DANCING WITH THE DRAGON
#500 Column Written - 4/12/2001

Political leaders in both countries are speaking in subdued, measured tones, in sharp contrast to the strong, bellicose terms used at the very beginning of the crisis. While anti-Chinese speech predictably arose in the aftermath of the downing of the spy plane and the detention of U.S. Navy personnel, there came a quiet, almost imperceptible, message, one coded and no less powerful for its silence, that a burgeoning Sino- American conflict was bad - for business. And it is business that drives international relations, not politics, for both Bush and his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, President of the People's Republic of China, are at the mercy of powerful economic forces at home. When the average person is asked to speak out loud his, or her, thoughts about China, a number of images spring to mind: the Oscar-nominated movie, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," the "Charlie's Angels" remake featuring actress Lucy Lui, or to some, the specter of red communism. If the average businessman or Wall St. denizen is asked, another image emerges, as evidenced by comments made in the April 7th - 13th, 2001 edition of 'The Economist'.

For them, the economic potential of China fairly makes them drool. An investment consultant, Stuart Leckie, predicts the imminent integration of its domestic (yuan) stockmarket, with the Hong Kong stockmarket. When that happens, China will rank in the top three markets in the world, right after the U.S. and Japan.

Andy Xie, regional economist for Morgan Stanley, predicted that in less than 20 years, China will be "the next $10 trillion economy," after the United States. An hour before the Chinese foreign ministry announced it would release the American spy plane crew, business news sources announced that Ford Motor Co. would open a car factory in China. Historian-columnist Manning Marable, in his recent collection of essays, 'Black Liberation in Conservative America' (1997), looking at the changes of the last few decades, observed, "Communist China today has arguably the most aggressively capitalist economy on earth" (p.3). In short, times have changed. While the Bush administration sports more than its share of cold warriors who would like nothing better than to portray the Middle Kingdom as this month's candidate for the Evil Empire, we must remember that business calls the tune here. And business, from agricultural salesmen, to tobacco merchants, to car dealers, ad infinitum, looks to the vast 1.3 billion in China with a capitalist hunger that virtually borders on lust. Business convinces its politician servants to cool it; play nice.