BOOK
REVIEW Cherry-picking from China's
success What the US Can
Learn from China by Ann Lee
Reviewed by Benjamin Shobert
Beset
by an increasingly dysfunctional political system
that will inevitably become an insurmountable
drain on the country's economy, America faces two
choices: either summon the political fortitude to
make the frequently mentioned, yet rarely acted
upon "tough choices", or let our national
conversation continue to degenerate.
Given
what Americans have seen from their politicians
over the past year in particular, it would seem
the obvious choice is to believe that America will
take the more emotionally gratifying
option; namely, blaming
others for problems of our own making.
This in part explains why America's most
recent elections have been so focused on elevating
candidates willing to toe the line of increasingly
puritanical orthodoxies. After all, history
suggests that a country struggling to right itself
will first of all turn its frustrations inwards in
an attempt to purify its politics and culture of
those it perceives as "others".
When this
process proves to not remedy the underlying
maladies, many countries will then look outside
their borders in an effort to find others to
blame.
Post-9/11, America's deep
insecurities are more obvious than ever. Some, as
in how to best manage the tension between having
an open society and protecting yourself against
the stateless threat of terrorism, are
understandable insecurities. Others, such as how
to build a thriving economy in the face of the new
realities imposed by globalization, are no less
insidious.
Whether these insecurities
allow us to learn from our own mistakes, or
conversely, from the successes of our competitors,
is very much an open question and one that would
be well worth the time of our policymakers and
politicians to struggle with. Thankfully, Ann Lee
has done just this in her new book What the US
Can Learn From China: An Open-Minded Guide to
Treating Our Greatest Competitor As Our Greatest
Teacher.
It is helpful to perhaps set
one of the most obvious and least interesting
criticisms about Lee's book aside at the outset:
anyone familiar with China will be able to argue
that certain aspects of Chinese business, culture
and government that Lee finds laudatory are in
fact potential weaknesses that they feel she may
not adequately explore as such.
The two
best examples of this are her comments on the
meritocracy of the Chinese government and the role
of Confucian philosophy within China's culture and
educational system specifically. Admittedly in
both of these areas, certain readers may feel that
Lee's treatment overlooks a more comprehensive
conversation about how these are weaknesses;
however, this misses her point.
Lee's
overarching objective is to, as she puts it, help
the country "face one of the most challenging
tests of its will. The challenge is not as simple
and straightforward as facing an enemy like the
Soviet Union during the Cold War. Rather, the
challenge to America is how our nation will
coexist in a world of rising powers and
diminishing natural resources, both of which may
threaten our chosen way of life." (pg 4)
Lee believes America has long had the
cultural and political elasticity to learn from
what others are doing well, and repackage these
insights into policies and practices that are
uniquely American.
Consequently, while
critics of Lee's analysis of China's meritocracy
may point to stories of China's princelings as
evidence of vice and corruption, Lee would simply
point out that whatever these excesses have to say
about the very real problems of corruption in
Chinese society, one cannot discount the good the
system has done through its single minded fixation
on economic growth.
As she illustrates in
her book, while relationships and politics matter
in defining how a Chinese politician advances
through the Communist Party, nothing has more of
an impact than their ability to meet economic
goals. The pregnant question this poses to readers
of Lee's book is this: what would American
politics look like if our system was as
fundamentally oriented towards the pursuit of
economic growth of the country as China's
leadership is?
Lee does not overlook the
problems of graft in China's politics; rather, she
makes the following point, "By the time a person
is chosen by peers to become premier of China,
that government official has served for decades in
numerous and diverse leadership roles with a very
public track record of accomplishments."
As she sees it, this is in marked contrast
to the American system where "... some US
politicians are elected to the federal government
with limited leadership experience in both
government and [the] corporate world". (pg 65)
Coming off of what many Americans ruefully
acknowledge has been a spate of primaries and
general elections with some of the most poorly
qualified and intemperate candidates the US has
ever seen, it is hard to argue with Lee's
critique.
Lee's point is not that the
Chinese approach is flawless, but that the Chinese
formulation of political advancement as part savvy
inter-party relationships tied to successful
outcomes has merits over the American approach
that combines populism and pandering with
political triangulation.
While some
American politicians can certainly point to
positive outcomes as the reason for their
advancement, the uncomfortable reality is that
America would not be in the situation it now finds
itself if this was the conventional and
predominant means by which politicians advanced
themselves.
Similar criticisms about Lee's
treatment of Confucianism are likely to center on
the very real problems its reverence to hierarchy
creates in terms of fostering groupthink, making
dissent difficult to encourage, and limiting
innovation as a result. While to some Lee may not
give these concerns adequate attention, her
analysis draws the reader back to differences
between how Americans and Chinese approach
education.
Specifically, Lee believes
these critics underestimate the curiosity and
drive of today's university student in China and,
that these same critics overlook the lack of
curiosity and drive from their American
counterparts. As Lee writes, "The campus
classrooms [at Beida, where Lee taught as a
visiting professor] were occupied day and night,
seven days a week by lectures ... Not only are
they hard working, the Chinese students are also
incredibly curious." (pg 35)
Lee's point,
not unlike one made by Thomas Friedman years
earlier in his now famous The World is
Flat, puts forward a simple and deeply
disquieting question: is the average American
willing to work as hard as their counterpart in
China? And if not, what does that suggest about
the direction of American culture, politics, and
foreign policy?
America will have to
summon the will to match China's efforts simply to
maintain its current standard of living and
protect what it already has, a frustrating
realization that will too easily weaken the
resolve of both the public and politicians when it
comes time to think about what we should learn
from China.
One of the most important
insights Lee offers readers of her new book is the
role China's five-year plans play in concentrating
the efforts of China's economy. Few would argue
that China has been successful thus far in its use
of the five-year plan as a vehicle for aligning
top-level strategy with more practical questions
of implementation.
Many critics have said
the plans do not do an adequate job of
rationalizing where capital is deployed, which is
why infamous ghost cities like Ordos were built,
and why so much industrial capacity and overall
infrastructure continues to sit idle across the
country. Yet when Lee points her readers to the
impact of two-year election cycles on the time
horizon of both the electorate and the elected, or
towards the fixation on quarterly results that
characterizes publicly held companies, it is
difficult not to wince and wonder whether she is
right.
Building on this point, Lee asks
the even more thorny question of whether some of
what drives human beings to be short-sighted is in
fact hard-wired into us, and whether the right
role of government is to circumnavigate this
weakness. Obviously, this cuts to the heart of
what America believes has made it unique;
specifically, it is the freedom of the individual
to pursue his own interests, however short-sighted
these may be, that has made America successful.
China makes no such acknowledgement. In
fact, China's government is built around the idea
that the impulses of the individual, in particular
when expressed in the collective, are many times
disruptive and unproductive.
Lee writes,
"Given both the proclivity of Americans to favor
short-term rewards and our current system of
democracy, which records the thoughts and mandates
of the voting population, the ability to meet
long-term goals and objectives could be
compromised."
She goes on to state, "...
other issues naturally related to preparations for
the future include problems of objectivity,
judgment, and other human shortcomings. All of
these, left to the whims of an entire population,
may consistently fail to put the long-term
interests as a priority." (pg 94)
Does Lee
go too far in crediting the Chinese system of
government with unique insights in these matters?
Perhaps. But maybe this is precisely her
objective. Possibly by forcing the reader to
confront China's relative success in the midst of
America's decline, she draws our attention back to
the ways in which our politics have become too
self-serving, too short-sighted, and too partisan.
Yes, one can critique whether Lee fully
presents the downside risks and limitations
inherent in China's form of government. But in
focusing her readers on how China acts, and why it
has been able to achieve what it has over the past
30 years, she makes it impossible to avoid the
simple fact that China's results have something to
offer to America.
What is this key insight
Lee offers? Simply put: balance. Readers may put
down Lee's book less convinced that America needs
to copy China's culture, work ethic or mode of
government and more convinced that America needs
to rebalance itself in those areas Lee's book
discusses.
On most of the matters Lee
evaluates a spectrum of choices exist: one can be
as centrally organized and as long-term in focus
when it comes to economic plans as China is, or
one can be as decentralized and focused on
quarterly results as America has been.
America could be much better off not
necessarily by skewing wholly to the far extreme
where China resides, but rather rebalancing and
finding a more temperate view of the time horizon
for implementing and measuring the outcomes of
national industrial policy.
If America
chooses to believe either that it has nothing to
learn from China or that somehow China is to be
blamed for America's decline, it will not be
because thinkers like Lee avoided pressing the
American people and policy makers to reflect on
what China might be doing better than we are, and
how we might adapt their practices to suit our own
country and culture.
Benjamin A Shobert is the
Managing Director of Rubicon Strategy Group, a
consulting firm specialized in strategy analysis
for companies looking to enter emerging economies.
He is the author of the upcoming book Blame
China and can be followed at
www.CrossTheRubiconBlog.com.
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Post-9/11, America's deep
insecurities are more obvious than ever. Some, as
in how to best manage the tension between having
an open society and protecting yourself against
the stateless threat of terrorism, are
understandable insecurities. Others, such as how
to build a thriving economy in the face of the new
realities imposed by globalization, are no less
insidious. 
