Panelists say Michigan's economic future tied to China
Michigan's road to recovery may not run through the revitalization of Detroit, but through Bejing.
"(General Motors) has $4.2 billion in exports to China," said Zhigang Xing, deputy news editor of the China Daily. "And the CEO of Ford said the future of Ford is in China."
The economy, U.S.-Chinese diplomatic relations and differences in journalistic censorship were among the topics discussed by Xing in the forum, "Global Obligations: The Role of the U.S. and China," facilitated by journalism professor Jiafei Yin in the Maroon Room of the Bovee University Center.
Minnesota senior Todd Balazovic, who interned at the China Daily from January to August 2008, spoke with Xing and took questions on life and journalism in China.
Xing spoke mainly on the interdependence that now exists between the American and Chinese economies. Xing said that between 2000 and 2007, Michigan's exports to China rose by 521 percent, compared to just 27 percent for the rest of the world.
"Everyone realizes the need to cooperate with each other," he said.
Xing also said that China is the largest creditor of the United States, holding $739.6 billion in U.S. treasuries and in the U.S.'s second largest trade partner and is the third largest U.S. export market.
Human rights and living conditions are major problems in China, according to Xing. Sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China and about 400,000 Chinese citizens die of pollution related diseases each year.
Balazovic said the hardest part of adapting to journalistic life in China was adapting to the culture.
"It was a real struggle finding sources," he said.
Balazovic said that the censorship of the state-ran newspaper was an issue, but not much worse than the kind of censorship that occurs in American newsrooms.
"You find that a lot of the censorship occurs on the personal level," he said. "The U.S. media is more of a corporate censorship, the largest difference is the transparency in the censorship."
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