Confessions of An Economic Refugee

Here’s an interesting quote:

America… America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions. In the days of the free market, when our country was a top industrial power…there was accountability…

…. Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), Wall Street (1987), Oliver Stone (dir.)

What were you thinking I was referring to?

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I had the opportunity to attend a local shindig hosted by local asian (re: Chinese) silicon valley association recently.

The event was well attended  by all sorts folks along the asian spectrum including: Local Asian Sili-valley moguls, local media personalities, Taiwanese business tycoons, Mainlander business tycoons, Mainlander gov’t officials even, VC’s, lawyers, ABC/CBC wannabes such as myself, Taiwanese/Mainlander wannabes such as a few folks I met and the like.  A veritable who’s who of yellow power – local, foreign, private, public or otherwise.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

The most interesting moment of the night came during the Q&A session following speech of the keynote speaker, who happens to be an accomplished SiliValley entrepreneur and VC with business interests in PRC.  A member of the audience, a caucasian gentleman raised the question of human rights and oppression in Xianjian.

*Sigh* I will spare the usual and cliche commentary on the laudable idealist cast as naive and unwelcome interjectionist.   The question I want to raise is, as the speaker, how would respond in this situation – what would you say and what would you do?  I’ll let  you think a little about this first…….

…..

Done?  Okay – well here’s what actually played out:

The speaker responded first by asking how many times the audience member had visited XianJian region to which the audience reply he had visited Beijing and Shanghai but was unable to get further due to government interference and went back to issue of human rights in China.

At this point, the speaker, ostensibly, lost it  (I’m still trying to figure out whether this was sincere or calculated) and went on (relatively short) rant on the validity of human rights in the US and generally arguing that while the US had the concept of rule of law, it still chose to conveniently ignore it whenever it wants to and citing, in no particular order, the establishment of America that condoned slavery, the internment of Japanese americans during WWII, the pre-1965 immigration act that practiced systemic racism.  The speaker then went on to say that had the audience member visited XianJian in 1965, 1980 and present day he would see marked improvements in each progressive visit and concluded simply with "These things take time," to which the audience responded with enthusiastic applause, ending the discussion.   Score one point for the yellow man over the nosy westerner.

Well that would be tidy conclusion to that story… 

…except for the fact that the whole interaction weighs on me as I find myself rerunning the entire interaction over and over again in my head and asking how I would respond if placed in a similar situation.

Here are a few things that struck me in that interaction:

1) There are mainland officials in the audience and the speaker does have economic interests in China, and afterall,  Even an sanguine response to the audience member would not be met acceptable to the PRC officials which at the least dictated a spirited response. This is a business conference on how to make money in China either topic would itself demand pragmatism.

2) Having said that, this America where, ostensibly, freedom of speech is a legal right so simply throwing the audience member out would be unacceptable not to mention bad form.

3) The speaker’s basic argument is simplistically that "Rome wasn’t built in a day" true but it does sound like a cop out.  If everyone said that, things would never get better.  Too often Politicians and administrators hold that out as a convenient excuse.  Political change often occurs with the fringe butting heads with the powers that be and changing public opinion such that they are no only the fringe but the generally accepted mainstream.  Notable examples in recent memory would be environmentalism, raciscm and now acceptance of homosexuals.

4) It was ironic for the caucausian person to be dissenting minority in a sea of yellow people.  In America, the situation is usually the opposite.

5) It wasn’t explicitly mentioned the recent Yahoo incident where Yahoo released the identity of a Chinese dissident to gov’t officials leading to his arrest.  Yahoo simply said that when operating in local jurisdiction, local laws had to be observed.  Similarly, on several occasions, the speaker also stressed the importance of adhering to local laws.  But what is local laws are unjust and oppressive?

So how would you handle this situation?

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