Derek Scruggs

US Says China Must Address its Intentions: How it’s Power Will Be Used Is Of Concern

I just got back from a month in China. My wife is Chinese, so we stayed in the homes of friends & family, not hotels and tourist areas. Though that hardly makes me an expert, I feel like I got to see more of the “real” China than the average tourist or even State Department muckety mucks.

While there I engaged in a friendly debate with my brother-in-law, who is a member of the Communist party and an employee of the ministry of finance. I have no idea whether his views are mainstream or not, but he clearly thinks of the USA as an expansionist military aggressor. I argued that at least our military adventures are checked by democracy (though some would say the last election disproved that), but he didn’t buy it. So I pointed out that all the financial entanglement between the US and China (we buy their stuff, they loan us the money to do it) made a war between us exceedingly unlikely, at least compared to 30 years ago. He agreed this was probably true. Nonetheless, we were pretty much diametrically opposed on everything else.

However, he made at least one good point: if you look at a map, China is literally surrounded by the US military or its proxies. We have:

• A base in S. Korea
• A base in Japan
• Taiwan with high-tech weapons supplied by the US
• A base in Afghanistan
• A base in Kyrgyzstan
• A base in Tajikistan

He also talked about the US spy plane that was shot down over Hainan island in 2001. He pointed out that there are no Chinese spy planes flying off the coast of Florida.

I’m not saying I think we should give China carte blanche to expand as they see fit – it is, after all, a dictatorship that is unaccountable to its people (I pointed this out to my brother-in-law). But if the US were surrounded like this, how would we react?

Aside: as much hand wringing there is in the US about outsourcing to China, there’s just as much there about being too dependent on foreign capital.

As most people know, piracy is rampant in China. In addition to the hundreds of Mickey and Snoopy knock-offs, I also saw a huge billboard on the side of a clothing store that showed Bill Clinton shaking hands with the store’s owner. Something tells me they didn’t pay Bubba a promotional fee. And neither are these guys.

Hat Tip: China White

Lately I’ve gotten more interested in what’s going on at the college level. Sites like Facebook, ManiaTV and CollegeHumor.com are attacking the 18–25 segment with gusto and having some success. The growth of media in the last 10–15 years has been staggering, and today’s students are smack in the middle of the biggest changes.

But what about all the alumni? My alma mater sends me dead-tree publications a couple times a year and has an e-newsletter that, while informative, is mostly propaganda about all the awards and research grants the professors have won. That’s nice, but I’m also curious about what is actually happening on campus.

When I was in school I read the Daily Northwestern every day, so of course that was conduit to all the campus news. But I haven’t read it since I moved out of Evanston 13 years ago, so I’ve really lost touch with the campus.

(Yeah, I know – “Get a life.” Of course I have other priorities and interests now, but I really enjoyed my college days and would like to maintain a connection.) 

So I was happy to see that they’ve started offering RSS feeds.Woo hoo! This has huge potential. If I were head of alumni relations, I would promote the heck out of this. If alumni feel more connected to the campus— really connected at the campus level—they’re much more likely to donate.

I just returned last night from a month-long trip to China (more on that later). I was out of the country when Katrina hit and so didn’t experience the wall-to-wall media coverage that ensued. However, I did follow what was happening via Google News, so I think I have a reasonably good sense of the situation.

In any case, the only reason I mention this is I wanted to point you to a great example of helping people affected by Katrina – MarketingSherpa’s Hurricane Katrina Resources Page for Marketing, Advertising, & PR Professionals. Rather than put up another Red Cross donation form like those that have (rightly) blanketed the web, Marketing Sherpa reached out to their readership and asked them for links to resources specific to their industry. The result is a ton of information that is useful to potential donors and recipients alike.

I’ve always been impressed with the consistently high quality product turned out by MarketingSherpa. This is another exceptional effort from one of the most important voices in Internet marketing.