I spent three weeks in China in 2010, went to a lot of places westerners don't often go, and had a chance to have some extended (and frank) discussions with a party member who works on economic development for the government in Beijing. China has huge economic challenges -- they have ten million peasants (their word -- we would call them "farmers") moving into the urban population centers each year -- air and water quality in the major population centers make the 1960s in the United States look idyllic by comparison. And working conditions in the major manufacturing centers are abysmal.
So this creates, for us, an almost insurmountable challenge -- we are attempting to compete with a massively growing economy that has an artificially depressed currency, a desperate need to feed and house a population almost four times ours, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve economic security and prosperity -- even at an extraordarily high human and environmental cost.
Our advantages are creativity, collaboration (not a skill being taught in Chinese schools or businesses), open communication, and compassion. Our challenge is to use these things to find our niche in the global economy -- the goods and services we can provide to the rest of the world more efficiently than anyone else. And to do that, we need innovative thinking across the board, from business and government alike, on a scale we've never experienced before.
I am not optimistic.
