Don't let the Chinese beat us

An important lesson I learned while in China recently is that while the Chinese have not embraced freedom, they have certainly wrapped their arms around free enterprise. Their economy is booming, and they are betting on the profit motive to maintain momentum, but they are investing in education to sustain the boom in the long term.

The Chinese are pouring public resources into education. Science and math are emphasized, and already almost twice as many engineers and computer scientists are graduating in China as in the United States. Perhaps of even greater significance to us is that English is a requirement throughout their educational system. The Chinese are thinking globally, and English is the commercial language of the world.

In the United States, education has been the great equalizer. While minorities and women have had to wait longer for educational opportunity, the generally accepted role of public schools has been to make the pursuit of success — the American dream — possible for everyone.

This is the reason that communism could never find a foothold here. The utopian dream of the classless society was never a realistic alternative for people who lived in freedom and free enterprise. Equal opportunity had a far greater appeal to masses yearning to be free than equality of classes imposed at the point of a gun.

Until recently, broad educational opportunity was as unwelcome in China as private enterprise. Traditionally opposition to publicly supported schools has not been encouraged in Europe, either. Educational equality was regarded as a mortal threat to the dominance of the upper classes there. That is why reforms there have gone in the direction of social welfare systems.

The European tradition, shared by rich and poor, is that government should ensure a decent standard of living for all its citizens. Americans believe more strongly that it is the duty of government to provide opportunity and the responsibility of each citizen to earn an appropriate standard of living.

The world economy grew about 5 percent in 2005. Our rate of growth in the United States was 4 percent. In the Euro community, plagued by mass unemployment, it was barely 1 percent. In India it was 8 percent. In China it was 10 percent. While the correlation is not a direct one, it certainly appears that opportunity and freedom out produce the welfare state.

The Chinese clearly understand this connection. They have recently discovered what has long been known in the U.S. — that there is enormous productive power in a system of free enterprise in which participation and opportunity are not limited to an educated few. So far that is where the similarity ends.

Scientific researchers in China are allowed broad latitude to think, experiment and discover. But politically, they must let their government do their thinking for them. Free inquiry is necessary for good science and it is also necessary for good government. In China there is a vibrant market place for trade and commerce, but no market place for the free exchange of ideas.

Lincoln said that no system can endure which is half slave and half free. If the logic of that analogy can be applied to China, then China will probably become more free because that is the direction in which it is moving. Certainly that would be good for the Chinese people. That might not make much difference in global competition, however.

Today the United States produces about one fifth of the world's economic product, and China is far behind. But we have a national debt that totals nearly $30,000 for every U.S. citizen, and China holds the paper on an increasing amount of that debt. The individual savings rate in the United States is less than 1 percent. In China it is 45 percent. The Chinese are financing their own expansion while we borrow from them to subsidize our consumption.

The world's top-10 research universities are now located in the United States. Education experts project that they will be evenly divided between here and Asia within a quarter of a century. Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently commented, "When I compare our schools to what I see abroad, I'm terrified for our workforce of tomorrow."

The Chinese are trying to beat us at our own game. Our lead is wide and their problems are far greater than ours. They can only succeed if we let them. We have to demonstrate more economic discipline in the management of both our public and private finances. And, we can't remain complacent in the critical importance of education.

Bob Brown is the former Montana State Senate President and Secretary of State, and he is a Senior Fellow at the University of Montana's Center for the Rocky Mountain West.