The nature of global power is changing, says deputy director of policy planning at the US State Department, and that’s good news for America.
Anne-Marie Slaughter argues that in “the emerging networked world of the twenty-first century … the state with the most connections will be the central player, able to set the global agenda and unlock innovation and sustainable growth. Here, the United States has a clear and sustainable edge.” Less relevant will be the hierarchies that yesterday underpinned power and promoted prosperity. Today and tomorrow, diverse and multiple linkages will be the key. With its tradition of welcoming newcomers and its cultures of openness and curiosity, the US should flourish, she says, perhaps more than any other country.
What is true of global power is also true for local economies engaged in the world. But Slaughter’s view of the non-hierarchic and networked future may not seem so rosy for particular localities in the United States. Consider Indiana, whose great story of foreign economic relations has been the nurturing of Japanese investment into the state beginning in the 1980s.
Larry Ingraham carefully details how Gov. Robert Orr and Lt. Governor John Mutz courted Japanese business leaders, bankers, and policymakers … while convincing their Hoosier constituents that opening to the world and to Japan would be the best way to reinvent the state’s struggling economy. It was a masterpiece of enlightened political leadership that was perfectly attuned to the geo-economic realities of the 1980s: the nature of Japanese businesses, the automotive industry, US-Japanese political relations, devolution of economic authority to the states. The times were ideal for skillful hierarchic leadership from Indiana to navigate in a hierarchic Japanese business culture, to negotiate with hierarchic political and economic leaders.
Times have changed. Compare China today with Japan in the 1980s. Investment flows predominantly (but not exclusively) from the US to China. Formal and informal political decision-making power in China is fragmented, scattered across hundreds of local, provincial, and national government and Party officials. No one industry dominates the way the automotive sector did in relations with Japan the 1980s. And for businesses, the number of access points into the Chinese economy is exponentially greater than into the Japanese economy in the 1980s.
It would be easy to feel pessimistic about Indiana’s ability to flourish in this new networked global economy. The percentage of immigrants in the state (about four percent) is lower than the average for the country as a whole (about 12.5 percent). So even though Chinese make up about the same percentage of foreign born in Indiana as in the rest of the US (about 5 percent of the foreign born come from China), Chinese immigrants make up a smaller share of the state’s total population.
Part of Indiana’s connections to China results from its economic relations. Large multinationals such as Cummins and Eli Lilly have had operations in China for decades, and
China is becoming an increasingly important destination for the state’s exports, which have increased fivefold since 1997.
The Indiana Economic Development Corporation’s figures show that China has cracked into the top five of several important Indiana products … and its demand for the products has been growing strong.
Indiana may not be a large destination for the Chinese capital encouraged to invest abroad as part of the Chinese government’s “Go Out Policy,” but there are an increasing number of instances:
Vanguard Trailer in Monon,
Coupled Products in Columbia City,
LHP Technologies in Columbus.
People and trade are only part of the connections linking Indiana and China. The large state universities are renowned for their programs of study and research in China and Asia. This tradition is being focused by the Confucius Institutes partially funded by the Chinese government at
IUPUI,
Purdue, and
Valparaiso: these Institutes are intended to stimulate and strengthen cultural and business ties for local communities and the universities.
IUPUI is fleshing out its strategic partnership with Sun Yat Sen University, while Indiana State University’s economics department uses its partnership with Liaoning University to enhance its clout in China and in Indiana.
The large universities are adding specialized programs such as IU’s Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business, or the Chinese Law Program at the law school of IU-Indianapolis.
Every year more of the state’s smaller state colleges and private universities add Chinese language programs. As can be seen with Asian Programs and the Museum of Master Au Ho-nien at the University of Indianapolis, the state’s small schools and universities often have all-but-unknown gems of resources.
That “all-but-unknown” part could be trouble, however. It is not that the state lacks connections to China. But simply having connections may not be enough.
If Richard Longworth is correct in his analysis of the Midwest’s hammering by the forces of globalization, Indiana’s culture and economy are poorly prepared for the 21st century. The state’s business and political leaders lack the nimbleness, the creativity, and the connections needed to take advantage of opportunities and avoid risks.
The state needs more connections to China in order to flourish economically. But we also need to connect the connections. It is widely acknowledged that universities and businesses must be better partners … thus the Kelley Schools of IU-Bloomington and IUPUI have rapidly blooming programs that place their students and recent graduates in Chinese companies as well as American firms doing business with China. Smaller business schools are trying to do the same, often with few resources or connections. But this is just a start: universities large and small have a wide range of connections with universities outside their business schools.
Looking off campuses turns up many other connections to China: churches, ethnic clubs and associations, nonprofit organizations, museums, high school classes, adoptive families, and so on. Many carry on their work in isolation from organizations that share their interest. If Indiana is to take full advantage of opportunities, these connections must connect with each other, they should become thicker.
Just forming new connections and nurturing thicker connections between Indiana and China is just part of the challenge. Those connections have to be mobilized to solve problems, in Indiana and in China. The connections have to be smarter. Anne-Marie Slaughter imagines the networked future for the United States.
In this century, global power will increasingly be defined by connections — who is connected to whom and for what purposes. … Imagine, for example, a U.S. economy powered by green technology and green infrastructure. Communities of American immigrants from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East will share this new generation of products and services with villages and cities in their home countries. Innovation will flow in both directions. In the United States, universities will be able to offer courses in truly global classrooms, relying on their international students and faculty to connect with educational institutions abroad through travel, the Internet, and videoconferencing. Artists of all kinds will sit at the intersection of culture, learning, and creative energy. U.S. diplomats and other U.S. government officials will receive instant updates on events occurring around the world. They will be connected to their counterparts abroad, able to quickly coordinate preventive and problem-solving actions with a range of private and civic actors.
Indiana’s challenge is to create an infrastructure that allows us to do this at home.
