Joe HonickJoe Honick
While the country continues to muse over the puzzling current affair between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, why are we not turning a similar focus on China? After all, Chinese investment in productive American business and real estate pours much more money into our economy and workforce that the few — if any — Russian operatives can promise or deliver.

Of course, logic dictates it would be much more productive for the United States and Russia to develop friendlier relations instead of what has currently resulted from recent conflicts in Syria and elsewhere. Nothing is to be gained from something that could eventually lead to a circumstance where U.S. and Russian aircraft come close to hitting each other or otherwise threaten to take a more aggressive role. Worse, neither we nor the Russians have done anything constructive to justify our collective involvement in events that have led to the deaths of men, women and children, n some cases when there’s no agreement who’s even the target of our military action.

Some years ago, when I served on MBA Advisory Boards for two different universities, it had become clear that scores of bright students were applying and entering programs at American campuses: overwhelmingly from Asia, and even more overwhelmingly from China. These students not only became outstanding candidates for those MBA degrees, many of them wanted to stay in the U.S., having come to view the myriad opportunities here as extremely attractive. Unfortunately — and well before the immigrant-negative attitudes of our President-elect — most were required to return to their native countries, only to later return also as major investors in all ranges of real estate, industry and commercial projects.

Nearly 20 years ago, I also had the privilege to chair a special committee for the National Institute of Building Sciences that reviewed the impact of foreign investment in American real estate. Much of that work revealed expanding interest from China, with hardly much to speak of from Russia.

My own personal experience lecturing in China — as well as producing and chairing a major conference on housing in that country — educated me immensely on that country’s interest in joint efforts with our own, and has since left me wondering why we’re not sustaining it. Preparing for a conference not long after the 9/11 tragedy in 2001 called “World Focus on Housing: China,” I met with the Deputy Minister of Construction, a position a few steps above our own HUD Secretary. My mission simply was to respectfully ask that he sponsor a couple of conference luncheons or dinners as a goodwill gesture.

When I arrived in Beijing for the meeting, I was startled to find an American Embassy staff car waiting for me and suggested they had the wrong person. Not so, according to the staffers sent to meet me. Seems then President Clinton had negotiated a mutually praised housing deal with the Chinese and dispatched then HUD Secretary (and now New York Governor) Andrew Cuomo to work the details. Unfortunately, Cuomo reportedly over promised on many of the things we would do and — according to the Chinese officials and our own staff — failed to deliver. Putting it mildly, the Chinese were ticked!

Suddenly I was tasked with using my industry experience to try to minimize the damage. The details of my discussion with the Deputy Minister are not as important as the fact that it even had to take place, and that damage had already been done to the positive aspects of our planned major program. Suffice to say, I pulled no punches with the Deputy Minister, who appreciated my admission that we don’t always look top notch in our follow-up actions.

Fortunately, the conference was a sold out success. Unfortunately again, however, our own industry and government sponsors ultimately failed to follow through.

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Joseph J. Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.