US risks missing the train to a shared global future

An electric car assembly line in Nanchang, China, May 22, 2024. No American business leader has more visibly and lavishly supported President-elect Donald Trump than Elon Musk, who has built businesses in high-tech manufacturing sectors like electric vehicles and solar panels — now targeted by Beijing for Chinese dominance. Photo by: Keith Bradsher / New York Times, file

Is there an American bull in China’s shop?

China and its one and a half billion people was a different country just 15 years ago when my wife, Myra, and I were on a Brookings Institution study trip there.

Most of us — many of them top U.S. scholars on foreign, economic and political matters — believed after two weeks traveling across that fast-changing country that the smart play for America was to find a way to partner with China — not fight with it — to make products together that the rest of the world would want.

Not being a scholar or an expert, I agreed. It just made a lot of sense. You know, the common kind.

At that time, the U.S. was in deep financial distress, especially the car industry, so the idea was to start there. We had the high-end technology that China needed, and China had the cheap labor for the basic manufacturing of products that we could use.

Americans could produce the higher-tech, higher-value products at home, combine it with the mass-produced, lower-tech products like cars in China and sell it all to the rest of the world. We would be partners, growing together over the next number of decades.

It didn’t escape any of us that China, a communist country in name only, and which was holding a lot of our money, might pay for the privilege of joining us on such an adventure. That first payment would be bailing out the U.S. car industry, which was on the ropes and leaking oil. Electric cars were still a dream on paper.

It sounded like a win-win at the time.

Fast forward to today. High tech, which was our strong suit, now goes both ways. We may no longer be the leader. And today, we need to grow labor (think jobs) to make the products that add great value to the world and help keep us safe.

There are still countries all around the world that want to buy what we both can make, together. Tariffs notwithstanding.

Our two countries, if we can figure out how to partner, can set the rules for the next century. They can be rules based on fairness and responsibility and, yes, perhaps even equity. I know, some people hate that word but the rest of the world still needs a little bit of it. In short, what we thought in the 2000s still holds today, although the path forward is not as clear.

Tom Friedman wrote a column in The New York Times a few days ago — it will be republished Monday in the Las Vegas Sun — about this opportunity. Whether America recognizes what’s before us or tries to B.S. our way through China’s high-tech shops of the future — that are working today — remains to be seen.

Friedman saw two choices. He could choose America’s fantasyland, located in China Disneyland, or China’s reality, which is no longer a technological fantasy. Disneyland only works if you have the ticket to ride. But that is a fleeting thrill because once you leave the park the ride is over.

What Friedman witnessed in China’s fantastical parks was the future based on its present-day abundance of talent, creativity and determination to succeed. When that country builds its high-speed trains, they are going somewhere and getting there fast. So much so that Friedman believes the rest of the world will want to buy a ticket to ride on that fast track to the future. So do I.

Friedman is speaking April 14 at UNLV about China and the U.S., and where the technological future may take both countries. I suggest anyone who actually cares about more than a political slogan based on fear and anger and ignorance get a ticket to that Barrick Lecture.

It is better that we all learn something together that can help the United States move toward a brighter, more successful Tomorrowland. The alternative is to remain stuck in a state of ignorance that keeps us on a path toward a constant cluelessness while our competitors, in this case China, present a future for the world that we won’t know about or, worse, refuse to even think about.

Knowledge is required if we are to remain great while we pursue the Founding Fathers’ dream of a “more perfect union.”

UNLV is a good place to learn about how we all can help America achieve that greatness in a very competitive 21st century. April 14 is a good time to start.

Tom Friedman can be our teacher.

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.