I’ve just finished reading what is by far the best book I have read this year, Henry Kissinger’s On China.Kissinger is probably the most experienced statesman of our times, and he is as well a perceptive analyst and a very fine writer, and his topic, China, does not lack for interest either. The combination makes for compelling reading.For it’s clear that the relationship between the US and China is likely to be a key driving force in the world economy and its politics throughout the first half of the 21st century, if not beyond.
And from our perspective today, we can see two quite different options for the future. The idea of the “duel of the century” is a phrase taken from Chinese PLA Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu, who is also a professor at China’s National Defense University. Kissinger offers detailed analysis to Liu’s viewpoint, and agrees that a difficult and protracted duel is certainly a possibility. But he also explores the possibility of a much different sort of relationship between the two superpowers, the notion of co-evolution, wherein both countries “pursue their domestic imperatives, cooperating where possible, and adjust their relations to minimize conflict” (p. 526) in the context of a Pacific Community.As events unfold in the coming decades, they will do so in a situation where both sides are under increasing pressures. As Kissinger points out, “Part of China’s spectacular growth [in recent decades] was attributable to its good fortune that there existed a fairly easy correspondence between China’s huge pool of young, then largely unskilled labor – which had been ‘unnaturally’ cut off from the world economy during the Mao years – and the Western economies, which were on the whole wealthy, optimistic, and highly leveraged on credit, with cash to buy Chinese-made goods. Now that China’s labor force is becoming older and more skilled (causing some basic manufacturing jobs to move to lower-wage countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh) and the West is entering a period of austerity, the picture is far more complicated.” (p 524)The development of the Chinese economy is not an idle pursuit for us at InnovationLabs. We have partnered for the last 3 years with Shanghai’s China Institute for Innovation to bring advanced training in innovation principles and methods to Shanghai, Bejing, and a handful of additional cities.We’ve also worked successfully with many companies in China, including the Chinese operations of multinationals such as France Telecom, Bayer, Alcatel, Kone, and General Electric, as well as Chinese companies including Haier, Li-Ning, COFCO, and many others. Through this work, we have come to appreciate the pleasures and complexities of life and work in China, and we have made many friends of whom we are very fond.As a result of these experiences, and most recently, InnovationLabs has signed an agreement with the Chinese government through which we have become the “official and exclusive supplier of innovation training” to the Chinese government and its powerful state-owned companies.Beginning in early 2012 we will be offering three innovation training programs in China, Certified Innovation Manager™, Certified Innovation Professional™, and Certified Chief Innovation Officer™. An overview of these programs is available on our web site, and we’re now in the process of translating all of the materials into Chinese in preparation for next year’s debut. Our latest book, The Innovation Master Plan, will be a central text book for this program.Once these programs are up and running in China, we will work to make them available elsewhere, including of course North America and Europe, as well as in the major developed and developing nations of the world.As all of this unfolds, we will therefore have a front row seat in the continuing saga of the relationship between the US and China, and in our modest way we may also be able to influence the path toward co-evolution, as we work to build stronger ties of knowledge and expertise that will hopefully draw the two peoples together. Notes: A more detailed version of this blog post has been sent to our newsletter subscribers. If you'd like to receive our newsletter, please sign up to the upper right on this page.The photo shows Shanghai at night, taken from the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center, and shows Jin Mao Tower, the Oriental Pearl communications tower, the Huangpu River, and Shanghai's famous Bund district.
