December 3, 2007 Spokesman
For announcements, Brian Tucker proudly reported that his daughter Mattie will appear as Clara in the Kirkland Performing Arts Center performance this season of the Nutcracker. Chuck Morgan will also appear at matinees in his traditional role. Patti Sims thanked the interviewer volunteers for Business Week and Bob Gassen announced that he will be taking portraits of Rotarians and guests at the Holiday party next Sunday. Half the proceeds will be donated to the Rotary Foundation. When asked if he "airbrushed: his subject's pictures, Bob answered, "With this crowd, definitely". Since Al and Alice have advanced the fees for a band for a live performance, the Board approved that the "Happy Dollars" raised tonight would go for that reimbursement. Chuck Brockway did not disappoint us. Jim Feek finished off the festive fundraising with a story that showed his Norwegian heritage as being good sports, particularly when it comes to hunting "game".
Dr. Jerry Campo introduced our speaker, Peter Cuthbert who works in China, is an economics expert and is fluent in Mandarin (no one in the group could understand that language so Peter confined his remarks to English). The subject of Peter's talk was "China's Economic Challenges". China is so large and populous and so much is made of their economic power in the world economy, it was a timely topic. China is a land and culture in change over the last 25 years. They are moving from egalitarian/authoritarian economy to market driven with what he called "soft authoritarianism". China has grown from total self-sufficiency with a history of humiliations as a culture to being foreign trade and investment dependent. The Chinese like to call this 21st century as "The Chinese Century". The movement of the people has been from rural to urban as foreign investment has increased exponentially. With it has come a change from a totally planned economy to a market oriented economy. Their challenges have been to implement the changes brought about by the World Trade Organization, building a social safety net for its people, managing the effects of the widening wealth gap and enforcing intellectual property rights of its trading partners. The final challenge is the environment, which has suffered with growth in productivity without safeguards being maintained. Other major challenges are: (1) the need for more internal investment; (2) the need for a consumption led growth fueled by wise use of their high savings rate; (3) the need to deal with a trade imbalance with their global trading partners; and(4) an undervalued currency by 20-40%.
A lively question and answer period followed Peter's talk with questions such as concerns over quality and safety in their exported products to America, a subject in the news recently. Others wanted to know if freedom was coming to Chinese people and the answer was apparently not yet. China has need to develop its education system and because that has lagged other nations such as India with its British based democratic society in meeting the challenge of providing workers for the world wide technological markets. Peter signed a book for the John Muir Elementary school library we support.
Ken Hollingsworth was the lucky ticket holder and this time won the $30.00 pot which he generously donated to the Kirkland Rotary Foundation. Karen Quirk won the drawing for the duck prize.
The meeting was adjourned. At7:45 PM
John E. Woodbery, Scribe
Editor note. There will be no Spokesman from the November 26th meeting. We had some technical difficulties and we may produce one at a later date but no guartantee SS