unclechina.org

You may ask why business should care whether the U.S. has a pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 or not.  The answer is complex, but it boils down to national branding, soft power and potential retribution from China.   As this article in the Washington Post points out, the US is only one of three nations that do not have plans to exhibit at the Expo.  The other two nations? Colombia and Andorra.

When 70 million Chinese go to the Expo and find that the US has snubbed them they will take away a lasting impression.   The Expo is a matter of pride to the Chinese government and while we may not be obligated to come to their party it would be very smart of us to show up if we care about winning hearts and projecting soft power.

On a pocketbook level, US companies bidding on infrastructure projects in China should not be surprised if they start losing more and more contracts.   The decisions on who gets these contracts are made by the same government that will be feeling miffed that we did not join the Expo.

On a personal level, Chinese citizens will take the absence of the U.S. as further confirmation of the meme they have had planted in their heads that America is jealous of China and in decline - too poor to show up alongside Iceland and France.  America’s products are tied up in the national brand awareness and will suffer along with our overall reputation.

So why doesn’t the U.S. have a pavilion under construction?  Because Congress in its wisdom passed a law years ago to prevent any government money from being spent on participation in Expos.  They wanted the private sector to pay for our pavilions.  This worked so well that in the last Expo we participated in in Japan, Japanese corporations paid for our pavilion to help us avoid embarrassment.  Our own multinationals were only focused on their shareholders and not on the nation’s honor and soft power.  What a shame.

The Administration and Congress had better get its act together and appropriate some money for a pavilion in Shanghai.  We should know by now that we can’t depend on our large corporations to care about the nation.  That’s our job as citizens.