I'm reading Nixon and Mao by Margaret MacMillan. Until the year 2000, Nixon was my least favorite president, but as I read this recounting of his 1972 trip to what we then called "Red China," I cannot help but acknowledge the greatness of what he achieved by being the first US president to set foot in China. It really was a trip that changed the world.
I recall the controversy of the time. Some TV reporter--either Dan Rather or Sam Donaldson--stuck a microphone in front of Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser who had engineered the trip."Mr. Secretary," he was asked, "what does the United States expected to gain out of this China junket?" The implication was that the trip was nothing but political PR. Many of us suspected that it was no more than a stunt.
Kissinger had hardly been paying the reporter attention as he walked down some hallway of government, but on this question, he stopped. He turned to the reporter and spoke to him in the same tone one might might use to address a slow-learning child. "When we do business with a country, we never go to war against it." he said, glaring for emphasis then walking away.
It was a one-liner that changed my world view. First it taught me that people I do not like or trust, sometimes speak universal truths. It was a statement that made me realize that people I oppose are capable of doing great deeds.
It also gave me a new respect for trade and the human condition. In fact, there can be no freedom without economic freedom and that lesson resounds to me when I look at China today.
But mostly, following Nixon and Kissinger to China, made me incurably curious about the world's most populous country. Over the years, every time I thought I understood China, something new would happen to alter my thinking. China is simply too big, too complex and too rapidly changing for me to presume to have a universal statement about the place that could endure longer than a few weeks.
In 2005, I interviewed China's first blogger, Isaac Mao via email. He was the first person I talked to inside China and his answers contained surprises for me. Last year, I met him face-to-face over a three-hour lunch in San Francisco. We hit it off extremely well. He once repainted my understanding of social media and entrepreneurialism in China. He also let me understand how very rapidly China is changing. In the two years since we had talked, the number of Chinese bloggers had grown from 1.2 million to 25 million. Now, a year later there are nearly 50 million bloggers.
This is where one of those interesting triangulations takes place. In the past few months, through Twitter, then in real life, i have come to know the amazing Christine Lu, who along with Elliot Ng and Janet Carmosky have been working almost nonstop to launch The China Business Network (TCBN), an organization that aspires to be a catalyst in business networking between China and the West.
I have accepted their invitation to go to China to speak as one of the international speakers for CNBloggercon, in Guangzhou Nov. 16-17. The conference committee is led by my friend Isaac. More than 500 of China's top bloggers are expected to attend and I feel honored to be among the very few international speakers addressing the group.
I'm also going to get the chance to see some of the country. I will be part of a small group of Westerners that TCBN has assembled to visit and talk with Chinese entrepreneurs in Beijing and Shanghai. TCBN has also agreed to bake in enough time to see a few of the wonders, such as the Great Wall and Forbidden City. I am certain that this brief journey will whet, but not satisfy, my curiosity. I expect this trip will change me in ways that I cannot yet imagine.
It has taken a good-sized global village to put all the parts of this event together. Edelman Digital is the lead sponsor. Web2Asia and CNReviews.com are TCBN's China partners. I am grateful to them all.
One closing thought: Current relations between the US and China can be described as bumpy at best. Yet, they are the best they've been in my lifetime. I think they will get much, MUCH better during the lives of my grandchildren. This is indeed because countries whose citizens engage in business with each other come to interdepend on each other and this is a good thing in a great many ways.
