USA-China. Keep Talking.

Chinese President Hu is visiting the United States and there's a lot of coverage, chatter and opinion about just what condition our relations are in.

China is well on its way to becoming an economic super power. When the financial markets in China sneeze, we get a cold.

Pass the Kleenex.

We've come a long, long way since President Nixon made his historic trip to China in 1972. Another milestone happened when the British turned over control of Hong Kong in 1984.

Today we get everything from Pandas to iPads (At least manufactured there) from China. Chinese labor is cheap. I can't imagine what an iPad, although American designed, would cost if manufactured here. As for the Pandas, I have family going to China this fall just to play with the little buggers.

But back to the topic at hand, it's a tense relationship now and has been all along. After the Tienanmen Massacre there was demand to completely cut off relations with China. My friend and political mentor, and at the time United States Senator Alan K. Simpson disagreed.

Simpson told me that if anything it was a time to increase communication, especially in the way of one on one dialog between the two countries through student exchanges and business. He reasoned, thoughtfully as always, that if we could talk at all levels it could only help. We did exactly that and all in all, it's worked out pretty well.

Today the big issue is all the money we owe China. Make that a huge issue. We owe China trillions of dollars and apparently there is no plan in place to pay it back. That's our fault, not China's. China is artificially messing with the value of it's currency, which is messing up the value of our dollar. That's their fault.

China has lots of faults, not the least of which are the personal freedoms we take for granted which don't exist in China.

So it's best we keep talking, that our students go there and theirs come here. It's best people from China come visit us, and we visit them. It's amazing what happens when regular folks get to know each other, regardless of nationality. Good things happen when you start a conversation.

Brian Olson
Conversation Starters Public Relations
"We start the conversation about you"