Shanghai,
China is only the size of the city of St. Louis and a portion of
St. Louis County. Yet Shanghai is home to 20 million people,
compared to the 2.8 million in the entire St. Louis metropolitan
area, including Illinois counties.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>Tony Thompson, CEO and founder of Kwame Building Group, recently traveled to Shanghai to give a lecture to Chinese students in Webster University’s business and management program. He also presented at Webster’s program in Chengdu, an economic and communication center 1,300 miles west of Shanghai.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>Thompson focused his talk on entrepreneurship, and the Chinese students clobbered him with questions about how to make it work.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>Many of them said they would like to open their own business, but their parents insisted that they perform at top levels in school and then get a job.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>As Thompson listened, the Chinese students reminded him of African-American students in the 1950s and ‘60s.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>“If you go back in history in the African-American community, education was paramount,” he said. “It was number one. You get a good education and get a job. We’ve just become more entrepreneurial recently.”
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>Creativity and entrepreneurship are what fuels the United States’ economy, he said. Microsoft, Facebook, Google – they are all U.S. companies, and many Chinese people work for these companies. President Obama put the importance of American technical innovation and entrepreneurial endeavor front and center in his 2011 State of the Union speech.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>However, when it comes to education, China dominates the world in performance. In December, a global education study found that China’s high-school students performed better in all three categories – math, reading and science – than any other country’s students.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>“Once these young intelligent people get the entrepreneurial spirit and figure this thing out, we are going to be in trouble,” Thompson said.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>Thompson pulled out his iPad to show a video he had taken of a four-year-old Chinese girl speaking English. Mind blown, he pointed to China’s heavy emphasis on early education as their key to success.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>“Ninety percent of the brain is developed before a person turns four,” he said. “If they are not getting the training they need in those four years, then every five years we are losing a whole generation of people.”
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>Thompson commended St. Louis Public Schools Superintendent Kelvin Adams for making early education a top district priority. With a healthy balance of education and ingenuity, young black students will become true competitors in the marketplace. Minority communities can save the U.S. economy, he said.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>“The black community has the highest dropout and unemployment rates, but that’s exactly why I’m saying this,” Thompson said.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>“Those are the opportunities. Instead of everybody looking at the black community as the slug that’s pulling this country down, we need to start looking at the African-American community as the one thing that can change our corporate structure in St. Louis.”
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>While in China, Thompson attended a Webster graduation ceremony officiated by Benjamin Akande, dean of Webster’s George Herbert Walker School of Business & Technology. Most of the Chinese graduates were already middle and upper managers for Microsoft and other American companies.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>Shanghai is also the hub for China Cargo Airlines, an airline studying St. Louis-Lambert International Airport as a potential cargo hub for new Chinese-U.S. trade. Airline representatives will visit St. Louis on Feb. 20 to study and negotiate possible air routes and schedules. China Cargo Airlines recently merged with other companies to make it China’s largest cargo airline and one of the largest in Asia.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”>While Shanghai students are graduating from Webster and Chinese business leaders are traveling to St. Louis, many local residents remain unaware of these changing global relations, stubbornly focused on local racial tensions.
“EN-US” xml:lang=”EN-US”> “We need to broaden our horizons,” Thompson said. “While we are looking at each other, the rest of the world is passing us by.”
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