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A few months ago when the National Football League postponed the Eagles’ game because of an impending snowstorm, then-Gov. Ed Rendell said, “If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium. They would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”
Memo to Rendell: The last time the Chinese attempted such a march was when Mao led the way. In fact, it is open to question whether the Chinese would have bothered wasting their time marching in the snow to see pro football when there was a perfectly good ping-pong match closer to home. But Rendell’s much quoted comment is typical of our infatuation with all things China.
Americans have built a myth around the superiority of this Chinese super-race that will gobble us up if we don’t get tough. Even the president succumbed to the idea in his State of the Union speech calling it “our Sputnik moment,” but we all know it isn’t the Russians we fear anymore.
Watch a morning show and chances are you will see Amy Chua, author and self-proclaimed “Tiger Mom,” who is noted for her raising super-achieving children. According to Chua, if you want your kids to be No. 1 in their class, you must forbid them to attend sleepovers or play dates, waste their time in a school play, watch any TV, get any grade less than an A, not be the No. 1 student in any class except for gym or drama and play any instrument other than a piano or violin (sorry, Charlie Parker).
You would think Americans would laugh off this demonic parenting style, especially at a time when the suicide rate appears to be going up in the nation’s elite schools. You would be wrong. Beneath our boastful image and our vows of American “exceptionalism,” we are as insecure as an actor on a high-wire in the Broadway version of “Spider-Man.” We are so sure China is the source of all wisdom that if it were to invade Taiwan tomorrow, our very own China lobby would be marveling that it did it, despite a howling snowstorm, while doing calculus in the middle of the invasion.
We went through something very similar about 20 years ago when it was Japan that was going to eclipse us. Remember our fear of the Japanese buying up American property? We were sure that before long, the Statue of Liberty would be eating a seaweed salad for breakfast. We were enamored with Japan’s grasp of economics, management style and the Japanese’s ability to produce products free from defects (this was before the multiple Toyota recalls). We were almost ready to kneel down and praise our employers if it would only help us to stave off the economic threat from Japan. Then Japan went into a period of economic stagnation and became yesterday’s news. Japan has been replaced in our psyche by China.
Before we lose sleep over the threat of competition from China, we ought to ask ourselves do we really want to be like the real China and not the mythic giant we helped create? Do we really want to raise kids who are so focused on super-achievement that they must be forbidden from playing a trumpet? Do we want to emulate a nation so homophobic that 80 percent of its gay adults enter straight marriages, according to “The Daily Dish”?
Sure there is great promise in China as it struggles to emerge from its dark night of communism, but it is still a one-party dictatorship. Its safety standards are so poor you can’t trust that their toys don’t have lead content. China is so oriented toward male babies that sex selection abortions are not unusual. There is no real safety net; no social security and a lack of health care coverage. Although more dissent is allowed than in the past, we are not far removed from the slaughter in Tiananmen Square to forget about the tanks rolling over students. The Chinese media are censored. Corruption is rampant. Even with great strides, industrial pollution takes a backseat to economic expansion.
Much of China’s economic success is because the government shamelessly manipulates their currency. As Eric Lotke wrote in “The Huffington Post,” by manipulating the Yuan, the Chinese defy the laws of monetary physics. They make American imports of Chinese goods artificially cheap and give American companies opening factories in China an artificial subsidy. It is not over the top to claim, as did Paul Krugman of “The New York Times,” that China’s monetary policy has aggravated the ability of the rest of the world to dig out of its economic hole. To date, China has feigned cooperation, but in reality has done nothing to heed the pleas of President Obama to stop playing this shell game with their currency.
It is not China bashing to point these things out, but balancing the propaganda that seems to make Americans feel that in order to compete, we must totally emulate the Chinese. I’m starting a movement: The heck with the “Tiger Mom,” let your kid play that horn. SPR
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