“Is there such a thing as a private company in China? I’m not sure there is.” Those are the words of GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher, who is heading up a new House committee that the Wall Street Journal reports is “charged with alerting Americans to the perils of a rising China.”
The view here is that Gallagher doth protest too much. Indeed, he can’t claim to be a conservative or a Republican while at the same time musing about whether or not China has “private” companies. He has to know the country is full of private businesses based on what a major market China is for American plenty. Readers of this column are by now familiar with these statistics, but it bears repeating that the world’s most valuable company (Apple) sells a fifth of its iPhones in China, that Tesla sells 40% of its cars in China, that GM sells more cars in China than it does in North America, that Starbucks has over 4,000 stores in China on the way to thousands more, that China is presently the second largest market for McDonald’s, Nike and many, many more U.S. blue chips.
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