Who should we be worrying about?
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Tom Watkins has been involved in public service at all levels ever since he was a young aide to then-Gov. James Blanchard – and then, at age 34, became director of what was then the Michigan Department of Mental Health. Over the years, he’s held a number of important jobs including State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and CEO of the Detroit-Wayne County Mental Health Authority.
Earlier this year, however, he decided to devote himself full-time to his true passion – building better ties in business and education between China and the United States, especially Michigan; he is now living in China and working with the WAY American school.
Watkins is not easily flustered, but thinks the Trump Administration is making a dreadful mistake in demonizing China –and that we would all do well to realize that if America is to have a prosperous future, it will be next to impossible to do so without close ties with what may soon be the planet’s biggest economy.
“I’m worried about U.S. China relations, and how today’s heated rhetoric is shaping a new generation of American beliefs and attitudes about a nation that is the second-largest and fastest-growing economy in the world, with the largest standing army, a nationalistic fever, a focus on technology (think Big Data and AI – Artificial Intelligence) plus an optimistic attitude and home to one-fifth of all humanity,” he wrote to me this week.
That doesn’t mean we have to like or support everything China and its leaders do. But it does mean we ignore – or needlessly antagonize — the world’s biggest nation at our peril.
“Americans need to know a
lot more about and pay more attention to China,” he said. Hard to argue with the logic of that.
- Jack Lessenberry
