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发帖数: 30882 | 1 Dear General Secretary Xi:
Congratulations on your elevation to the top post in China. If economic and
strategic trends continue, you will lead China to an unprecedented peak in
power and influence in the world.
Indeed, if your tenure extends two terms, until 2023, your country is
expected to produce a gross domestic product of $40 trillion, 60 percent
larger than the United States. Your middle class is expected to swell to a
billion people, more than the combined populations of the US, Japan, Canada,
and the leading European economic powers. Your country will probably even
dominate in technologies ranging from biotechnology to renewable energy to
lasers. Many expect you will be the most powerful head of state in the world.
OPINION: 3 reasons why China isn't overtaking the US
But you face citizens around the globe who are saying, “Enough is enough.”
First among them are the citizens of China. They’ve had enough corruption,
income inequality, land expropriation, environmental ruin, human rights
violations, and third-world-quality education and health care.
Second are the citizens of Western countries. They’ve had enough unfair
trade, intellectual property theft, cyber espionage, bullying of foreign
businesses in China, threats against the sovereignty of neighbors, lost jobs
, declining benefits, and more.
Some people say you are going to have your hands full with your own citizens
’ demands. But dealing with people in Western democracies will also
determine your success in office.
These citizens have tolerated years of free riding by China – in the form
of pirating technology, expanding exports by holding your currency down, and
building companies with subsidies and trade barriers that bankrupt their
firms.
In a 2012 European Union Chamber of Commerce in China survey, four out of
five companies said China’s laws protecting intellectual property were
inadequate. Two of three said they lost business in China because of market
access or regulatory barriers.
The fact is, China is burning through global goodwill. People in Spain,
Germany, the US, and elsewhere won’t forget how your policies and companies
have bankrupted Western wind- and solar-energy companies.
If you push the citizens of the West farther, you will turn their simmering
reservoir of goodwill into boiling hostility. They will not allow China to
impoverish them in the next 10 years as they blindly did in the last 10.
They can’t lose that many more jobs – more than 2 million in the last
decade in the US due to the trade deficit with China and likely as many in
Europe. Families can’t lose that much more income – down 6.7 percent in 10
years in the US, with China contributing to that loss.
Westerners will cry out – many already are – for action. And I think the
patient efforts of their politicians to stop China’s present course of
transferring the wealth of the West to the East will ultimately have to end.
OPINION: Different China, same risky political system
Western politicians will reconcile themselves to the fact that China won’t
change its state-controlled trade practices and its unfairly created
competitive advantages for its companies.
These leaders will continue to profess “friendship” but tacitly act like
enemies – counter your cyber-espionage, bar state-controlled Chinese
companies from Western markets, intervene with government action to stop
China’s companies’ destruction of their energy, aerospace, software,
telecom, and other strategic industries.
How will you guide China in response to these tough reactions? Will you lead
your people in rash acts of nationalism as you have during the anti-
Japanese protests in September? Will you foment Chinese jingoism that leads
to burning cars and boycotting global finance summits? Will you fail to
address Western concerns and continue down the same path of depleting your
best customers?
If you continue fanning the flames of nationalism and making provocative
moves against neighbors, will you be able to retain control of your military
-industrial complex? Can you guide your own people away from turning a cold
war into an unthinkable hot war?
My point is that you can’t keep draining the West to build up China – even
if you badly need economic growth to retain your regime’s legitimacy and
to feed China’s poor. Such authoritarian nationalism has historically led
to internal unrest or war, as we saw in World War II.
OPINION: Five tough truths about US-China relations
Even if you don’t want democracy, listen to the world’s citizens, and find
a middle way to grow and prosper. Work with other countries to defuse
economic and military escalation – and keep China’s star rising without
reducing the West to a continuously falling standard of living.
Richard A. D’Aveni is Bakala Professor of Strategy at Tuck School of
Business at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. He is the author of “
Strategic Capitalism,” his fifth book.
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