[XXPANTHAXX]

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 30, 2008; A13

SHENZHEN, China -- The gray waters around the port of Yantian are
ominously empty. It's supposed to be peak season here, a time when the
docks are filled with exporters shoveling holiday goods onto freighters
bound for the United States faster than the ships are able to receive
them.

Instead, irritated truck drivers, logistics coordinators and other
workers stand idle, smoking and complaining that business is so slow
that their income has dropped by two-thirds, because of the
deteriorating U.S. economy, with which this region is so closely linked.

The community that once bragged about its close ties to the United
States now rues them.

Li Hongguo, 36, who was ferrying a load of handbags from a factory to
the port, said that last year he made one or two runs a day. These days
he's lucky to get one job every three to four days.

"America is the boss of the world, so if it does badly, it affects
everyone else," Li said.

Nowhere is this view more pervasive than here in China's Pearl River
delta, where the majority of companies exist with the single goal of
producing products for U.S. consumers.

Stakeholders in China are watching the trials and tribulations of the
massive U.S. economic rescue package, rejected Monday by the House of
Representatives, as closely as Americans are.

For better or for worse, economists say, China and the United States are
like conjoined twins. "The two economies are mutually reliant and
mutually influential," explained Hua Min, director of Fudan University's
Institute of World Economy in Shanghai.

Once the envy of the nation for its abundant jobs and high wages,
Shenzhen -- the birthplace of China's experiment in capitalism -- is
experiencing an economic downturn in tandem with the United States.

Industry groups estimate that tens of thousands of factories making
products from ball bearings to shoes to furniture have closed over the
past year. Weighed down by the problems here, growth in China's gross
domestic product for 2008 is expected to slow to a single digit for the
first time in 11 years.

On a recent weekday at Yantian, the majestic, nearly 1,300-foot-long
container ships that once graced the waters were gone. With shipping
volume down for the first time in the port's history -- by 5 to 7
percent depending on the month -- the larger ships had been reassigned
to other ports in China with goods headed for anyplace but the United
States. Only half-size freighters are left to serve Yantian's port.

"Orders to the U.S. have been reduced by 40 percent," said Angela Hao,
general manager for the Shenzhen office of the City Ocean shipping
company. "At the moment everybody is struggling, trying to see who will
survive."

Sun Junshan, who works in sales for Shenzhen Jiao Technology, said that
when she was growing up she thought America was "heavenly -- everyone is
living well and there are good benefits for Social Security and medical
care."

"Now I feel like China is number one, not the U.S., because China has
money," Sun said.

The U.S. economic problems have shaken the foundation of what many
Chinese have been taught in the 30 years of Communist leader Deng
Xiaoping's "reform and opening up" campaign, which was built around the
idea, as Deng famously said, that "to get rich is glorious." The U.S.
system that was once held up as a model now seems full of weaknesses.

China's leaders say their country can still learn from the United States
-- from its mistakes, that is.

Ever since Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, was honored with becoming
the country's first special economic zone in 1979, residents of the area
have been China's keepers of the American dream. Today the landscape
around the city, with its big houses and big cars, is the closest thing
China has to U.S.-style suburbs.

Xiong Ming, 28, who works at a shipping company focused on the port of
Yantian, is part of a generation that grew up with the gospel of
American capitalism.

Raised on Hollywood movies, Xiong built his career on close business
relationships with the United States.

When he graduated from college six years ago with an economics degree,
Xiong took a marketing job with Cosco, China's premier shipping company.
With his strong English skills, he did so well that a former colleague
soon offered him a management position at a competitor that sent goods
to California's ports in Long Beach and Oakland.

For a while, Xiong prospered. Like other employees, he often made $4,400
to $5,800 a month with commissions -- a fortune in a country where the
average annual urban salary is $2,000.

But today most workers are making $750 to $1,500.

If the U.S. economy doesn't pick up, his current employer will probably
have to lay off some of its 20 employees in Shenzhen or even shut down.
"Right now we haven't hit bottom yet. We see things getting worse and
worse," he said.

Xiong, a marketing manager at Dragontrade Logistics, said that if he had
it to do over, he would choose to work more with Europe, or emerging
economies in areas such as the Middle East, or even with Chinese
companies that he once thought were old-fashioned.

The U.S. troubles have made him reconsider the benefits of communist,
state-run support, he said.

"In the U.S., the workers at the gold-chip companies are carrying out
their desks in boxes," Xiong said. "But in China, the jobs are still
here because they are more protected."