Reality Is Reality or Wake Up America

I am a voracious reader and I enjoy many different types of the printed word. For enjoyment I prefer fiction and certainly lean toward thrillers of one kind or another. But I also read non-fiction and have just joined the local Ivy League Non-Fiction Book Club. This is a new experience for me since I have never belonged to a book club of any kind and have always felt that it was a waste of valuable time to get together with other people to discuss books of fiction. However, I was persuaded to look into this non-fiction club which held the promise of intellectual discussions on topics of importance where honest differences of opinion could occur or where different, yet viable, philosophies/viewpoints could be examined in some detail. It is this book club that has brought me to read China Shakes the World by James Kynge. It is a description, along with Kynge’s revelations from having lived and worked in and around China since 1985, of how that country has become a world economic power in a very short period of time and how that country compares to the industrial west including the United States. Kynge worked as the China Bureau Chief for the Financial Times and, as such, has a thorough understanding of economics. The book has become mandatory reading in most business classes in America’s colleges and universities.

There are a number of very disturbing comparisons between China and the United States that bother me greatly. Perhaps the most disturbing comparison is the amount of government economic control over the businesses and citizens of the two countries. I naturally assumed that being a communist country, the Chinese government owns all business and that, true to its communist philosophy, strives to distribute wealth to all citizens as evenly as possible by taxing and redistributing income to those who do not earn as much as others. Of course, this was of particular interest to me since we now have a proclaimed socialist president and congress who are setting about to do exactly that to an even greater degree than already exists in the United States. What I discovered was the exact opposite. The United States is already more socialistic than communist China and the comparison is about to widen dramatically if the president’s proposals are passed by Congress and implemented.

Without going into great detail, I will merely cite some passages from Kynge’s work to support this conclusion.

“China today is a great deal less socialist than any country in Europe; the 120 million or so migrant workers, for instance, receive no welfare at all.”

“ … the taxes the government levies on its corporations and its people can also be lower … Chinese state expenditures … come to less than half of German levels.”

“These discrepancies define the challenge China presents to the social democratic model that Europe so painstakingly constructed from the ruins of World War Two.”

“He (Emilio Camponovo, founder of one of the largest gold refineries in Europe & whose industry was virtually wiped out by the Chinese) did not blame the Chinese, he said. They were willing to work hard and they were smart. What really exercised him … was how ignorant the Italian and Swiss governments seemed to be of the nature of Chinese competition. From his perspective, the threat came less from China’s rise than from the failure of European governments to understand it and formulate policies to deal with it. For instance, he said, corporation tax rates in his canton of Switzerland were effectively over 50 percent of profits. But in spite of this heavy tax burden, the canton announced larger budget deficits year after year. … The main cause of the deepening deficit was state payments to individuals for medical treatment.”

“Healthcare was one cost. Unions were another. There were ten different unions represented among the staff who worked in the gold refinery. The red tape and the welfare payments were suffocating, he (Camponovo) said. In every company and profession it was the same story; the socialist welfare state had turned from a boon to a burden.”

“What is true, though, is that at the 16th Congress of the Communist Party in late 2002, the Constitution was amended to put private business on an equal footing with state corporations.”

“The Communist Party had to surrender considerable control to deliver the growth it needed; since 1998 it had privatized almost all of the country’s urban housing stock, made redundant (fired) more than 25 million workers from state companies, allowed hundreds of thousands of state companies to free themselves from the burden of providing medical care for employees and free schooling for their children … “

“Many of the weaknesses and deficiencies … can be traced back to China’s overarching contradiction: that it tries to run an increasingly sophisticated, capitalist economy with a political system that was designed to issue crisp commands from a single source of authority, and to be obeyed.”

“On the World Bank’s list of the twenty most polluted cities in the world, sixteen are in China.”

“And as for being a Communist behemoth, well, that is difficult for Beijing to address because although it is no longer Communist, it is still ruled by the Communist Party.”

In talking about the government owned banks Kynge writes, “The big ‘ four’ banks, which control more than half of the country’s deposits and loans, are all owned by the state. … In return, they can feel secure in the knowledge that they will never be allowed to fail, no matter how many bad debts pile up on their balance sheets. The central bank, which regulates the banking industry alongside the recently established China Banking Regulatory Commission, has a track record of bailing out the “big four” every time they need it.”

I could go on and on with quotes from this book. The point that I now make is simply this: The perception that the average citizen of the U.S. now has of China and its perception of the current U.S. government (President and Congress) is the exact opposite of reality. When comparing the U. S. and China by virtually any measure that defines government control over individuals and corporations and the redistribution of wealth from those that produce to those that do not, the United States is more communistic than China.

I wrote about the dangers of confusing perception with reality in The Leadership Teachings of Geronimo, published by SterlingHouse. The book’s very first Teaching, “One Who Yawns”: Or Perceptions Change, warns:

Geronimo’s original name was Goyakla or Go-khla-yeh, which meant “One Who Yawns.” This was not a name that anyone in the entire southwest would think was appropriate for the feared war chief. He did not receive the bloodcurdling name Geronimo (Spanish for Jerome) until years later when the Mexicans renamed him.

Teaching

Many people believe that it is true that perception is reality. Do not accept this commonly held belief. REALITY IS REALITY, and perceptions often change. You should always be wary of the perceptions that you have developed about people, companies, organizations, and situations. Once your perception has become a reality in your own mind you will act on it as such. All too often, either the perception was wrong or reality changed, but, in either case, your actions based on an old or false reality lead to incorrect decisions. This can cost your organization dearly. Therefore, be open to changing your perceptions by carefully looking at the facts and not your perception of them.

The perception that people within the United States and, indeed, most all of the world, is that China is communistic and backward and unable to rival the U. S. economy. Once upon a time this perception was true but it began to change in 1978 when reforms were put into place. Today it is not the U. S. that has “free enterprise” in a capitalistic state and an economy that is the envy of the rest of the world. It is China. It is China that is growing by leaps and bounds, not the United States.

The way for America to survive this current economic downturn and to be able to compete with China in the future is not to become more socialistic like the Europeans but to return to our capitalistic, free enterprise roots. It is not to provide free “everything” to “everyone” including medical care. It is not to tax our corporations more through the subterfuge of cleaning up our environment through a “cap and trade” giant tax increase. It is not to “redistribute” wealth from those who have worked hard to earn it to those who have not taken advantage of the opportunities America provides. That is what the old Communist China did. That is not what the new “Capitalist” China does. Wake up America. Reality is Reality.