As a natural stone importer and distributor, one of the great privileges I have is traveling to different countries and getting exposed to different people and cultures outside the United States.
Over the years I have developed many great friendships and learned of how people live in developing and third world countries. This has been a great experience and has opened my eyes to many things about different peoples, cultures, and governments. I only wish that more Americans would venture out of the U.S. to discover the great big world around us and develop a different perspective of our relationship to and with our global neighbors.
As a baby boomer, I grew up in the sixties and was indoctrinated by the anti communist propaganda put out by our government and the press, and grew up very weary of the Soviets, Castro's Cuba, and of course the Great Communist China. The events of June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square, Beijing China attested to the ruthless leadership of the communist party in China and the stranglehold on the neck of freedom these dictators held on it's people. For decades since, I held a great distrust of China and was very reluctant to investigate business opportunities in the natural stone industry.
I remember being introduced to an American sales rep for a Chinese stone producer in the early eighties at an MIA Convention and wondering if this American was a "Double Agent," (was I paranoid or what?). There was a great amount of discussion among the fabricator community over concerns that the Chinese government used child labor to quarry blocks and fabricate slabs. As recently as 2008, I heard a report that China was sending processing ships to Brazil to buy blocks, and while en-route back to China, processing slabs in the hold of the ship, and dumping sludge in the ocean during the voyage. Once in port in China, the finished slabs were loaded into containers and shipped (at great discount) to the United States. I don't have any confirmation of this or other horrific stories, but the distrust remained.
For years as an importer I have been bombarded nightly with solicitations from Chinese trade companies trying to engage in business from across the Pacific Ocean. During the past five or six years, I have seen many U.S. companies begin to develop relationships with these Chinese companies as a competitive strategy in an increasingly competitive environment. Again, for many personal and patriotic reasons, I delayed for years in engaging with the Chinese. As the recent economic crisis has developed over the past few years, I too have had to respond to competitive impulses and began to investigate this option, albeit very reluctantly.
In 2009 I decided to travel to China to examine this sleeping giant of a country and to reinforce my prejudice against the government and its authoritarian leaders. I fully expected to find sub standard quality, processes and infrastructure in the stone industry. I was very, very (and I don't use very, very often) surprised to find a sophisticated dimensional stone industry with modern factories, systems, and processes. The education level of many of the sales and management personnel I dealt with rivals, and in some cases, exceeds many western cultures. The stone industry in China has its sights on taking over the dimensional stone industry and being the dominant force. Of course there remain many companies that have not embraced technology and remain in the stone age.
During this initial visit, I was amazed at how open and westernized the culture is. I saw no signs of overt control from a very authoritarian government "Big Brother." Certainly the government remains very much in control, and Central Planning is very much at work in the background, but it does not noticeably interfere with the everyday affairs of companies and staff. The workforce is very youthful and highly educated, and they are very interested in the culture of America and Western Europe.
Since my initial visit, I have returned to China and begun limited business relations on a few strategic materials and have found the relationships with most sales and production personnel to be very rewarding. The people are very friendly, hard working, savvy, and in some ways, more westernized than many in the United States, in a Chinese sort of way.
And here is the most glaring and potentially dangerous aspect of my observations. The youth of China have limited knowledge of the atrocities of the past as perceived from outside their country. They are highly educated as stated earlier, and have a passion for freedom that resembles the sentiments of the US Colonists. In fact, because the government in decades past, and continues to some extent to limit outside influences, the people (not the government) of China are extremely hungry for knowledge of the world and long for success and respect from outside their country. The Chinese people are extremely entrepreneurial. With government support, they are creating companies and industries at a rate surpassing the boom of the American Industrial Revolution.
As scores of peasant farmers flee the countryside for better paying factory jobs in the cities, they are immersed in new cultures with all the opportunities and vices that modern cities present. These masses of people are so hungry for a better life that they make great sacrifices to achieve them. They work longer and harder than most Americans, and much longer than Europeans. The work ethic is reminiscent of the early American Pioneers heading westward for a better way of life. Even though there is a form of universal heath care, the social safety net and entitlement mentality is noticeably absent in the everyday life of the Chinese people.
Americans have grown up with relative ease and success. Suffering and postponed gratification are not in our lexicon. Entitlements have become the mantra of a great segment of our society. We have become fat and lazy when compared to emerging cultures of the world. India and China are no longer "Sleeping Giants," they are devouring monsters and will certainly overtake America and Europe as productive and competitive forces in commerce. Americans better wake up to these harsh realities. The third world nations are educating their populace at vastly greater rates than Americans. India and China produce vastly more engineers and scientist than America. While blue collar unions and their membership wail about the outsourcing of jobs to these developing countries, Americans turn a deaf ear to the global competitive forces at work that require American companies to be competitive in a new global economy. Americans better get off their couches, put down the remote, and reinforce their skills and education to be able to compete in this new world. There is no stopping the course of these emerging countries as they hunger for success and recognition in the global marketplace. America has been warned for years that we need to change our perceptions of these developing societies. We need to expand our horizons and realize that there is a New, New World emerging in these countries that will not be turned back or denied the success and power that they crave.
Torin Dixon is a freelance writer and owner of Montana Stone Gallery, LLC http://montanastonegallery.com
")