I Read an Article for You — “China and Trump, Listen Up”

-        20-11-2018

-        Thomas L. Friedman, the writer and analyst in the "Opinion" column of The New York Times, wrote on 13-11-2018 an article about the trade war between China and America. Friedman says he visited Tokyo and Hong Kong prior to writing the article, and summarized his conversations with Chinese, Japanese and European interlocutors on that tour. He summarized them as follows:

-        Chinese businesspeople and government-sector representatives there expressed genuine concern, asking what is President Trump’s main objective in this trade war against China: is it to rebalance trade between the two countries, or does he want to contain China—mixed with arrogance? These Chinese interlocutors say that America acted too late, because China now feels too big to be contained; if the Americans were going to do this, they should have done it a decade ago!!

-        As for his Japanese interlocutors, they appeared grateful to President Trump for finally understanding what threat China poses, accompanied by genuine concern; yet these Japanese do not favor going too far with Beijing and breaking the global trading system.!!

-        As for his European interlocutors, expressed by a clever European consultant who showed his puzzlement and astonishment at China’s inability to discern the intentions and the extent of desire of Democrats and Republicans in America—and of Europeans as well—to see President Trump’s hammer fall on China!! In these trade talks, however, they—that is, the Europeans—do not favor a Cold War with China for fear of being dragged into a position where they must choose a side in this war!!

-        Friedman’s own view is that he told all his Chinese and Japanese interlocutors he is glad that Trump is confronting China over the barriers China erects to prevent American access to its markets; he says that is the real story!! Not the bilateral trade imbalance, because trade is not a zero-sum game—China can prosper and grow while the Americans do the same at the same time—and this has been happening for forty years!! But we would be better off if China offered the same kind of market access to American industrialists as it enjoys in America. The time has come to reassess economic relations between the United States and China before it is too late!!

-        And the writer Friedman adds, saying: We do not want to contain China in the way the American decision 70 years ago...to contain the Soviet Union... But, to avoid falling into that path, both countries...must be smart and honest...about how to get there.. China should be more smooth and humble. In disclosure ..about how its economy obtained this amount of speed and growth.. And Trump should be more sophisticated about how America became so strong for this long a period...

-        What Friedman means, in other words, is that the formula and equation of China’s success rests on three pillars: the first pillar is their hard and serious work and large savings, smart investments in infrastructure, in addition to education and research; and the nature of a Chinese form of private "jungle capitalism" in which 30 companies are created in the same field and compete among themselves, producing a winner that is supported by the government to become a global company—this produced high levels of creativity and innovation, like "Alibaba", despite the fact that their internet is subject to censorship there and there is no free press and the government is authoritarian. The second pillar is cheating the rules of the World Trade Organization and forced technology transfer and theft of others’ intellectual property!! and government support for all non-state-owned industries. As for the third pillar, which the Chinese have never acknowledged, it is the stable global trading system that American statesmen built and American Navy sailors protected in the Pacific!! It sent a message to China’s trading partners in the region suggesting that China’s economic dominance would not result in geopolitical dominance over them, and thus made those partners open to large-scale trade and investment in China!!

-        The American formula for success, which dates back to the country’s founding days, has multiple components, including: educating our children to always take advantage of the prevailing science and technology of their time—when the era passed from cotton gins to factories to computers, education progressed from primary to secondary to university—and now that the era is that of data, digital information and artificial intelligence on a large scale, education will be lifelong!! We have the best infrastructure of roads, ports, airports and communications; we perform better in government-funded research that pushes the boundaries of science so our companies can innovate faster and farther; we have the best rules and regulations to encourage risk-taking and avoid slowness and contempt for time!! Additionally, we have the most open immigration system to attract even low-skilled workers from abroad who nonetheless possess energy and a willingness to take smart risks!! We always support the just values of freedom and human rights and always push for the stability of the global order, of which we have been the greatest beneficiary, and therefore we have always had enduring allies!! Not only neighbors frightened by what China does!!! Our strengths also stem from the availability of the democratic system and the political class that has always been a means of compromise to define the elements of our growth model—and how we got to where we are today.... This trade war can end well only if China is honest about all the pillars of its success—and if Trump is honest about what we have and how both achieved these successes—we can obtain many trade concessions from China.!!

-        I want to tell the Chinese, in the context of this ongoing trade war, that what you have achieved in growth was not primarily your hard and painful work and the barriers you erected and have so far managed to retain, nor the economic system in which you developed—none of that was created by you!! Your biggest customer and competitor did that—it is America!!

-        And I want to tell Trump: America became great through a formula and equation that every great American president renewed and reinvested in—and you have not done that!! You are in fact undermining and neglecting some of its fundamental factors, namely "immigration, allies, rules and regulations"!!

-        The writer concludes his article briefly by saying he fears that America has become overly focused on who the Chinese are and what they are trying to become; thereby we have lost sight of who we are and how we got here!! This is the greatest threat to our economy and our future