China - the largest holder of U.S. public debt, which last week criticized Congress for its inability to reach a debt deficit plan - has its own internal problems with debt-ridden companies, said an Oklahoma City resident who runs a consulting company in Beijing.
"China''s large conglomerates are doing well, but what you don''t hear about are its small- to medium-sized enterprises who are in trouble," said Michael Harris, president of Gao Fei Consulting, in an interview last week with The Oklahoman.
"They''re saving face, and don''t want to be embarrassed about their own economy," said Harris, whose consulting company is retained by potential foreign backers interested in investing in China''s troubled companies or turning them around.
Harris, 59, a certified public accountant, PriceWaterhouse retiree and married father of three, has worked in Asia since 1995 and commuted from Oklahoma City for the past decade.
He learned Mandarin Chinese language in Monterrey, Calif., during the first of four years in the Air Force in the course of the Vietnam War. His career since has followed a fortuitous path.
An accounting graduate of Oklahoma State University, Harris in 1984 went to work for a California-based client of Grant Thornton, based in Oklahoma City. He later transferred to The Philippines, Hong Kong, and ultimately China, to handle the financial crises unfolding in those countries on behalf of Ernst & Young, Arthur Andersen and, after Enron, PriceWaterhouse.
"I didn''t think I''d ever study chinese language again, and I didn''t for more than 20 years," Harris said.
Harris is the only non-Chinese native in his 50-person company.
But rather than interpret fast-speaking locals, he prefers to read contracts with no colloquial sayings.
Meanwhile, global workplace observes say Mandarin is the language to learn. American businesses are doing more business in China than any other country, they say.
Michael Cheng, president and founder of the New York-based Mando Mandarin Online Chinese School, which delivers real-time online lessons to executives for $20 an hour, likes to quote a phrase he read on the Web.
"If you speak three languages, you are trilingual, if you speak two, you''re bilingual, and if you speak one language, you''re obviously American."
"I think it''s time that all that changes," Cheng said.
Guy Bramble, headmaster at Heritage Hall in Oklahoma City agrees. The school since 2007 has participated in Chinese exchange programs and offers Chinese language courses, with about 60 seventh- through 12th-grade students enrolled.
"Too many think of China as a backward, aggressive communist country tying work its way out of Third World," Bramble said. "But there''s an economic tsunami rolling in from the Pacific, and by the time we see it coming, it will roll over us," he said.