Show Me the Money

In the welcome reception he held for the president of China this week, Obama has made a supreme effort to furnish the Chinese with symbols of the status of an equally mighty nation. He has good reasons to do so.

There is one statistic that summarizes the Sino-American alignment situation: 344 against 82. Chinese exports to America are estimated at $344 billion in a year. The American exports to China amount to less than a quarter of this total. And one more statistic can be contributed for good measure: 9.9 percent against 3.6 percent. The latter number is the desired growth rate in the United States in 2011. At that period, China is going to keep a breathtaking, extraordinary pace developing its economy. As the legendary investor Jim Rogers once said, “China today is where the United States was in 1907.”

The Chinese are masters of protocol. Three days ago, the President of China Hu Jintao had landed at Andrews Air Force Base. His entourage, of course, already knew that the Americans were about to shower the trappings of prestige and respect on the leader of the world’s largest nation. Joe Biden, the Vice President, was sent to the airfield — an exceptional attention — and stood up there in order to shake the Chinese president’s hand upon his landing. Biden looked a little frozen and wooden. Maybe it was the weather, or maybe it was the feeling that he, the person whom leaders normally show up to greet at the airport, had arrived to kiss up to the leader of a country which up until two decades ago had been considered a Third World one.

The Chinese knew and noted this new reality. They remember well enough the humiliations they suffered from America in the past during similar visits. In 2006, The New York Times recalled recently, the arrival ceremony for the Chinese president was disrupted by a heckler from the Falun Gong spiritual sect banned in China. To compound this embarrassment, the official announcer on behalf of the United States government — the one naming the title of the guest from China — decided to present him as the president of Taiwan. This, more or less, is the worst thing which can happen during such a visit, but that was just the beginning. President Bush refused to host a state dinner for his Chinese counterpart — the astonishing, ideological pretext voiced within the administration was that he “did not want to confer such an honor on a leader who was not democratically elected.”

Now, however, America is experiencing winter days. Obama is a master of pragmatism. If protocol is important to the Chinese, he’s going to give them whatever they will ask. Anybody who watched the ceremony in the White House this week could have gathered — from the numbers of flags and honor guards — that the two countries are signing the Mutual Defense Treaty. Obama, who started his relations with China in a honeymoon phase that quickly deteriorated into major tension, made a supreme effort to provide the Chinese with symbols of the status of a superpower equal in its might to the United States.

And the reward? Let’s quote Hollywood: Obama is asking, demanding from the Chinese: “Show me the money!” America is groaning under the surge of unemployment. Her industrial production is in a deep crisis. The Chinese are preserving the yuan as a weak currency relative to their massive currency reserves and thus stimulating their exports. The world — from America to Spain — is exploding with frustration and unemployment. Everybody buys from China, while China tries very hard not to buy from anyone.

The American argument is not only their own misery. You don’t build superpowers out of self-pity. The Americans are telling the Chinese: your economy is hot. It’s on fire. If you do not calm it down slowly, if we do not balance world trade so that you sell us less and buy more, the outcome will be a giant economy that will spiral out of control and lead the world into an abysmal crisis. Not a world recession, but depression.

This argument, as we all know, is merely an argument. The fact is that China has managed the high rate of growth very successfully so far and sits on the Mt. Everest of dollars and foreign currency. The Americans fear the world recession, but they are more afraid of the coming elections and the possibility of failure to provide jobs. The Chinese understand this very well, and they have brought over to the United States an imperial tribute: a notice that they would sign deals promising American exports of $45 billion and, among other things, $19 billion worth of Boeing jets. This week, the last living testimony of “Camelot,” the shiny glowing administration of President Kennedy, has waned.

Sargent Shriver, President Kennedy’s brother-in-law and father to Maria Shriver — Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife — was 95 years old. Shriver was a Democratic candidate for the vice presidency in the failed campaign of 1972, but he will be primarily remembered as the founder and the first director of the Peace Corps, which was established by Kennedy and which mainly operates in Third World countries.

The foundation of this organization had been one of Kennedy’s most famous election promises, and he referred to it, among other things, in his inauguration speech when he famously said to Americans: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

Behind the establishment of the Peace Corps there was a clear underlying political goal which had been a result of — as we put it — PR distress. In the developing world, the concept of “The Ugly American” was spreading and taking root. It’s not only an expression, to be sure, but also a book. It was published in 1958 and had a crucial impact on American political thinking of that time. The novel described the idea that the Americans were losing the publicity war in Asia as a result of diplomats’ exhaustion and businessmen’s greed.

Kennedy had understood a very fundamental thing about propaganda and public relations, or “winning hearts and minds.” He understood that everything the United States is doing — the actions it performs on the world stage — predetermines the way it will be perceived. This is not a matter of ideas, campaigns or bribing local governmental officials, but a matter of real actions the nation carries out in its relations with the world — and these actions are to determine how the test proceeds.

More than 200,000 volunteers have participated in the Peace Corps since Kennedy signed the presidential directive creating the organization in 1961. It didn’t prevent the high rise of socialism in the Third World, but it did impart Americans with a sense of self-appreciation and understanding that they too, capitalists though they are, have a universal obligation. Interesting: The Americans didn’t read “The Ugly American” and decided instead that the authors were despicable traitors who served the communist tyrants. They read the book and responded to the criticism in a business-like fashion. This is the way great nations behave.