Students offer incense to Confucius for good luck on their exams.

Americans who have not been fortunate enough to visit China recently do not have a true sense of what life in China is like. Our cultural stereotype of China as an economically depressed communist backwater full of uneducated peasants and factory workers is not true even out in the rural regions (where it is not uncommon to find an internet café), let alone in the thoroughly modern cities.

Americans need to know that though China’s political system is radically different from our own, China’s economic system is now thoroughly capitalist.

Americans also need to recognize that China is a global economic competitor with two major advantages over the United States:

1. The scale of China’s population is immense compared with our own. A small Chinese city like Suzhou boasts six million people, while Shanghai and Beijing have 16 and 15 million people respectively. The rural and suburban workforce (and yes, China does have suburban sprawl) is immense and Western corporations are taking advantage of this labor force (along with the lower standard of living in China) by shifting their manufacturing bases to China.
2. The Chinese are motivated, hard workers determined to make China a global economic power. Chinese students are pushing themselves to work harder and achieve more than their American counterparts. One Chinese student we met told us that America’s economic dominance is nothing more than a paper tiger. I met third graders in Southern China who spoke fluent English — how many American third graders are learning how to speak foreign languages in their schools?

How can Americans hope to maintain an economic advantage over the intense competition coming from China?

First, we need to improve our broken education system. American schools have the potential to be stronger than those in China. Chinese students are extremely diligent workers, but their curriculum consists largely of rote “drill and kill” test preparation. The Chinese system is forced to rely on nationwide standardize testing to measure its students because there are so many students to measure. Chinese universities use only test results to determine a student’s acceptance. America should stop focusing so much energy on similar mass testing, and recognize that the strength of our system is that students learn both skills and how to think analytically and creatively. Instead of focusing on tests, policy makers should focus on what studies show is key to student performance: decreasing the student to teacher ration in the classroom. Here the Chinese could never hope to match us.

Second, we need to demand that our leaders be visionary and imagine a post-industrial American workforce. Those manufacturing and production jobs we have lost are not coming back. What will America’s new role be in the global economy? How will average Americans make a living wage and ensure a better livelihood for their children? We need to ask these difficult questions and call for thoughtful answers and realistic plans from our leaders that have the best interest of the average American worker at heart.

Finally, we should allow more Chinese students to study in America and make it easier for them to stay here after school. Currently, visa restrictions make it difficult for Chinese students to come abroad to study in American universities and especially difficult for them to take jobs here after graduation. Having more Chinese students in American universities will build good will between our countries and, when those students return to China, will help spread the values of American democracy abroad. Our students should be forming relationships with the Chinese now, so that we better understand them as competitors and can forge cooperative links between our countries. More importantly, we need to encourage Chinese to stay in America so that they enrich our country with their contributions and strong work ethic.

Americans must feel a sense of urgency about our future position in the world and not complacency or entitlement. We must have more realistic views of the world around us — other countries know about our way of life and are learning our language, so should we be learning theirs. Our dominant position in the global economic and political realm is not a given; China and other countries across the globe are vying to gain the wealth and prosperity that many Americans take for granted. If America does not view these countries as equal competitors then we have already lost the race.

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