Gates ogles China in Davos
Tom Plate / Syndicated columnist
LOS ANGELES — Bill Gates, as everyone knows, is no slouch when it comes to numbers. That's why he likes China a whole lot. For him and other Western CEO types, China means numbers like 1.3 billion people, a real annual growth of about 9 percent (two to three times the United States'), a projected surpassing of Japan's 2003 net annual output by 2020, a household savings rate that is currently six times Japan's, and — in a best case scenario — an economy that in just 15 years might grow to be as large as a third of the United States'.
And so it's China du jour 24/7, even in the otherwise straight-laced ski town of Davos, Switzerland. There, at the annual World Economic Forum retreat of business and political swells, was the monument to American capitalism — Gates himself — publicly sucking up to Hu Jintao and the other top dogs of China. "They're smart," he pronounced, as if no one had thought of it. "This generation of leaders is so smart, so capable, from the top down, particularly from the top down."
Few people outside China would dare argue with that, certainly very few Davos Men. The reason is that China Inc., as it were, continues to post such impressive growth and financial numbers.
And Gates thinks he knows why: "It's a new brand form of capitalism," a Chinese model that emphasizes "the willingness to work hard and not having quite the same medical overhead or legal overhead ... " And, he added, almost breathlessly: "You know, they haven't run out of labor yet. ... "
Right, Chinese entrepreneurs don't have to worry about so many of the things that roil at the bottom line of American businesses — items like medical insurance, a minimum wage, or worker-safety regulations. But the consolation prize in the West is a pair of Levi's that, adjusted for inflation, costs less than it did two decades ago, and a virtual consumer-price subsidy to the American middle class that has helped to tamp down inflation.
So that's the whole China story all neatly packaged? Not quite. Hold the standing ovation for a moment: It's the canny Kenneth Courtis himself who offers to pull a little tinsel off the Golden Economic Glove award, and maybe some wool from our eyes, too.
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Copyright 2005, Tom Plate
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