no one was questioning why and how China was controlling $ 2 trillion dollars in reserves, or why the cargo vans which came with Chinese imports did not leave with US exports. “Ready to resolve all outstanding issues, Zhu travelled to Washington in April 1999. The city was then consumed, as was much of the nation, with the unfolding of a soap opera… Little else received much media attention, not the intervention of the United States to secure the independence of Kosovo, not the continued tensions over the no-fly zone in Iraq, and not the visit of the number two official of China…” (Karabell, 2009, p. 121)
History saw the beginning of the Superfusion not with the Tank Man, but with the Chinese soldiers whetting their appetite with KFC just down the street from Tiananmen Square, later Mao’s tomb. “Yet, another symbol, less vaunted but immune to the currents that buffeted China in the spring of 1989, survived.” (Karabell, 2009, p. 57) True to the promise of Deng, I will give you prosperity if you obey the government. For “China’s leaders learned several lessons watching Russia unravel: reform, but do so in a controlled way; change, but set your own pace; globalize, but in stages; attract foreign investment; but on your own terms. (Karabell, 2009, p. 35)
Conclusion
Reading Karabell’s “Superfusion,” I find the plot to be a romantic narrative of the story of China and the United States. China is the virgin bride, secretive but smart, reluctant to embrace globalization, liberalization, and free enterprise for the love and respect of her history and those in authority over her. She gives her dowry to the United States, the bankrupt gambler, who has lost everything to speculation and living on a spending spree of wild credit. Will the marriage be of equals? Will the marriage last? More importantly, will Chimerica be a chimera (defined as a horrible or unreal creature of the imagination)?
Reference:
Karabell, Z. (2009). Superfusion: How China and America became one economy and why the world’s prosperity depends on it, New York: Simon and Schuster.
