China is in the midst of a transformation unmatched in the history of the human race. Their immediate goal is to improve the living standard of 1.3 billion people.
Alaska and America will greatly benefit if we make the effort to understand today's China. It may be a surprise to many Americans that the roots of their drive to modernize can be found, not in the communist world, but in the U.S.
My colleague and co-writer of this column, Malcolm Roberts, recently returned from a week in Hong Kong and southern China. He and a group of 80 members of the Princeton University class of 1958 were introduced to a China unseen by most visitors.
Their guide was their classmate, Hong Kong businessman and billionaire Sir Gordon Wu. Starting in the 1980s, Wu has built superhighways, bridges, power plants and luxury hotels in Southern China and has played a major role in its transformation.
In a series of informal briefings, Wu explained to his classmates the changes that have occurred in the 30 years since Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping engineered a dramatic shift from Mao Tse-tung's commune-based agrarian economy to "privatization, marketization and globalization."
Since then, the pace of growth and change has been dramatic.
As the group was bussed north along the superhighway built by Sir Gordon through the former Canton province and China's first Special Economic Zone, they drove through one hundred miles of factories, apartment buildings, and construction staging areas with only glimpses of a former rural society.
This region is one of the first in China to begin producing the tens of thousands of products we buy in most U.S. stores today. There wasn't a rickshaw, a patty field, and very few bicycles in sight.
The group stopped at several modern city centers, where handsomely-designed government buildings, theatres, and sports arenas are rising from farmland.
In spite of the recent global economic crisis, China has amassed $2.4 trillion of foreign exchange, and it is using that cash to improve the quality of life of their people, including extensive transportation infrastructure.
One example in southern China is a railroad from Hong Kong that will enable passengers to travel at more than 90 miles per hour to Beijing arriving, in 13 hours. Another is the longest bridge/tunnel project in the world, first envisioned by Sir Gordon in 1983, that will link Hong Kong, the mainland and Macau.
Why is all this taking place?
Wu credits China's dramatic changes to the 600,000 Chinese students who attended U.S. universities. He bluntly states that they "studied Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith and learned that Mao Tse-tung was a bloody idiot."
As to his own career at Princeton, Sir Gordon reported he was a C+ student, but he cautioned his classmates not to laugh. "The plus showed potential!"
To express his gratitude for his education and the many friends he made at college, he has donated more than $100 million to the university.
Now, at age 73, he will dedicate his engineering skills to design and build a vertical axis, wind-powered turbine to help China tap clean energy.
"Without energy," he says, "you cannot create wealth."
The Chinese are far behind the U.S. and Europe in terms of environmental technology, but they won't be for long. As an example, Wu's goal is to complete a prototype of his wind turbine in the city of Yangjiang on the south China coast by next December.
And, like everything that Sir Gordon (and China) tackles, it will be large. It will stand 60 stories high and generate an undisclosed, but significant, amount of megawatts.
Let's leave behind Cold War fears and open our minds to China, which is already Alaska's second largest trading partner. With the export of Alaska products, especially liquefied natural gas to help clean up their polluted skies, we will generate revenue for our state and build a solid relationship with one of the most dynamic economies on the planet.
Walter J. Hickel with Malcolm Roberts. Hickel was governor of Alaska from 1966-1968 and 1990-1994 and U.S. Secretary of the Interior from 1969-1970. He is the founder of the Institute of the North where Roberts is a senior fellow.
WALLY HICKEL
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