Letter from the President: The US-China Business Council Turns 30 -- CBR Mar-Apr 2003

Letter from the President

hirty years ago, when I myself was thirty, every American under that age knew the saying, "Never trust anyone over thirty." That dark admonition was the legacy of the late 1960s, a time when young people in many countries had grown powerfully disenchanted with the world created by their elders. The age of thirty was the dividing line; above it lay the "old regime" and the old world, beset by hypocrisy and repression. Below it lay the makers of the new world, pure, honest, and free.

I never really subscribed to that world view, even as a student in the 1960s, and once I passed the age of thirty myself I didn't see much merit in it at all.

Now, thirty years later, as the US-China Business Council turns thirty, I think of the thirtieth birthday as the beginning of a rich and full stage of life. I like to think that the Council's thirtieth anniversary, which coincides almost exactly with the commencement of the contemporary US-China encounter, is an announcement of an even fuller and more productive era ahead, not only for the Council and its member businesses, but more broadly for the United States and China in global affairs.

The Council marks its birthday this spring with a visit to China by many members of its board of directors, leaders of renowned American companies that have built extensive activities in the PRC with Chinese customers, partners, and suppliers. As it happens, the Council chair under whose leadership we visit China is Philip M. Condit, chair and CEO of The Boeing Company, whose sale of ten 707 aircraft in 1972 boldly signaled the beginning of a new era of commercial engagement between the United States and China. The board's brief visit to China this spring, when new leading figures in China's central and provincial governments take up their posts, offers us a chance to reflect with our Chinese counterparts and hosts on what has been achieved thus far, and what new tasks confront us today.

It is appropriate, on this occasion, that our Council's magazine, The China Business Review, focus on the Council's thirtieth anniversary. In this special CBR, we look back, as Americans and Chinese involved in this long and complex relationship regularly do when milestones loom. But we also look forward—a riskier and more uncertain enterprise, perhaps, but one which Americans and Chinese alike need to undertake more intensely. Where are the United States and China going, separately and together, in a perilous world? What will China, now in the midst of such far-reaching economic and social changes, be by 2033? Will the intellectual and material forces in both countries that lead in the direction of convergent interests exert more weight than the forces that see friction and conflict as the inescapable destiny of our two countries? In the crude vernacular of America's western frontier, is the world "big enough for both of us"? Both in business terms and more broadly, Americans and Chinese should be thinking about such questions and seeing where and how they can contribute to greater harmony of interests between the United States and the People's Republic of China.

Now, there are different ways of looking at thirty years. If we start counting Chinese history from the beginning of the Shang Dynasty, supposedly 1122 BC, our little thirty years comes to less than one percent of the total sweep. On the other hand, three decades take up nearly 15 percent of the history of the United States.

In the context of the past century of more intensive US-China relations, this most recent thirty year period, with steadily increasing economic and commercial engagement at its core, is emerging as a longer and perhaps more stable phase than anything that came before, in spite of significant ups and downs. From the fall of the Qing Dynasty to Pearl Harbor and American involvement in the Pacific War—29 years. From the start of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to the establishment of the People's Republic, with the accompanying estrangement of the United States and China—12 years. From the collapse of US-PRC relations in 1949 to the reopening of contact—23 years.

Will these past thirty years soon be interrupted by another radical change of direction? I, for one, think not. We are in a period of dynamic change, both domestically and internationally, but also of an underlying continuity that promises to endure, in spite of recurrent changes of pace. Again, the economic engagement of the United States and China, for all of its fluidity, is the key thread of continuity reaching into the future.

Look back for a moment in the other direction, from 1973 to 1943. What was happening in US-China relations in 1943? The United States and China under the Kuomintang were uneasy wartime allies against Japan. Much of China was under Japanese occupation. In 1943, the United States finally ended "extraterritoriality," the hundred year-old system that placed Americans (and other foreigners whose nations signed similar treaties with China after the Opium War) in China beyond the reach of Chinese law and came to symbolize to generations of patriotic Chinese the trauma of foreign intrusion and domination. In 1943 the great Honan Famine was petering out; millions had starved. The retail price index (1937=100) in Nationalist-controlled China passed 22,800, on its way to the 874,000,000 mark of late 1948 and the 1,000,000,000 level at the moment of regime change in 1949. Civil war lay just around the corner in China.

The three decades since 1973, when the US-China Business Council got its start, have been dynamic, and there is reason to expect that the next three decades will be, too. The emergence of China as an increasingly vigorous player in the world economy is a long process whose end is not in sight. The texture of the US-China relationship continues to change, with each side viewing the other through the prism of great-power requirements and aspirations in increasingly complex ways. The two countries have a long way to go in confronting the profound stresses that now define the human condition generally, as well as the challenges to each nation's distinctive economic and political systems.

But no one dreams of setting the clock back. The task for Americans and Chinese—in business, but especially in government and in the realm of public opinion—is to manage a future whose promise is real but not guaranteed; to pursue genuine, not simply rhetorical, "mutual benefit"; to accept the possibility that the other's interests are legitimate without discarding one's own; to prosper with, rather than at the expense of, the other. At the heart of this deepening and broadening interaction is the economic engagement embodied in the work of the US-China Business Council and its hundreds of member companies.

Our thirtieth anniversary China Business Review seeks to bring creative and knowledgeable writers to expound on the broad contours of US-China engagement since the US-China Business Council opened its doors, and to look to the future as well. We hope our readers in the United States, in China, and throughout the world will find food for thought, and grounds for optimism, in this CBR's reflections on where we have been, where we are, and where we can go in the future.

The US-China Business Council takes this opportunity to extend its deepest appreciation to the hundreds of American companies that have given the Council its life and its mandate for three decades, and to the countless Chinese friends who have worked so closely with our Council year after year. Our special thanks to our counterpart organization, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, which celebrated its own fiftieth anniversary in 2002.

The willingness of people of good will in American and Chinese government service has enabled us to serve our constituents and the broader cause of strengthened US-China relations; we extend our thanks and our welcome to them.

Finally, my personal thanks to all Council staff members, in Washington and in China, who serve the Council today, and to all those who have come before over three decades. The Council's soul is its great staff, and they will keep the Council strong tomorrow.

March-April 2003 THE CHINA BUSINESS REVIEW

Last Updated: 13-Mar-2003