94 American CEOs Call on President Obama and President Xi Jinping to Prioritize Bilateral Investment Treaty Discussions during Upcoming State Visit | US China Business Council
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During my recent trip to China I had occasion to observe that China is continuing down the road to moving its model, towards a managed market economy and integrated into a new Asian half of an emerging Eurasia linked to the Middle East and Africa.
There are many challenges but the biggest is to find a relationship with the USA which enables change and progress to happen for the benefits of both nations and the world.
It is not easy, as history shows, for dominant nations and a rising nation to find the formula for positive outcomes but it is also not beyond capability of both China and the USA.
This letter shows the way. It is signed by 94 of the most powerful business people in the USA. It competes with concepts of military confrontation and battles. It is a very positive basis for the way forward and shows the European weakness for the moment as it is obstructed by several problems.
In 1972, 1992 and 2002 the USA moved before Europe and it looks this may happen again.
Have a read:
The authors of this letter can see that military solutions which cost over 100 million lives in the 20th century are not the way to solutions in the 21st and 22nd century.
During my trip I had occasion to assess the recent challenges to the Chinese economy, the Silk roads and several other areas. My conclusion is that this transition of China is as major as that of the 80’s but that they can manage it. We would do ourselves a disservice if we believed that the only way forward in the global challenges is based on Western Enlightenment.
Why? Because we may well find that is wrong and be left behind by a changing set of winds. Europe is very distracted by Greece, by the tragedy of the refugees, by the Ukraine and the problems of unity of progress.
We may find that President Xi’s visit to the USA is leading to a new way. That his later visit to the UK is a great opportunity to be part of change.
We may find that China is heading successfully and the way forward is by measures such as those contemplated in the letter.
The advent of a Bilateral Investment Treaty between the USA and China, the emergence in China of a new model of managed market economy with a welfare state largely funded outside the State, and a Silk Road leading to the creation of a new Asia linked to Europe and Africa by high speed rail, conventional rail, highways and sea may be the new world that is beckoning.
If it is , and I think it is , then nations and regions need to adjust their sights and the sooner the better.
Stephen