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TOKYO -- Businessmen around the world continue to be fascinated with
the prospect of
making a fortune doing business with China.
The May 27 U.S. House of Representatives endorsement of the China
trade bill, to be followed sooner later by passage of the U.S. Senate
version, will perpetuate the imagined potential of selling to "one
billion Chinese."
"Imagined" and "potential" are the operative words since very few
foreigners have made old-fashioned "profits" in China.
In 1937, author Carl Crow wrote a book "400 Million Customers" (World
Press, New York) carrying on the "oil for the lamps of China" myth that
had captivated traders for centuries. As China grew, so did the market,
as Australian Ross Terrill made plain in his 1971 book "800,000,000: The
Real China." (Little, Brown and Co., Boston).
Jay and Linda Mathews, first of the now-popular husband-and-wife foreign
correspondent duos, in 1983 published "One Billion: A China Chronicle"
(Random House, New York).
By the time William H. Overholt had joined the chorus in 1993 with his
book "The Rise of China,"
(W.W. Norton & Co., New York) there were about 1.2 billion Chinese.
A confession is in order: I played on the same syndrome in a book I
co-authored in 1974 "The Future of the China Market: Prospects for
Sino-American Trade." (American Enterprise Institute-Hoover Institution,
Washington D.C.) There was a certain euphoria after President Richard
Nixon's 1972 trip to China, and curiosity about doing business there
captivated American firms.
The book was criticized by some for being overly-optimistic on the
Beijing-Washington trade
future. As it turned out, the predictions in the book were too conservative.
In 1973 U.S. exports to China were worth US$689.1 million and imports
from China were $63.9 million.
By 1998 China had become the U.S.' fourth largest trading partner,
selling US$71.1 billion worth of goods and buying US$14.2 billion.
But here was more than trade at stake. The 1974 book concluded:
''To take advantage of the changes, challenges, and opportunities
that lie within the trade and developmental finance areas of the coming
enlarged mutual relationship between Chinese and Americans, we must prepare
ourselves much better than we have been doing, both in a bilateral sense
and in our awareness of a changing world situation.
"There is much to be learned and understood about China, and there is
a potential for interaction between the U.S. and China tomorrow that is
scarcely imagined anywhere today."
The biggest issue between Washington and Beijing is Taiwan as Chinese
President Jiang Zemin
reminded U.S.President Bill Clinton in a telephone call last weekend.
But the feeling in Taiwan, at least, is that membership for both
Beijing and Taipei in the
World Trade Organization will ease mutual tensions and perhaps allow for
some semantic,
if not political, accommodation.
The admission of first Beijing and then Taipei into the WTO will
greatly improve the relationship between the two adversaries, Taiwan
former Foreign Minister Chen Chien-jen said in an interview.
Chen made the remarks on the eve the March 18 Taiwan presidential
election. After Chen Shui-bian was elected President and then inaugurated
May 20, he asked Chen Chien-jen to become Taiwan's de facto ambassador in
Washington.
The former Foreign Minister said there was "no question" about Taiwan
following China's tracks into the WTO once Beijing has completed pending
agreements with a final fistful of countries.
"There is no question about Taiwan's admission," Chen Chien-jen said.
"We have passed the requirements and signed 26 agreements, all except with
Hong Kong. And Hong Kong is part of China so that is pending."
He might have added that the United States and Japan exerted pressure on
China to agree unequivocally to Taiwan's immediate entry into the WTO after
its own. Taiwan agreed to face reality and wait in line and even accept a
name change, even though its own economy measures up to world criteria
better than does China's.
Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.