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Monday, June 28, 2004

Thomas Friedman's Visit To Beijing--and the China Foreign Affairs University--Spurs His "Imagination"

10:36 AM

Thomas Friedman, a writer and thinker I'd very much like to spend some time jawboning with, was at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing (where I am a visiting professor of "Media & Foreign Policy") last week and delivered a lecture that was exceedingly well-received by students, many of whom asked quite probing, intelligent questions and received answers that impressed them. I know, because they told me so in follow-up discussions in class. Now, I was of course delighted by this turn of events--but not nearly as much as if I'd been present for his lecture and visit to our tiny campus!

Yes, I missed it. Such are the vicissitudes of teaching at three universities and not being able to read Mandarin. While my schedule ostensibly precluded my attendance, I might have been able to alter it had I been able to read the hand-written posters that accounts for most of the intra-campus communication here at a university smaller than most junior high schools in a smallish American town. While I have a wonderful relationship with the Chinese faculty, they forget that we "Foreign Experts" cannot read Chinese. And, since every week we have at least one major dignitary from most any part of the globe visiting our little school for Chinese diplomats and leaders of the future, there isn't enough excitement at any particular visit to warrant a ripple of grapevine communication that would arouse enough curiosity for us to ask "what's up?"

So, I missed a wonderful opportunity to listen to and chat with a colleague whom I much admire. However, his visit to Beijing and our university was of enough import to Mr. Friedman that its residue appeared in his column in today's The New York Times. In a piece announcing a three-month sabbatical to finish a new book, Mr. Friedman listed three headlines "I'd like to read while I'm gone." The second one--and part of the third--is a direct result of his visit to Beijing and the Foreign Affairs University. It is below:

President Bush Stuns Electorate -- Does His Own Version of Nixon to China and Announces Joint Chinese-American Crash Program for Developing Alternative Energies. Roughly 30,000 new cars merge onto the roads in Beijing every single month. Every day, the newspaper headlines in China are about energy shortages, blackouts and brownouts. U.S. officials estimate that 24 out of China's 31 provinces are now experiencing power shortages. China's foreign policy today consists of two things � Taiwan and searching for oil. China's oil imports jumped last year alone by 30 percent. This is not a healthy situation. Environmentally speaking, in 10 days in Beijing I saw blue sky once. The other days were a gray, polluted haze. Developmentally, China's growth is soon going to be restrained, if it isn't already, by a sheer shortage of energy. Strategically, China and America could soon find themselves in a dangerous head-to-head competition for fuel.

If there was ever a time for big imagination, it is now. What we need is for President Bush to surprise himself and the world and propose a grand China-U.S. Manhattan Project � a crash program to jointly develop clean alternative energies, bringing together China's best scientists and its ability to force pilot projects, with America's best brains, technology and money. "When it comes to renewable technology and sustainable energy, China could be the laboratory of the world � not just the workshop of the world," said Scott Roberts, Cambridge Energy Research Associates analyst in China. Why not?

Bush Administration Calls an End to the "War on Terrorism." No, I haven't taken leave of my senses on the way out the door. I realize that we have enemies and they need to be confronted. But I do not want this to be all that America is about in the world anymore, and that is what has happened under this administration. I don't want the rest of my career to be about an America that exports fear, not hope, and ends up importing everyone else's fears as a result. I don't want it to be about explaining to young Chinese why my government can't give them student visas anymore. [emphasis added, ed.] I don't want it to be about visiting U.S. Embassies around the world and finding them so isolated behind barbed wire, they might as well not be there at all. Defeating "them" has begun to define "us" in too many ways.

America is so much more than just "Anti-Al-Qaeda Inc." � but our whole identity in the world, and too many aspects of our way of life, are getting contorted around that mission. If we're really having a relevant presidential campaign, I'll come back and find the candidates debating, not who is the "toughest" guy � the jungle is full of them � but who can be the toughest guy while preserving the best of what we had and the best of who we are.

The whole column is well worth you clicking through and reading it in full at: The New York Times

10:36 AM / Editor / permalink 2 comments

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2 Comments:

You beat me to the punch this time. Great post, and Friedman is exactly right. What will to take to get our leaders to listen? (Dumb question, as the answer is so obvious: Regime change.)

By richard, at 4:26 AM

Thanks,

Regime change indeed. Would that we could just turn over "sovereignty" of the U.S. to the Democratic Party now instead of waiting until January 1995.

By Joseph, at 11:47 AM