This is China! BLOG

Curiouser and Curiouser: American Thoughts on China

I’ve just returned to my home(town) Suzhou. I’ve been reflecting on the attitudes and impressions of Americans vis a vis the development of China’s economy. If put to the sword and asked for a single word to describe the average American’s impression of China I’d say, “Curiousity.”

For business and family reasons the past three weeks I returned to the States after several months living and working in China. In general, I return to the States about three or four times a year, mostly for business now. This past trip, I did A LOT of driving in the midwest; too much, if you ask me. From Wisconsin to the Ohio border and of course in and around Chicago. And then there was the Panhandle of Florida, the Redneck Riviera I’ve heard it called. My folks and siblings all live in a small town there on coast, host mostly to retired and active-duty military, and tourists. Then off to New York City, staying with friends of the family in New Jersey.

In each place, people would ask me what I did. I would tell them (all self-important, of course) I owned a China strategic management consultancy. “Oh, well where do you live?” To which I would answer, “China,” in a sober tone. “Oh!” they would exclaim, and ask when I was coming back to America (presumably to make a normal life), to which I would reply, “Never. Except for business and the occassional trip to see the folks. And unless and until China has the next great social revolution, which happens every hundred years or so.”

In general, people found the idea quite intriguing. Black, White, Asian, they all seemed to think it was pretty cool that I make my life in China. A black rental car driver from South Chicago who picked me up at my apartment in Evanston (near Northwestern University) to ferry me to the rental car agency filled the fifteen minute drive with geopolitical questions about the relationship between China and North Korea. This fellow was a homie from the ‘hood, not a master’s degree candidtate. A lovely physical therapist and her fiancee in a Wisconsin Teppanyaki restaurant who genuinely wanted to know if Thanskgiving was celebrated in China. A retired Air Force officer and his wife in Florida peppered me with questions about the place of Walmart in the social fabric of Chinese people. And in New York a Chinese tax consultant admired the plunge I had taken to make my life in a country in which I had not been born – just as he had in the States.

In other words, I did not encounter the kind of vitriol one often hears oozing from the mouths of Congressmen from both sides of the aisle in Washington. My feeling in the great doughnut of a travel plan I had followed - albeit only through one half of the country - left me with the impression that Americans on average would like to know more about what’s happening in China, and would like to some extent to separate the fact from fiction of mainstream media outlets.

That’s not to say that there are not Americans who see China as a great pillager of American jobs; or perhaps even the next great combatant. (One neighbor in Evanston a couple years ago – and elderly white woman – said to me when I told her what I do, “Oh, you send American jobs to China.” Ironically, she had been born and raised in Australia.) But on the whole – even in the factories of the Heartland, as they like to call it on TV – people seemed to want to engage China, at least intellectually. Unfortunately, media coverage of the nightmare in the Middle East and the creaking Healthcare system are over-crowding people’s attention spans.

It’s a shame, really, the American government has allowed those two agendas to become so unmanageable that people literally lose sleep – or even loved ones – to one or both issues; when instead the government should be educating its citizenry about the changes globalisation is bringing about for their country and for their children; and easing its constituents’ transition through educational re-tooling programs and the institutional development of new industries.

Impossible orders to fill under in the current political climate.

William Dodson
Suzhou, China