Reporter’s notebook: Many competing visions of China
WASHINGTON — China has become an increasingly important story for Texas since President Donald Trump launched a trade war last summer, threatening one of the most important markets for the state’s energy and agricultural industries.
So when I received an email from a public relations firm in New York last summer asking if I’d be interested in joining a trip to China organized by the nonprofit China United States Exchange Foundation — long before the coronavirus outbreak grabbed headlines — I was immediately interested.
Established by Tung Chee-hwa, a Hong Kong shipping magnate who was later appointed chief executive of Hong Kong by the Chinese government, the foundation runs regular trips to China for American journalists, academics and politicians, with the hope of improving understanding of China within the United States.
After some paperwork and discussion with my editors about potential conflicts of interest — we decided we would reimburse the foundation for the cost of the trip — I boarded a flight in Washington, D.C., in mid-November for the 18-hour trip to Beijing.
So began a 12-day tour that took me and three other journalists from the heavily surveilled streets of Beijing to a farming village turned half-empty city named Binhai. Then it was on to Suzhou, a clean-energy and biotech manufacturing hub — with a passing resemblance to Silicon Valley— and Shanghai, a modern metropolis where futuristic skyscrapers tower over 19th-century colonial architecture left from the French and British authorities who once occupied the city.
Like most everyone visiting China for the first time, I was shocked by its scale and frenetic pace. In Suzhou, the highways are lined with neon lights, like something out of a science-fiction movie. Cash and credit cards are out of fashion, replaced by money apps that even can be used to make donations to beggars wearing QR codes around their necks.
And with construction cranes dotting the horizon, there’s little sign it’s stopping anytime soon.
After stepping off a train in Shanghai — as other trains zoomed by at more than 200 mph — I explained to a woman from Beijing how governments in the United States and Europe were struggling to build high-speed trains because of debates around land rights and costs. She laughed and said, “Democracy does not equal efficiency.”
As we made our way down the coast, there was meeting after meeting with Chinese officials wanting to talk about the trade dispute, something they were eager to bring to an end as long it didn’t mean doing away with their protectionist economic policies, as the United States and Europe want them to do.
Meanwhile, the foreign businessmen we met were simultaneously excited to take advantage of China’s fast-growing economy and wary that the government would pull the rug out from under them at any moment.
That image of a manipulative, protectionist state is very different from how the Chinese government likes to present itself, with its ranks of Western-educated officials and tuxeoded attendants welcoming visitors to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing.
As a trade attorney explained upon my return to Washington, there are many competing visions of China, none entirely correct or incorrect.