Posted on 03/04/2005 3:28:55 PM PST by mandingo republican
Progress and potholes on the road to the People's Republic
By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS
Nine years of outreach by Westchester business, education and government leaders will show some progress when a county delegation returns to China next month.
The delegation is expected to meet with their Chinese counterparts from March 17-29. That itinerary will include the signing of a memorandum of understanding to allow Pace University to offer business and technology courses at Xian Northwest University.
Beverly Kahn, associate provost for academic affairs at Pace, said the university envisions an expanded presence in China over the next several years.
"We're looking at exchange of students. We're looking at exchange of faculty, meeting and collaborating on research. We're looking at creating a destination for students who study abroad. In terms of offering degrees, that would take a couple of years," Kahn said.
Pace established its China presence in 2003 when it began offering a master of science degree in accounting at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. The program graduated its first class of 12 students in January.
PHARMA BUSINESS BENEFITS
Few Westchester businesses have benefited thus far. But one that has, credits the county.
MediPharm International Consultants Ltd. of New Rochelle was among nearly a dozen Westchester businesses that took part in a 1999 videoconference organized by county officials with a dozen Chinese counterparts. At the time, Westchester officials hoped to help local businesses crack China's pharmaceutical industry.
"One, two, three, four years later, there were a number of companies who remembered me from the conference call. For us, it has been good because it did lead ultimately to contacts with other people, and we increased our investment in China," said Sidney Rubinstein, president of MediPharm.
Rubinstein also assists Chinese companies seeking to comply with U.S. Food and Drug Agency regulations, as a principal in Regulatory Compliance Initiatives Inc.
Ken Dewoskin, a PricewaterhouseCoopers senior consultant specializing in China, credits China's growing experience with international businesses and its 2001 admission into the World Trade Organization, in exchange for opening parts of its economy to investment by American and other foreign companies.
Westchester doesn't track numbers or activity of businesses expanding into China. The county does hook up interested businesses with its director of Asian-American affairs and business development, Daisy Yao.
"We have developed good contacts with the Chinese government and the business community," said Norman J. Jacknis, county's chief information officer, and an organizer of Westchester's exchanges with Chinese leaders. "Our main responsibility is promoting the brand image, if you will, of Westchester, so that any company that comes to China from here has the wind at their back."
Few businesses have taken advantage, Jacknis acknowledged, due to fears that China's bureaucracy is too slow and promotes theft of foreign intellectual property ’Äî arguments he rejects: "What we have seen is the traditional American reluctance to get involved with international trade."
Jacknis and other county officials caution that they're taking a long-term view of their prospects for shepherding business activity in China, given the years required to build relationships with officials, business leaders and others.
'They loved Westchester'
Officials and business leaders expected little short-term success when Westchester County launched its first China initiative in 1996.
Then-County Executive Andrew O'Rourke and officials from Jingzhou, a metropolitan area of about 8 million residents, established a "sister city" relationship intended to foster economic and cultural ties.
Margaret Soter, O'Rourke's director of economic development at the time, said China's interest in Westchester was piqued by the county's wealth, its proximity to New York City and an economy that balanced small businesses with corporate giants like IBM.
"They heard Westchester was affluent and successful, so they began by wanting to study our government and our budget," Soter said. "They loved Westchester, so they wanted to come and explore and look at Westchester's business environment and government environment."
While Chinese leaders agreed to the exchange of visits, they produced little but pleasantries and symbolic results at first. The most lasting result from the first trip was the donation by Jingzhou of a pagoda now at Lasdon Park in Somers.
The baby boomers who set up programs like these are either infatuated with socialism, communism or they are amoral greedy business people who don't care about human rights or democracy and are only interested in the bottom line of making money for their companies.
Here are some of China's "greatest hits":
1. China is not a friend to the United States. China is an enemy and a rival to American interests, no matter how many cultural exchanges or business ventures American institutions set up there.
2. China is one of the biggest human rights abusers in the world - if not number one. Read any report from Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch to be shocked on the massive executions.
3. China has brutally annexed Tibet and has unleashed a 5 decade genocide on the Tibetan people and culture.
4. China threatens Hong Kong's democratic and Western style foundations.
5. China threatens the independence and democracy that has arisen in Taiwan.
6. China persecutes, jails, tortures, and even executes members of the peaceful Fulong Gong movement.
7. China is a great religious persecutor making official religions illegal and persecuting their followers. Instead the Chinese dictatorship sets up sham state run religious fronts. For example, the Roman Catholic Church is illegal in China. Only a state run Catholic organization that doesn't recognize the Pope is allowed to exist.
8. Educating Chinese students in America is a terrible idea - the institutions in question will not be educating exchange students who will go back to an open society that respects freedoms and the rule of law. Instead the Pace University program will be creating the business people, engineers, scientists, administrators, and computer professionals of a nation that is hostile to American interests and democratic ideals.
9. China's history of censorship and lack of press freedoms is infamous. Recently it has brutally cracked down on Internet usage by Chinese citizens wishing to exercise a universal human right.
We have alot of greedy traitors in this country who are going to end up feeding the monster that other Americans are going to have to fight and die to contain...We never learn.....and conservatives should wake up from the silly idea that "business" always supports conservative ideals...that's a load of crap...
Have they read the FBI reports that say that many PRC covert operatives enter the US as students? Do they have their heads in the sand on this? (a purely rhetorical question ... )
You're pretty new here. What is your vested interest in the PRC? Are you *in* the PRC or *from* the PRC yourself?
Frome doesn't need to have an invested interest in the PRC to disagree with you.
The U.S.-China relationship has always been complicated. It's wavered from the heights of the Open-Door Policy circa 1900, to the depths of the Korean War.
Today, citizens of the PRC are primarily focused on economic wealth and consumerism. The only people the Chinese people really hate is the Japanese, mostly for the atrocities of WWII.
Referring to the PRC as a communist country is becoming increasing laughable as time goes on. The proper term is "market socialism", a peculiar hybrid of free-market economics with a centralized leadership. Political processes are slowly decentralizing, but won't do so on a large scale until economic factors require it. There are still a number of years to go before the Chinese economy is seriously impaired by such a centralized government. When the economy reaches that point, Chinese political structures will quicly begin the process of democratization.
I've spent alot of time in China the past few years, I majored in Chinese Studies, and am about to marry a PRC national. To understand the PRC of today, you really have to go there. There's so much construction, each trip I have to buy a new city map.
Your comment is absurd. Why are you so afraid of China? Yes, China has committed human rights abuses as documented by organizations like Amnesty International, but how do you think China is going to change? Do you even know how much China has progressed in this past century?
If you want to make an enemy of a nation that is NOT an enemy, you're asking for disaster.
RE: you really have to go there
And you assume I have not gone there? On what do you base your assumption? Fact is, I have, and I continue to. You are still caught up in what I would term the "fascination" stage. I broke out of that. You may or, you may not. Most never do.
I am not afraid of China at all. I have a Clausewitzian view. I consider the PRC to be a likely adversary in a future (inevitable) great war. Yes, it is a cold, clinical view. But someone has got to have it.
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