I've been asked to contribute to the KMM thread regarding Mattel's recall of 18.2 million toys worldwide. The causative link is that all the toys were made in China. Okay. Another typically NextStageish take on things...
This is something we have discussed in the NextStage office. Roger, one of our Senior Analysts and Trainers (not to mention one of my mentors) taught in China for several years and a few others of us have ties there. Tom, our Consulting Economist, has both taught and done business there.
The discussion revolved around the question of "Is China losing power?" In other words, is this an economic bump from which China will right itself or does the globality of this event (and those in recent past) demonstrate a cultural incongruity between China and its trading partners from which it won't fully recover?
Many times we've heard people state that China is the US's economic enemy. This isn't the case, at least not in the way NextStage understands the term. They are our nemesis (in an economic sense) and that can't be questioned (we thinks).
Get past the definitions of "enemy" that involve military aspects and you get "any hostile group of people". China can not be hostile to the USA in an economic sense. They can't afford to be. They own too much of the US's debt to be hostile to it, let alone militarily. Any hostile action insures their own bankruptcy because they won't be able to call in those markers.
But "nemesis"? "Something causing misery or death"? Oh, yeah. There China fits in quite nicely. They don't have to do anything to us militarily, all they need to do is call in those markers, a little at a time and over a very, very long time. Can you say mooshi? More importantly, can you say "Nei hao ma"?
If this situation persists it might be because China was not prepared to deal with a western population as opposed to a western government entity or corporation. How China deals with its own population is quite different than how the west deals with its populations. The fact that a population as a whole would rise up without a leader -- that's the important piece, without a recognized leader -- and rebel, economically or otherwise, is a nemesis China hasn't been culturally prepared for.
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