China...

China… arguably the oldest civilization, has given the world some really important inventions and for centuries they were lost into oblivion by different circumstances, either internal conflicts or unfriendly visitors have push them towards bad situations, not to mention their experiment with Mao, which may have pacified the country at the time and given it a new identity and sense of unity (minus Taiwan) but that came at a huge cost in more ways than one. Now things are notable different, we hear about China all the time in every topic, they have finally come to the table with an influence and power more suitable for a country with a population of that size. 

Their impact is still more brute force than influential or so called soft power but they are coming and one way or another we will only see their influence grow in the next decades. From a country that could not feed itself and could only make bicycles they have come to dominate the commodities market and to be the biggest market for automobiles they are moving very quickly up in the value chain and are ready to give a full on battle for artificial intelligence and machine learning and in the making of the 5G infrastructure to the United States and Europe. 

They are making headway in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America by using their buying power and liquidity to create very favorable relationships for them, and if the west should have learned something about the Chinese culture is that if anything they are determined, resilient and can wait and do whatever is necessary to achieve their goals, even if it includes enduring some pain a long the way, with that in mind is that any other country should negotiate. There is no bullying them, there is pressuring them, there is only a very thoughtful process of negotiating and being very careful in the terms that you agree with them, if anything that doesn’t bode well for Trump’s style and personality so I really don’t we will have any kind of true deal before he leaves office, despite fair claims from both sides and the need for one. 

But, what about the rest of the world?, we must try to get our hands into China, regarding what happens to US companies we need engage with China and to create mutually beneficial relationships. One idea that comes to mind, for Mexico, promote integration no matter what, cultural integration, begin by making it easier to learn the language and to send and receive students from one country to another, you don’t to get into revolutionary mode and giving the US a reason to raise their eye brow, you can just start with certain areas, construction, water management, city development, nothing fancy, nothing in the national security categories and certainly nothing close to computers, cyber attacks and hackers. 

We have some excess capacity in certain industries and we could accept cheap labor form the south, so  it is just a matter of putting that together and something good can come out of it. We desperately need investment in ports and airports and we could put together an attractive package for them in exchange of opening up to us in some products and markets near by, we must think long term and that kind of thinking would force us to admit that China is a country that will make it increasingly attractive to maintain healthy relations. No need to get involved in democracy, corruption and human rights, after Mexico is no champion in any of those matters and there is no possible outcome in which we get to be better off by getting into those areas.

China will have a growing appetite for so many products… we are a bit late but we still have time to make them enjoy some Mexican candy, beer, tequila (no copies), mezcal and tortillas in every possible presentation, and that before we start talking about tourism, getting wealthy and old very quickly creating services for them could turn out to be extremely profitable and forget about preserving our national identity, there is no such thing to protect, if we need to create small Chinese villages there should be no problem to do it, remember that we must think long term and the overall effect of that is positive, period. 

What else can we do?, in general a good strategy would be to take advantage of the areas in which they are throwing money at and have generated excess capacity so we can go from there generate value and keep the profits or excess returns and plow them into the country. Let them flood us with cheap solar panels and that will give us the change to reshape our electric industry, let them flood us with cheap digital devices and use them to put one smartphone in a hand of every Mexican and use that to increase transparency, mobile payments and probably even security. Let them flood us with money for roads and bridges, sewer solutions and component for 5G network, everything can be negotiated, now that we have time we should engage and see what areas of opportunities there are, if we are going to the left, let it be in benefit of the country, not just supporting clowns trying to perpetuate themselves in power as in Venezuela.