Rising to the challenge?

This history all came to my mind as I read the story in today’s Washington
Post about the opening of the Shanghai
Expo. The Chinese are taking this event very seriously, as they usually do. They
get the symbolism.

From that story:

“The obvious conscious message is that China has arrived,”
said Jose Villarreal, a San Antonio lawyer recruited by the Obama
administration in July to salvage floundering U.S. plans for the Shanghai Expo.
“We are basically celebrating China’s emergence as a world power.”
Villarreal, who was named U.S. commissioner general to the event, joined
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in raising $61 million from U.S.
companies to finance the American pavilion, which — to China’s dismay — was
nearly abandoned at one point for lack of funds. “We were going through
one of the worst financial crises in history, and it was hard to get the
attention of corporate leaders,” Villarreal said. On Thursday, China
signaled its delight that the United States had finally gotten its act
together: President Hu Jintao visited the U.S. exhibit, met with
Mandarin-speaking American students who are serving as guides and
“congratulated us on completing our pavilion,” Villarreal said. For
China, money has been no object. Unlike the United States, which has begged for
private money to fund expos since 1991, when Congress made government funding
difficult, China dipped into the deep pockets of the state. It is spending $4.2
billion on the six-month Expo — and 10 times that if new roads, rail lines and
other infrastructure projects are included in the bill…The U.S. pavilion —
motto: “Rising to the Challenge” — features a movie house, a big room
filled with stands promoting the companies that are footing the bill and a fast-food
joint run by Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut. The United States has also
signed some big-name acts, including musician Herbie Hancock, who will perform
next month.

Early reviews of U.S. efforts from ordinary Chinese have been mostly lukewarm. “There
are too many corporate logos,” said Sam Feng, a 30-year-old Shanghai
resident. “I thought the USA would have some brilliant and exciting stuff.
. . . Except for buying some souvenirs, I can’t think of anything special about
it.”

Herbie Hancock is the best we can do?

In what sense do we want Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut to represent us
to the world? Let the Chinese know that you too can be just as fat as we are, if
only you eat this yummy food?

In 1959, Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev had the famed Kitchen Debate at
the American National Exhibition in Moscow. In that encounter, Nixon showed the
Soviet people (and the Soviet premier) why capitalism was superior to
communism, mostly by showing Mr. Khrushchev various kitchen appliances that
purportedly made the lives of the American housewife a lot easier.

Today, in Shanghai, our exposition shows a couple of things. First, we are
broke. Second, we are fat. Third, we are not so much the United States of
America as we are the United Corporations of America.

I looked up the website for our exposition, and it is embarrassing. No mention
of the Constitution. No mention of the First Amendment. No mention of the
Statue of Liberty. Many, many mentions of the different corporations that spent
good money to advertise on the website (why not? They paid for it, after all.)

I am not one to bash corporate America. They employ a huge percentage of
Americans, provide much of the healthcare and create much of the wealth. But
America does not thrive because of these corporations. These corporations
thrive because of America. Because of our faith in the free market, our system
of limited government, our representative form of democracy, our protection of
intellectual property and because of our people, who make up all colors of the
spectrum, all faiths and pretty much every belief — that is why so many of
these corporations thrive.

America’s greatest strength comes from the First Amendment to the Constitution.
The First Amendment protects the people’s right to free speech, free assembly,
the free practice of religion and a free press. China — obviously — doesn’t have
a First Amendment (ask Google if you don’t believe me). And that is their
greatest weakness.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why we didn’t use this opportunity at
the Shanghai Exposition to highlight the First Amendment, and show the Chinese
that while we may be currently broke in currency, we are not broke in spirit,
nor broke in freedom.

America stands for much more than just a sum of our various corporations. Too
bad our exposition hall didn’t make that point in Shanghai.

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