Governor Gives Chinese a Pep Talk

In an exhortation to the power of the individual and the “moral” imperative of economic growth, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday urged students at a premier Chinese university to change the very nature of their tightly controlled country.

The California governor’s 18-minute speech at Qinghua University, on the third day of his weeklong mission to stimulate trade, was designed to give an oblique nod to democratic ideals and economic freedom. The message has been heard here many times before, made by more powerful Americans, but Schwarzenegger provided his own special celebrity touch.

“America is a nation that believes in the power of the individual and what the individual can accomplish -- no matter what color, no matter the religion, no matter the economic background of that individual,” the governor said to about 400 students at this science and engineering school known as the Chinese equivalent of MIT. With 32,000 students, the school regularly welcomes prominent foreigners for question-and-answer sessions. It was established in 1911 as a prep school for Chinese students heading to universities in the U.S., and its graduates include Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Schwarzenegger repeatedly used the word “individual,” telling the students at one point: “Imagine what can be accomplished if the dreams of China’s 1.3 billion individuals could be unleashed.”

Schwarzenegger began his address by describing his first efforts at bodybuilding while a young man in Austria. He said that after one intense workout he was so tired he fell off his bicycle while riding home, his legs limp like noodles. He was unable to comb his hair, but “I soon learned that pain meant progress.”

“If I could change my body I could also change anything else I wanted,” the governor said. “I could change my habits, my intelligence, my attitude, my future, my life.... I think that lesson applies to people and to countries. You can change. China can change.”

In his most overt reference to human rights, the governor invoked the memory of Rosa Parks, the Alabama seamstress whose “simple refusal to move to the back of the bus put into motion events that led to my country’s great civil rights movement.”

The 58-year-old governor encouraged his young audience to “now go and do it for yourselves.” Again drawing from his own life experience, he said, “The bodybuilding gave me the confidence, the movies gave me the money and public service gave me a purpose larger than myself.”

Schwarzenegger also invoked the name of Kenneth Behring, a wealthy California businessman who over the years has donated 400,000 wheelchairs to the physically disabled. He said Behring’s act of charity gave people “freedom -- the freedom to move, to go to school, freedom to vote, freedom to get a job, freedom to hope for the future.”

China’s booming economy, which grew about 9.5% last year, “has become an engine of human progress lifting millions of people out of poverty,” the governor said. “That is the moral and economic good for China and for the rest of the world.”

Schwarzenegger is traveling with about 80 California business leaders -- representing financial, pharmaceutical, entertainment, manufacturing and agricultural firms, among others -- as well as a dozen or so newspaper, television and radio reporters. The trade mission moves to Shanghai on Thursday and Hong Kong on Friday and Saturday.

The governor has carefully avoided direct talk about Chinese human rights. The Qinghua speech, aides said, was designed to make only oblique references to democracy and individual freedom as told through his personal life story. They said the subject of human rights would be better handled by President Bush, who arrives in Beijing on Saturday to discuss trade and intellectual property issues with President Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao.

Throughout Schwarzenegger’s visit, the governor and top aides have spent much of their time behind closed doors, putting business deals together and taking company leaders into private meetings with influential Chinese officials.

The overarching purpose of the trip has been to get the governor’s face on television, in newspapers and on storefronts across China, promoting California products.

In a French-owned superstore near central Beijing, for example, photographs of Schwarzenegger were plastered over bins of California-grown oranges and grapes, near containers of Chinese-born turtles and crabs waiting to be sold as food.

As “Stand By Your Man” echoed through the massive Carrefour shop, Blair Richardson looked over the fruit and lamented that his group has been trying since 1994 to get China to open its doors to California plums. Prosperous-looking Beijing residents pushed their plum-free shopping carts past him.

Richardson, president of the California Tree Fruit Agreement, represents the interests of nectarine, peach and plum farmers, but not oranges. As he looked on, California Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura and a Sunkist vice president put orange slices in their mouths and flashed wide orange-colored smiles for the cameras.

At least, Richardson said, Schwarzenegger has spoken to the Chinese agriculture minister, Hui Liangyu, who was heard to say he wanted free and open trade. Maybe that will lead to a victory for plums, Richardson said.

“To get that kind of comment from a government official is just very difficult,” he said.

Kawamura, a green bean and berry farmer from Orange County, said there is “a window of opportunity” in China, California’s fourth-largest trading partner after Canada, Mexico and Japan. The state exported about $7 billion in electronics, machinery, tools and other goods to China last year, as well as $456 million in agriculture products.

“We’re entering into uncharted territory as to what a global economy could look like,” he said. “We have the opportunity for a renaissance, or a very real chance of a dark age.”

Representatives from Maersk shipping and Target stores met with government railway officials, along with Sunne Wright McPeak, the governor’s business, transportation and housing secretary. They urged the Chinese to double-stack trains, automate their systems and extend railroads deeper into China, McPeak said.

In two speeches Tuesday, Schwarzenegger called for a reduction in oil consumption in the U.S. and China while touting the role of California companies in the growing energy conservation arena.

Administration officials have been careful not to make any grand announcements about deals allegedly made with the governor’s help. The trade mission, they said, was more about building relationships.