Is That A Gong I Hear In The Distance?

With gas prices skyrocketing, jobs disappearing, recession looming, wars raging, and concern about America's direction spreading like California wildfires, any attempt to pump up interest in China is, at this time, a hard sell. Soberingly, China may play the largest role of any nation, outside our own, in this litany of converging nightmares. In making a sale, timing counts. Even Americans who dismiss China as no more than a far off dictatorship purveying cheap products will soon be watching a nightly NBC program from Beijing. The Olympics will bring the reality of China's progress into sharp contrast with our own national decline in ways that may touch the previously unimpressed. 

Why should Americans, with no shortage of their own problems, begin to pay attention to a country that, until 30 years ago, was populated by a billion peasants and a handful of autocrats? This page of the newspaper lacks the space to list all the reasons, but here are a handful worthy of attention: 

1. By negotiating away America's advantages in international trade deals, Presidents Clinton and Bush ceded China the right to a $256 billion trade surplus in 2007, now growing at $1 billion per day; 

2. By resorting to Chinese financing for the Iraq war, America has increased its debt from nearly $6 trillion in 2000 to nearly $10 trillion today; 

3. General Motors, which often seems to have lost its hunger for pre-eminence, sold more Buicks in China last year than in the United States;

4. China is successfully carrying out a national strategy of coöpting Africa's natural resources to promote China's growth and, in the process, shoving aside all would-be competitors; 

5. The number of Chinese drivers continues to increase by 30% annually (that doubles the base every 2.5 years) while China is aggressively pursuing a policy of replacing the U.S. as the world's largest auto producer.

If we didn't have to leave America to our kids and grandchildren perhaps we could ignore Thomas Jefferson's conclusion on the meaning of our current situation vis-a-vis China: I place...public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We need to sell ourselves and our leaders on the urgency of dealing with China in a way that protects our most vital national interests. We have recently been reminded that in a democracy nothing constructive happens unless we citizens push for it.