Letter from the President
by Robert A Kapp
President, The US-China Business Council
Robert A.Kapp recently left the US-China Business Council, after serving as its president for 10 years.
Moving On:
Concluding Observations
The origins of the China Business Review "Letter from the President" (Prezlet) are simple but worth reviewing as I offer my last in the series.
When I came to the Council in 1994, it was clear to me that anyone with a non-accusatory position on China was going to have an extremely hard time getting published in the major "mainstream" media. Getting a message out to key Council constituencies, most notably the US Congress and the US media, required the creation of a reader-friendly, short-but-serious format.
In addition to offering unsolicited observations to CBR readers, and at the risk of presuming that readers might be interested in what I had to say, every Prezlet is reprinted in free-standing, red-white-and-blue format, covering two sides of a single sheet, and sent out to Washington, DC, audiences and to a long media list.
Has the Prezlet made a difference to anyone? In truth, it's difficult to tell.
Still, things need to be said by the Council. Scattershot though it is, I think the Prezlet has probably served a useful purpose by reaching some hands whose involvement in US-China issues matters to the future, not only of USChina business, but of US-China relations and the cause of peace itself.
In the hope that someone will read this, then, a few concluding observations:
1 There is a parallel universe in US-China relations of which business remains too unaware—the national security arena
Americans—and perhaps even some Chinese—whose focus is primarily on doing business need to understand that even as opportunities grow and business blossoms, a whole different internal discourse is taking place within the national security arenas of both countries. The tone of the discussion within each country appears to be neutral at best and often pessimistic to apocalyptic.
While an outsider's cursory examination of this discourse reveals no one who is thinking about what happens after the US and China come to blows, plenty of people—in fact, a whole industry of people—are busily at work contemplating the possibility of short-term, situation- driven US-China conflict or a longerterm, existential clash of national interests and cultures.War games seem to proliferate. Theorists posit inevitabilities.Worst-case scenario addicts have their field day.
In this sector, the "Intentions" folk seem to be drowned out by the "Capabilities" partisans. In fact, the subject does not lend itself to certainties, and some of the best minds of our generation are apparently flying blind in the fog. I recently wrote to an extremely sophisticated colleague:
You know something? I think the US academic security community doesn't have a clue as to what is going on out there.We seem completely at sea as to intentions, motivations, calculi, etc.
My friend replied:
Precisely! People see what they want to see, neatly wrapped up in IR [international relations] theory. That's why I am trying to goad those who really ought to be more prepared to examine their own unconditional assertions, and maybe even admit that more often than not we are clueless about the meaning of "data."
The broadening focus on US-China security was in full view during the mayhem in Washington over China in 1998-2000 in particular, or perhaps from the Taiwan Strait crises of 1995-96 (barely remembered now, I suspect, by most US businesspeople but very well remembered indeed by national security and military people). September 11 and its aftermath, including Iraq, pushed the theme back below the surface in the United States.
But the American commercial community should make no mistake: the old themes are alive. In the field, an arms race is under way in the Taiwan Strait, while larger movements of US military strength in the Asia-Pacific region, however innocuously they are packaged, suggest preparations for conflict. On China's side, the endless threatening over Taiwan, the drumbeat of martial rhetoric, and the regular appearance of articles explicitly dealing with war against the United States or testing of weapons unmistakably developed to counter US battle power, tell a similar tale.
As I have pointed out before, American businesses are normally diffident about discussing security issues like this for fear of being ridiculed for lacking "standing" or criticized for their alleged willingness to compromise essential US interests merely to make money.
My message, upon departure, though, is: Get involved, get informed. Stay active. Do not abandon this field to the battle planners. Demand to know what assumptions, what logics, what facts prevail and what their outcomes are likely to be. Demand to know what those who envision conflict between China and the United States would consider "victory" to be. American presidents and their leadership counterparts in China have, to date, helped to keep the US-China relationship from careening out of control, but future success is not guaranteed. Do not surrender the field to those who see China's growth in zero-sum terms and postulate military conflict as all but inevitable.
2 Beware clichés and maintain psychic distance
The United States and China can only get by for so long on "sole remaining superpower," "one quarter of humanity," "world's biggest developed country and world's biggest developing country," "inexhaustible supply of cheap labor," "peaceful rise," and so on. Outside of China, the stage is full of "accepted wisdom" and canned verbiage, just as, within China, many march to the officially sanctioned worldview du jour.We need to keep our distance from such rote orthodoxies.
That is not to say that every situation must be painted into incomprehensible complexity. Given that those who make crucial policy decisions can only spend so much time on any one subject, the inherently complex must be drawn in ways that can be easily understood.
But too often, in the US-China field, those "ways that can be easily understood" draw on deep-rooted, often ideological or even theological, perceptions of the other side. The same old catch-words persist year after year, decade after decade. The business community, which engages more broadly and more deeply with China than any other sector of American society, needs to contribute to the richness and the realism of the American discourse on China, and that means not slipping too comfortably into familiar clichés of our own, or of China's, making.We will pay dearly if we discard our critical thinking skills or withhold them from the discourse that lies beyond the borders of US-China commerce.
3 Confront the reality of a changed world
A senior labor leader of my acquaintance, who has regularly assaulted US corporations for their alleged complicity with evil at home and abroad, one day over a quiet cup of coffee asked me an important question. "Bob," said he, "We all talk about the need for retraining, as the world changes and China or other countries learn to manufacture as well as we traditionally have. Retrain for what?"
American businesses are plunging heavily into commerce and investment with China, and more power to them. The US-China Business Council is dedicated to helping US firms do exactly that. US business with China is good for many Americans and good for many in China. But as they move ahead, our companies are not just observers of historic structural changes in global economics; they are participants. As participants, they need to confront the impacts of their actions continually.
My 10 years with the US-China Business Council tell me that most of our member companies understand this and grapple with it in various ways.Most Council member firms do not need moral lectures about corporate responsibility; they live it daily.
But some kind of national dialogue waits to be launched, and it is not going to be smooth. The arrival of China as a major global economic force, and the arrival of the world's economic powers inside China's borders, are changing both countries' economic landscapes and provoking many questions. US companies should try to lead this longterm discussion, not avoid it or enter it as a last resort. Clean answers to huge questions will be diffi- cult, but pretending that China's rise has not already sparked a debate that won't go away would be selfdefeating.
We are at a relatively quiet moment in the turbulent history of US-China relations. My own surmise is that America's big, fiery moments of national convulsion over China have receded, perhaps for a long time to come, in spite of some election-year fireworks. Whether China's parallel spasms have faded for good is uncertain. American businesses, whether large and powerful or small and less powerful, should look ahead—with their government, with their critics, with the occupants of the world of ideas—to try to channel the energies and passions latent in US-China relations to positive, rather than negative, ends. The US-China Business Council can help lead the way.
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