The Chinese Move On Beyond American Dollars

If you, like myself, read too much financial news during the day, it is easy to become jaded with the same mantra about China inevitably becoming the world’s number one superpower in a number of months. While the Obama administration has done nothing to squash these articles and blurbs, I found a very interesting article in The Washington Post on Sunday. “Zhou and Chao, a husband and wife from Taiwan who now live in Shanghai, run one of China’s oldest and most successful consultancies helping well-heeled expectant Chinese mothers travel to the United States to give birth.”

The service to California costs roughly $1,475 but includes “a three-month stay in a center — two months before the birth and a month after. A room with cable TV and a wireless Internet connection, plus three meals, starts at $35 a day. The doctors and staff all speak Chinese. There are shopping and sightseeing trips.” Perhaps less quantifiable, though, is citizenship for the unborn child. The people who use this service, considered to be the elite in China, still find it more desirable to have their children in the American system. “The United States is widely seen as more of a meritocracy than China, where getting into a good university or landing a high-paying job often depends on personal connections.”

Perhaps I will have to teach my children Mandarin in order for them to get ahead in the workforce, but at least America’s place as a superpower of liberty is (relatively) intact.