A Los Angeles Times article discusses a comment by President Obama in his State of the Union speech where he said that Americans face a "Sputnik moment," essentially meaning a major challenge from another foreign superpower. In 1947, Russia beat the United States in the space race by being the first country to launch a satellite named Sputnick into orbit around earth. Russia's initial victory prompted the U.S. to move much faster in the race to explore space.
Obama's statement was intended to motivate Americans to rise to the economic challenges posed by China's rapidly expanding economy which challenges U.S. economic dominance of recent history. China became the world's second largest economy last year and is starting to assert its economic power more while the American economy, though still the largest, is lagging in growth.
Although probably not intended by Obama to be a comparison of the U.S. relationship with Russia and the current U.S./China relationship, any such comparison is probably a poor one. The U.S./Russia relationship during the Cold War was openly adversarial and confrontational, with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev saying "We will bury you." China, on the other hand, seems to be much more interested in cooperation with the U.S., as stated by President Hu Jintao during his recent American visit.
While President Obama may try to use China's economic rise as a tool to motivate (or scare) Americans, into believing that China is about to overtake the United States, most Chinese people don't seem to agree. From talking with Chinese people, the vast majority seem to recognize that the U.S. is still a much bigger economic power than China. They also seem to realize that China is still technologically behind the U.S. as well as some other nations and still needs to make significant improvements to be more competitive. For example Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at Beijing Institute of Technology is quoted as saying "Our system lacks creativity" . . . "The U.S. is a private sector. It will stimulate innovation. We may be temporarily ahead of America in the areas Obama mentioned, but to truly surpass the U.S., we have to reform our system."
While looking up a link for the term Sputnick for this post, I found out that sputnik means "co-traveler", "traveling companion." The rise of China does not necessarily have to mean the all of the United States. Although the U.S. and China will be competitors in some ways, they could also be co-travelers.
Posts
