The Norman Transcript

The Rt. Hon. Lord Chris Patten, speaking to an OU Associates dinner Monday evening, told the story of Yamaha's entry into the Chinese motorbike market. The company spent years designing and perfecting a scooter that would appeal and sell to the Chinese markets.

Within months of the scooters being introduced, Chinese factories were producing knock-offs and selling them for considerably less than Yamaha could make them. That's just one of the dilemmas facing manufacturers who want to sell their consumer products to the emerging Chinese markets.

Lord Patten, who attended Oxford with OU President David Boren, said the tendency will be to be more protective. He served as the last British governor of Hong Kong and spoke of China's emergence as a world trading partner.

More Chinese are leaving rural areas and moving to cities where skyscrapers number in the thousands. Manufacturing and white-collar jobs are being outsourced there from Europe and the United States.

Despite the job losses and theft of intellectual property, solutions to world problems like pollution, global warming, the illegal drug trade and genocide require the inclusion of China.