By JIM GENARO

China has seen staggering growth since it began to privatize its economy in 1978. But that expansion eventually will be reined in by market forces and environmental limits, according to Dr. Jim Lenburg, president of the World Affairs Council of Western North Carolina.

A former professor of history, emeritus, at Mars Hill College, Lenburg discussed “U.S.-China Trade Policy” at a meeting of WAC-WNC last Monday. About 75 people attended the discussion.

Since beginning the transition to a market-based economy, China has undergone a “30-year industrial revolution that took Western Europe and the United States some 200 years to undertake,” Lenburg said.

Today, the country is the world’s third-largest economy after the U.S. and Japan, he noted. However, economists project that by 2040, it will surpass both.

But China’s rise to power is particularly troubling to some economists because of its significant trade deficit with the U.S. — currently about $233 billion.

Furthermore, China has significant investments in the U.S., with more than $1 trillion in currency reserves.

China’s growth can also be seen in its expanding infrastructure, Lenburg said. The country is in the process of building a massive highway system that, when completed, will cover 10,000 more miles than the U.S. Interstate system.

One of the main factors driving China’s growth is the ability of manufacturers there to provide cheap goods by paying “industrial-revolution wages” to its workers, Lenburg told the audience.

Furthermore, Chinese companies often lower production costs by cutting corners on safety measures, he noted.

But the trade imbalance is not the only point of concern for American officials. Intellectual property rights have been a point of contention between the two countries, with U.S. officials charging that poor enforcement of anti-piracy laws in China results in “billions of dollars in sales lost” for American companies, Lenburg said.

The Bush administration has filed two complaints in recent years with the World Trade Organization about Chinese practices, including one case about intellectual property and another alleging that Chinese subsidies for auto-parts manufacturers undercut the ability of U.S. companies to compete. The U.S. won the latter of these cases, prompting Beijing to drop its subsidies.

But despite the large trade imbalance between the U.S. and China, Lenburg said he sees change on the horizon. “I think there are signs that China’s large trade deficit cannot be sustained in the long run,” he told the audience. “China is facing a number of environmental crises that are absolutely staggering in their immensity.”

Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, he noted, and by European Union standards, only 1 percent of the country’s urban population breathes safe air.

Furthermore, precious resources, such as water, are being depleted in China’s push to industrialize. Since 1985, China’s Yellow River — which used to be responsible for massive flooding on a regular basis — has failed to flow all the way to the ocean most years, he said.

These environmental and resource-driven limitations will eventually slow China’s massive growth, Lenburg told the audience.

However, a more complex issue also is undermining Chinese progress, he said — an ethical vacuum that allows rampant corruption to flourish.

Traditionally, Confucianism provided the ethical framework for Chinese society, in much the same way that Judeo-Christian ethics guide American culture, Lenburg said.

However, that framework was supplanted by Mao’s communism with its ideals of the “new Chinese man and woman,” he explained.

When the socialist ideals of Mao’s revolution were discarded in China’s rush to modernization, nothing came in to take their place, leaving only “a kind of ‘the end justifies the means’ materialism” to guide Chinese society, he added.

The result is rampant corruption that permeates every level of Chinese government, leading to a “devolution of power” from the authoritarian central government. Local leaders in China today hold considerable power with virtually no checks and balances, he said.

“If nobody’s watching you, why be honest — especially if there’s no ethical system to give context?” he asked.

In the wake of rampant abuses by local officials, thousands of protests have sprung up all over the country. By one official estimate, China in recent years has experienced more than 74,000 riots, demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience that involved more than 3.7 million people.

Given all of these pressures, Lenburg predicted that China will “continue to grow, but in a smaller scale” over the coming years.

Lenburg then answered questions from audience members.

“What can the U.S. do to protect its interests?” a man asked.

Lenburg answered with his own question. “Do we want to start making toys again?” he asked, rhetorically. He said that he did not think a return to a manufacturing-based economy was the solution for the U.S., but rather that it should focus on educational efforts.

“If we did more to provide education for our young people, they could find new jobs in the new economy,” he told the questioner.

“Do you foresee any way that the U.S. and China could get themselves in a war?” a man asked.

Trade between the two nations is “a symbiotic relationship,” Lenburg replied. “It’s in the interest of both nations ... to do it in a cooperative manner. Nobody wins if they do it through conflict.”

However, he added that if Taiwan were to unilaterally declare its independence from China and the U.S. recognized it formally, it could lead to a war, though he noted this is unlikely to happen.

A man asked how strong Chinese nationalism is, and whether it is a sentiment that is generated from “the top-down” or from below.

“I think it’s both,” Lenburg answered. “For several hundred years, China saw itself as the center of the universe. Then the westerners came in and turned that all around.”

Foreign imperialism, culminating in the brutal occupation of China by Japan during World War II, has reinforced a strong sense of nationalism in China. Since the implementation of economic reforms, nationalism has replaced Marxism as the dominant ideology, Lenburg added.

Another man, who said he had worked in China as a teacher, called the Chinese educational system “abysmal.” He went on to ask whether Lenburg could “see any change coming from the Chinese educational system that will put pressure on us” to compete?

Lenburg responded by saying that during his time as a college professor in China, he observed “almost an inbred thing in Chinese education toward rote memory, because of the number of characters in the language.”

Furthermore, corruption is pervasive in the school system there, he said, as evidenced by the unusually high grades that students from influential families would get on test scores, even when those students were among his worst students. Cheating, he said, is ubiquitous in China.

A man asked whether the abuses workers in China face are indicative of a lack of value for human life.

Lenburg answered no, saying that a Londoner visiting a meat packing plant in Chicago in 1890 might have walked away with the impressions that Americans lack any respect for human life.

“I think it’s a systematic problem, not an ethical problem,” he elaborated. “I would be the first to say we ought not to throw stones.”