A simple artifact, from over a thousand years ago -
May 11, 868: A woodblock printed copy of a Chinese translation of the Diamond Sutra, a Mahayana Buddhist text, is completed. Why is this noteworthy? Because this particular copy, included among a trove of documents discovered in a cave in Duhuang, China, in 1900, is—at least as far as the British Library is concerned—“the world’s earliest dated, printed book.” Thanks to the intact dedication, scholars know when, by whom, and for whom the document was produced—it reads “Reverently made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 15th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong.” That apparently corresponds to May 11, 868. [Foreign Exchanges]
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The article I really sat down to write today is about the Western foundation for the creation, emergence and stunning development of China into a major industrial, economic, military and political world power. When Deng Xiaoping opened China to foreign investment, knowledge and ways of life in 1979, there were murmurs and then cascades of excitement in Western corporate board rooms. This excitement was written about a great deal in terms such as “China is a huge market of one billion people!” A huge market was seen by many as a mother lode to further riches.
I was 31 years old in the summer of 1979, and didn’t have any ideas about this at the time; but by the middle or late 1980’s - after many Western businesses had invested huge sums of money in China - something occurred to me: What is the monetary value of a huge market of desperately impoverished people? In 1979 many, many people were malnourished or starving in China, and modern conveniences, industrial methods and finance was unavailable or unknown in China. Nevertheless, the investments from the West continued to pour into China. Much of the investment money was used to build factories, using Chinese labor and western materials, designs, parts, etc. So Western investments created an industrial, working class in China; and the materials, parts, designs, etc. became the property - material or intellectual - of China, directly or by subterfuge. The monies paid to workers were then spent in the local economy, creating wealth.
[A separate issue that I do not discuss is the manner in which the Chinese government and Communist Party insisted that Western business entities could not be created in China unless one or more Chinese entities had significant ownership interests in each new business. Sometimes the ownership interest was held by the Communist Party or the government; sometimes there were Chinese individuals, partnerships or corporations that owned shares or other portions of the new businesses.]
It appears to me that the establishment of China as a world power was financed by Western business interests … those interests whose owners and bosses had been so animated by the idea of a huge, new, one billion person market.
Chinese people, like all other people, can invent, discover and create, but they could not have built modern factories, among other things, without funds for investment nor could they have created financing institutions without money; otherwise they would have done so prior to 1979. Western business interests supplied the money, knowledge and markets which were the foundation upon which China, through its own education, learning, training and creativity, has blossomed and flourished. A personal example: some years ago, I worked for a large firm, many of whose partners were proud of the fact that the firm had an office in China, an office that had, by then, been established for 10 years, and had lost money the entire time. The U.S. part of the firm had been supporting that office, putting money into the Chinese economy. But the firm’s view was that having that office for such a long time meant that the firm “had its foot in the door,” “had gotten in on the ground floor,” etc., etc. Given the authoritarian nature of the Chinese government, and the harassment of foreign business people by that government in recent years, that foot in the door on the ground floor likely seems less appealing. “We” created our rival. The rival that Westerners now fear was, to a significant extent, launched by the West.