Minnesota has built a few bridges to China

In January 1979, the United States and the People's Republic of China "normalized" diplomatic relations after three decades of Cold War stalemate. This geopolitical turning point, brokered in part by Vice President Walter Mondale, gave America a major role in Deng Xiaoping's global quest to "let foreign things serve China."

America's post-World War II security umbrella and a free-trade framework enabled industrializing nations in the Western Pacific to become increasingly prosperous, stable and democratic. The more the United States invested in these high-tech, export-savvy "Asian Tigers," the faster the Far East merged with America's Near West, transforming the entire region into the world's economic epicenter and creating millions of jobs.

Believing that Deng's "open door" initiative would boost Asia's economic rise and foster liberalism in China, Americans lobbied for China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Within a decade, Deng's market reforms created an industrial juggernaut that manufactured the world's "hardware." It also generated a 130 million-strong middle class. Some Chinese reformers, however, pushed too far. The June 1989 Tiananmen crackdown signaled that, while Deng proclaimed "to get rich is glorious," political change was not in the cards.

A century earlier, Minnesota railroad builder James J. Hill had dreamed of connecting Midwest raw materials with Chinese labor in a trans-Pacific trading empire. Because of famine, rebellion, foreign invasion and civil war in China, that dream never materialized in his lifetime, even as hundreds of Minnesotans tried to help forestall China's collapse.

When Deng came calling, Minnesota was ready. The state's export-dependent economy offered China's industrial machine advanced food processing and capital equipment; supercomputers; biomedical, health care and environmental control technology, and education for its future managers. Minnesota also strategized for comprehensive, long-term engagement by bringing together government, business, education, civic, arts, religious and other stakeholders to promote media outreach, civic ties, teacher and cultural exchanges, and Chinese-language instruction in Minnesota schools.

Our colleges developed Asian Studies curricula and initiated China-based study, teaching, service-learning and internship opportunities to prepare future "China Hands." Increasing numbers of young Chinese came to Minnesota to enroll in ESL camps, high schools and higher education. (In fact, China's president, Xi Jinping, became enamored of Iowa in a state-province exchange program 20 years ago.) Over time, these young Minnesotans and Chinese have created a multipronged, economically powerful partnership.

By the time 9/11 diverted America's attention and military ("hard power") resources elsewhere, China's growing need for worldwide raw materials and markets was intensifying its "charm offensive" in Asia, Africa and Latin America. China's "soft power" contributions to those countries have fostered, in President Xi's words, China's "peaceful rise" on behalf of its domestic economic development and social and political modernization. To this end, China's foreign interactions are strictly "transactional," eschewing "interference" in countries' internal affairs (as foreign powers had done to China during its "century of humiliation"). In fact, China initiated diplomatic relations only after its defeats in the mid-19th-century Opium Wars.

The Obama administration recently announced America's "pivot" — "return" is more accurate — to Asia. (This presupposes that international terrorism does not continue to bog the U.S. down elsewhere.) This policy comes at the very moment China is projecting military might to protect its global trade routes and overseas citizens and to fortify itself against a potential return of foreign aggression.

During the past 35 years, the scope, pace and complexity of U.S.-China relations have intensified. China has become an economic superpower and is now striving to also provide "software" to the world. Harvard's Noah Feldman thinks our economic interdependence minimizes the "cold war" threat but sees the two Pacific giants locked in a "cool war," with "a strange combination of competition and cooperation … in a wide range of economic areas." Even as we cooperate in trade and investment and address our common challenges of economic disparity — pollution, corruption and terrorism — new conundrums like mutual cyberspying, unclear military intentions and the search to accommodate China's global rise demand our attention.

As a longtime educator, I believe this cool war can be managed only through increased engagement among the next generation of ever more Internet-wired and globalized Chinese and American youths. We need to keep teaching them the lessons of history, help them improve their intercultural communication skills and prepare them to collaborate as world citizens. The need to keep widening the bridge across the Pacific is a global and a local imperative. There is still much more to come from Minnesota in this important work.

P. Richard Bohr is professor of history and former director of Asian Studies at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University. He is former president of the nonprofit Midwest China Center and former executive director of the Minnesota Trade Office. He has been a Great Decisions series presenter since 1980.