Exports and Imports

With the Olympics only hours away now every major media is full of stories about the rising influence of China upon the global stage.  Tonight, ABC's Primetime is looking at the role China's growing urban economy is playing on the entire world in a special hosted by Bob Woodruff titled China:  Inside Out (read more about the special here).  The show is taking snap shots of four specific countries throughout the globe influenced by China's growing demand for energy.  

Fifteen minutes of the special were spent in Brazil, which now exports vast amounts of its soy production to China.  The obvious question is, "why?" especially considering that just a few years ago China was able to raise and supply all of its soy needs.  But, as China's economic possibilities have exploded - lifting 600 million out of poverty in just 30 years (the greatest such surge in recorded history) - China's culture has moved from an agricultural, rather energy independent culture to an industrialized, energy sapping culture.  Thus, the extra soy is going to feed steers and other livestock, which are being slaughtered to feed urbanized workers.  

And with the growing industrialized economy come other costs.  For one, although China is home to 20% of the world's population, China only holds 10% of the world's arable land (China:  Inside Out).  As more land is dedicated to industrialization that 10% continues to decline.  On top of that, there's this:  all the construction and development is dependent upon the one thing we are all learning is not dependable, oil.  

Which then leads to the question, "Why China change so quickly and place itself in long-term risk?"  The answer to that question is built off of two ironies.  

First of all, China, the minor 20th Century political adversary to American democracy, is changing so quickly because America is making it grow.  When Nixon went to China he did so during a vanguard period, throwing open the door to Chinese industry at the very moment China was actually letting their own doors open to the world.  That small change in two country's foreign policies have since created a codependent relationship of supply and demand.  

We - as we continued to drown Soviet Russia in our spending and full-bore economy - expanded our notion of sufficiency ... and coincidentally expanded China's notion of productivity.  Even after the Soviet economy collapsed, ours continued to charge ahead, and our insatiable demand for more and more goods at cheaper and cheaper costs birthed China's own capitalistic economy.  For instance, China's current one day exports now equal what China exported in an entire year in the late 1970's - exports that end up in countless malls and - perhaps most notoriously - in low cost Walmart's throughout America (China:  Inside Out).  

It gets worse.  Our addiction to consumption leads us into habits of borrowing both personally and nationally.  This is the second irony, one too poignant and potentially disastrous to laugh at.  The money Chinese men and women are making off American consumptive habits is - in part - going back into the US economy to finance further American spending.  Chinese individuals and Chinese businesses are buying bonds to finance federal spending, and they are buying interests in US corporations to influence long-term plans.   

The overall effect is a symbiosis of exporting.  The Chinese economy and people export material goods to satiate American demand.  We all hear about that.  But, let's not forget the first export that we've happily sent around the entire world:  the American economic system and lifestyle which suggests happiness through materialism, which has in part motivated Chinese men and women to migrate from farms into cities, to buy cars and televisions.

This, unfortunately, reveals some of the truths we prefer to hide from ourselves.  Eugene Peterson who has lived as pastor, teacher and prophet has been attentive to America's destructive materialism for a number of years now - gathering wisdom and corroboration from other modern prophets like Bishop Desmond Tutu, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Wendell Berry.  In an interview from the late 1980's regarding the impoverished state of American Christianity , Peterson said:

"It is useful to listen to people who come into our culture from other cultures, to pay attention to what they hear and what they see.  In my experience, they don't see a Christian land ...

"They see a lot of greed and arrogance.  And they see a Christian community that has almost none of the virtues of the biblical Christian community, which have to do with a sacrificial life and conspicuous love.  Rather, they see indulgence in feelings and emotions, and an avaricious quest for gratification.

"Importantly, they see past the facade of our language, the Christian language we throw up in front of all this stuff.  The attractive thing about America to outsiders is the materialism, not the spirituality.  It's interesting to listen to refugees who have just gotten into the country:  what they want are cars and televisions [and from the Romanian visitors I've known:  blue jeans].  They're not coming after our gospel, unless they're translating the gospel into a promise of riches and comfort." (Eugene Peterson's interview with Rodney Clapp in Christianity Today, published The Contemplative Pastor:  Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction).

As the 2008 Olympics prepare to begin, the world is about to see a China unveiled that will be radically different at first glimpse - a culture from the other side of the world.  But, upon closer inspection the China that people will see in the years to come will be the last thing the world needs:  an American economy of industrialized consumers.  For, as Bob Woodruff's special said explicitly tonight, the very reason why Chinese families are leaving their farms and working torturous jobs and saving their meager pay is - in the end - to live like Americans, to have the ability to eat more meat, to buy the latest technology and to have the world at its finger-tips at low, affordable prices.

It may appear that the dragon is rising, but - in truth - it is the bull and the bear that are moving China into the 21st Century.  So help us God.