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发帖数: 272 | 1 What Obama And America Should Learn From China
Shaun Rein, 01.24.11, 12:15 PM EST
There are ways in which Hu Jintao is being wiser than us.
There has been much discussion lately of how China survived the
financial crisis much more robustly than the United States. Many credit
Beijing's centralized power structure, which Sen. Harry Reid mistakenly
(and foolishly) calls a dictatorship under President Hu Jintao.
Political scientist Francis Fukuyama recently wrote that China's command
system allows for a fast response to problems while America gets bogged
down in partisan turf wars. In a shocking turnaround, Fukuyama even now
argues that he was wrong to say democracy is the only path forward. You
know Americans are questioning their core values when Fukuyama says
that.
It is true that China's system can quickly push through changes like
health care reforms while America's remains in gridlock. However,
America should absolutely not move toward any kind of command structure
for short-term gain. In the longterm, the checks and balances of a
democracy are needed to prevent tyrants from rising and to ensure
creative thought. Yes, President Hu is focused on improving human rights
and has the support of the Chinese people, but who is to say that will
remain the case in five decades under other leaders?
No, the American way is not in definite decline, nor should China's rise
be seen as a threat to our core values. Any political system must be
viewed in the context of decades, not mere months. However, there are
definite lessons in governance that President Obama and the U.S. can
learn from President Hu and China to help get America's mojo back.
First, although China's leaders are not elected democratically, they are
(contrary to what many Americans believe) very attuned to public
opinion. When trouble brews, they issue statements and new laws quickly.
Skeptics say they do this because they fear being overthrown and
executed, like former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, rather than
from true humanitarianism. Whatever their motivations, China's leaders
do in fact for the most part listen to the will of the people. Of
course, they can't always fix problems immediately, but they do show
that they care about the wants of ordinary folks.
For example, our research suggests that two of the greatest concerns of
ordinary Chinese are rising real estate prices and food costs. Leaders
show they are addressing these worries by regularly announcing how much
square footage of new low-income housing is about to come onto the
market or is under construction, and they use taxation to force real
estate developers through to product affordable units. Likewise they put
price controls on food for low income families, or exempt farmers from
road tolls.
America's political system, on the other hand, is increasingly beholden
not to the wants of the majority but to minority special interest groups
that hijack the national discourse. Take for instance our absurd gun
laws. Our elected officials are so scared about the power of the
National Rifle Association that no one is willing to take it on and do
what most Americans want--limit the proliferation of weapons like the
one Jared Loughner used in Tuscon. Somehow we can regulate how high
shrubs should be or how often someone needs to shovel snow in front of a
building, but not how safe our streets should be, because of the
outsized power of a minority.
Similarly, Wall Street needs a major overhaul along the lines of the
Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 to avoid excess risk and leverage in the
system. Most Americans know that the problems we face started with
behavior on Wall Street, yet our officials are unwilling to go against
the deep pockets of executives from Goldman Sachs ( GS - news - people )
and JPMorgan Chase ( JPM - news - people ) to make the changes that are
needed. They want election dollars, and they don't want to risk losing
out on a lucrative post-government career, like former Obama advisor
Peter Orszag's with Citigroup ( C - news - people ) or Dick Cheney's
with Halliburton ( HAL - news - people ).
Obama and our political elite need to learn from China to start
representing the needs of the majority, not of the shrillest
commentators on Fox News or the deep pocketed few. Until then we will
have not a true democracy, but a system that is stacked against the
majority.
Finally, President Hu has repeatedly said that no country should be
worried about China's rising power, despite its increased investment in
its military. He has focused on creating goodwill with soft power while
investing in the military to create economic growth and jobs. He came to
the U.S. and signed $45 billion worth of contracts with companies like
Boeing ( BA - news - people ), and he visited Chicago because of its
public school program to teach thousands of students Mandarin Chinese.
China is giving the children of African leaders scholarships to study in
China, much as the British co-opted local elite in the colonial period
by getting their kids to study at Eton and Oxford.
In contrast, America's rhetoric concerning the Korean peninsula and
South China Sea is getting more heated, and its military spending is
going up rather than down, despite its limited economic benefit for the
country. China's military spending goes right back into the economy,
while ours goes largely to corrupt officials in Pakistan, Afghanistan
and other dubious regimes. America is spending 10 times more than China
on its military, and that doesn't even include the costs of running our
ongoing wars in different countries.
Aware of how America is willing to use military power in Afghanistan or
Iraq, other nations bend to its will not because they are aligned
ideologically but because they fear being attacked. That is no way to
create long-term allies. Soft power backed by strong military
capability, as the Chinese are pursuing, is the better approach, both
economically and humanistically.
In today's difficult economic situation, we are right to question our
core values. However, reports of America's inevitable decline greatly
exaggerate the problems we face. By its nature the American system will
run into bumps, and sometimes serious ones. Yet if the U.S. continues to
evolve and can learn from some of the successes and failures of China's
growth, the nation will be sure to increase its strength and continue to
be a beacon for oppressed peoples.
Shaun Rein is the founder and managing director of the China Market
Research Group, a strategic market intelligence firm. He writes for
Forbes on leadership, marketing and China. Follow him on Twitter at
@shaunrein. |
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