Andy i met at the university of Northern Iowas jepson symposium. Each of the last two years he shared a dinner table with me, he was very kind to my students, and then he gave a marvelous talk last year about the chinese economy and the business relationships between the United States and china. Tell us a little bit about how your interest in china developed and what youre going to bring to our conversation today. Andy thank you f introduction. I actually first went to china by pure chance. Im from boone, iowa and studied at Northern Iowa for my undergraduat e degree in supply Chain Management. At the end of my degree, my adviser at the time encouraged me to take an internship in china in the International Logistics department of a large chinese stateowned enterprise. I didnt speak a word of chinese, and id never been to china, didnt know anyone on the entire continent but sucked into china. Its a fantastic culture, interesting language, food, everything. Just went back to the us and worked in the corporate world for awhile, and then quit my job and moved back to china to study chinese fulltime at China Northeast University of finance and economics in dalian china. That was really when my love affair started. Leon married a chinese woman . Andy i married a chinese met in england actually at graduate school. Leon developed some business interest in chinese . Andy thats right. Leon share with us too. Andy i started a Company CalledTrans Solutions back in 2007 and we do new Product Development and supply Chain Management mainly for clients in the us. Since ive taken that position at uni i have sort of stepped back to a certain degree. My wife does the majority of the work but i still do a lot of Chain Mapping and these sort of things as well as the strategy side. We travel back and forth to china on a very regular basis. Leon ling zhang is a colleague of mine at Cornell College and recruits International Students for us. Tell us a little bit about your background, how you happen to come to cornell and what kind of work youre doing now. Ling sure, thank you. I am originally from china. I studied in china for over 20wh there and raised there. I came to america for my graduate degree. I got my masters in america and my doctors degree in education in south dakota. Ive been living in the midwest for over 10 years. I just kind of fallen in love with Cornell College, and moved here and have been working at Cornell College for over a year recruitment means that you go to china as well and youre meeting with Chinese Students and making an effort to persuade them to come and study here. Ling correct. I visit high schools and colleges, and organizations in china. I pretty much go to china twice a year. Leon i think from our conversation youre extending yourself personally too to help some of these Chinese Students and other interna here in the United States adapt to life in the United States. Ling correct, because like i said, i was originally from chinese so i was an International Student myself. I understand the frustration and concerns that they have or the difficulties that they are going to encounter when they first get here. Also, im the faculty adviser for our Chinese Student association at Cornell College. David thats right. Leon member of the history department, is that right . David right. Leon your principal interest as i understand are japan and korea, but youve also had some experience in study in china. Talk a little bit about this. David youre right. I got into the field back in the, id say early 1990s when a lot of the issues were talking about today were about japan. Of course, many of the prediction of what was going to happen regarding japan didnt happen. In those specialist, and i also developed korea as a sub specialty as well. You cant escape china if youre the east asia field. When i was in graduate school i had to pass phd exams in chinese history. Even though i primarily go to japan and korea, i have been to china a few times, and in fact just a few months ago i was there. Leon id like to say just a few words about myself as well. At director of what we call the mcwethy program for economics, business, and public policy. I teach Computer Science full time but i have this second role where i engage students in questions like those that we are discussing now. David you mentioned the worries in this country about japan, are you thinking as the 1980s, 30 years ago in that time frame . David yes. Leon people wor that that more directed, more planned economy was going to overtake the United States. Is that whats that about . David sure, yes. I mean there was a very famous book that came out about japan in 1979 called japan as number one by ezra vogel at harvard university. The prediction was by the year 2000 japan would have long since surpassed the United States in economic terms. There was books coming out that every american was going to be working for a japanese and that the japanese were going to controlled so much us debt, the japanese were a threat, the trade deficit was a huge problem. All of these fears of japan, or some of the things that you hear about china today, people were saying about japan back them. Very few of them, if any, have come to pass. Leon i was moved to propose this discussion to our producer, because my perception is there is more conversation this year and not only in the United States, but in europe and elsewhere about immigration, about trade, abou anxiety not just in our own country. I worry that were not learning as much as we could from the experience of other people and from our own history. Do you see some of these patterns too . Can you comment on that, that we learn on what we should from models of history or models about other countries . Andy sure. Thats an interesting question actually because the us and china are no way military allies, and that is very different environments here. There are certainly stark similarities between the rise of japan and the rise of china, but there are very important differences as well. Do you care to comment on some of the differences that youve seen in your work . David youre right about that. Certainly, in terms of military rivalry, thats another topic. The United States of course has permanent troop presence in been talk certainly with the Obama Administration doing this pivot to asia in which the United States was going to be more assertive in the region to try and stem the rise of china. Of course right now theres a lot of talk about the South China Sea and the naval rivalry there. In that sense yes, in a political sense i think yes, japan and china relationship to the united in terms of economics which i think theres a lot of similarities. More what i was getting at was i think that a lot of the fears of china economically are exaggerated just like a lot of the fears regarding japan in the 1980s and 1990s were exaggerated and havent really played out. Just a lot of these issues in general about trade deficits being such a big problem are much older even at the 1980s and 1990s, that its a perpetual aspect of economic relations theres almost always a trade deficit. Its almost as normal as anything. Leon ling, tell us a little about what these Chinese Students are looking for when the come to the United States. What the attractions are for an american education. I think many of our neighbors, to the extent that they have interaction with Chinese People, it may here in iowa. Ling sure. I think Chinese Students, theyre looking for a good education, and of course america has the well known, top World Education and research. Also, i think for a lot of Chinese Students they are not just here to get education and stay here, a lot of them actually are look at getting a really good education in america then go back and find a really good job. Worked as ministry of education in china. I talked with her pretty frequently for the mission and the recruitment purpose. She just told me, she said the ministry of education, which means the Big Department that oversee all the education related issues, has Just Announced that they are encouraging all the student in china to do this International Come and do a full degree seeking program, but also they encourage the Chinese Students to do exchange. Go to america, go to europe, do one semester or one year. Thats why i think we will see a lot of colleges in america doing this two plus two or three plus one kind of an exchange program. Does that make sense . Leon sure. Id like to ask you now about what surprises those who what you think americans might be missing when they visit china. Many americans are now travelling to china and getting some picture of the country but they might be missing some of the part and pieces. To get you started here i want to tell you a little story and then you respond to this. Ling okay, yes. Leon i studied Computer Science, so in graduate school a large fraction of my classmates were international and many of them from chinese. Who called himself gary. I never inquired very much about where he was born. I could tell what his ancestry was but i didnt know where his birth place was. He called me aside, we were at the end of the week friday afternoon just kind of shooting the breeze when the week was done, 4 00 on a friday afternoon. He asked me, leon he said, why are our classmates borrowing money to go to graduate school . We all had teaching assistantship, so even the least well supported of us had a stipend and rent and our tuition was waived and so on, you could live a modest lifestyle. Some of the American Students didnt think that was enough, they were borrowing so they could live a little bit higher. Gary had come here, in the first year he lived in an apartment he shared with five other students and he had a grocery budget of 50 a month or something, it was rice and cabbage. The second year he bought a used honda civic, he year he traveled around the United States to visit the national parks. He sent half of his stipend and helped his parents retire. He is showing me his statements from fidelity investment, all of mutual funds he has. He said, why are americans. He had a completely different perspective of the world. Thats my story. What are your stories about this contrast of expectations, chinese coming in the United States, americans going to chinese. Well comment on this. Ling sure. I will start if you guys dont mind. I think thats changing because in the past as i said 20, 30 years ago, the students youve seen, the Chinese Students who were studying in america, they are here to do a graduate program. Most of them are graduate of assistantship. Actually, lets say back then, 20 years ago, if they dont have a graduate assistantship its going to be hard for them to get a visa. Now youre going to see the trend of the student from china who are middle school, and some are looking at Elementary School even. Like i said, its very different because credit card has never exist probably 15 years ago in china, but now i think the Chinese People are kind of getting used to the concept of credit card and borrowing the money. When i was growing up, i mean thats the philosophy we have, if you dont have the money dont spend it. You always have to have some kind of saving. With this new anymore. They want to borrow money, they want to use the credit card. A lot of times since china has been doing the one child policy for a long time, so a lot of the families nowadays, if college, they are the one child in their family. The parents doing the saving, and the grandparents also help out. They use all this money to sponsor the student to receive a good education. Leon my friend gary borrowed money from an american professor he met in china, got to the United States without a penny left in his pocket, had to call the dean to get a ride from the airport to the university. Thats how he sta anybodys. You go from boone iowa to china, tell us about some of the surprises, the contrast that you experienced. Andy again, i lived in dalian in northeastern china, its on the peninsula right in between beijing and north korea on a peninsula surrounded by sea on three side. I was one of the only foreigners in the city that i lived in. I lived in the northern suburb of the city called , so the free trade area. Back then it was very stark difference, this was back in had just recently graduated from undergrad who is actually considered fairly well off compared to a lot of my coworkers who had been in the industry for 10, 15 years. Speaking to this change thats happened with the students your experience is very different from what we see from students today at the university of iowa. I would say, you and i. All across the board. Ling Cornell College as well. Andy Cornell College as well, its very dif now, not everybody is poor. Its still a very poor country. I think thats one of the misconceptions for americans, they think of china they think about this very, very strong, wealthy country where everybody is rich. Thats not always true, there are very rich people in china, but there are even more poor people still today. The rich ones gets to come over to the us in some cases, and the poor ones we dont see quite as much unless ling exactly. Andy what are some of the misconception s youd like to correct here david . Ling i dont know about misconception, but id actually just sort of echo that. I think thats one of the main mistakes americans make when discussing china. I think theyve even done polling on this, a lot of americans assume that most chinese are as rich as most americans, or maybe even richer. Of course most chinese are still quite poor, but at the same there might be a middle class in china the size of the United States. Means theres still a billion people who are not anywhere near that standard of living. Thats a very important point that americans need to remember when discussing china, is that. People talk about china being the second largest economy in the world but thats not per person by any stretch of the imagination. Leon i told you a story ling, i have some chinese in the family, my brother married a chinese immigrant. They went to at that time at least there were some parts of china where westerners were seldom seen. What is the experience across the country of chinese engagement with the outside world . Do i make myself clear here . Andy yes. My wife is also from a rural. Her hometown is what they call is in guizhou province, in a poor town guizhou province. The first time i went back to see her ancestral home and see her grandparents and this sort of peopl, my autograph because theyd never seen a caucasian person before. That was only maybe five years ago, five or six years ago. This has changed in beijing, shanghai and shenzhen guangzhou. Those areas certainly have changed their perception of foreigners. Its much more regular to see foreigners and interact with them, but in the poor me that every time you go back its like a different world. Tell us something about the pace of change you see in this country. Ling every time i always visit the beijing and shanghai, even with beijing and shanghai i mean like you go to a place in beijing and youre very familiar with that area, the next time you go there and youre like, whoa, what just happened . Im so lost. Theres like another 10 New Buildings just sitting there. Its economy has increased rapidly in most of the major cities in china. Leon were through, were going to go next here. Lets talk about the investments the two countries are making in one another. Is anybody prepared to share something with that . Maybe were relying on andy too ling right. Leon tell us a little bit briefly and well get back to these folks as well. Andy coming back to your point on trade and how things have gone in the investments that were making. One important thing to remember that American Investments in china, theyre going there for different reasons. If we have an investment thats an American Firm who is investing in china just to get cheaper labor, that usually has a negative impact on american jobs and its usually overall a negative there for market seeking purposes or for National Resource seeking, all of these sort of things, then its generally a positive relationship with the home country and the host country for that fti. In the past we saw a lot of American Companies going to china to get cheaper labor, we dont see that as much anymore, were seeing that very seldom in fact. Now were seeing companies go to china for market seeking opportunities, so to sell their leon the various t