Or, as moderator Steven Greenhouse, a former labor reporter for The New York Times put it to a panel that included an economist, an entrepreneur, a labor law scholar, and a business development leader, “Why does globalization get such a bad rap?”

Jerry Nickelsburg, a senior economist with the UCLA Anderson Forecast, pointed out that the data measuring the effect of globalization “are actually really convoluted,” and that it’s difficult to separate the effect of globalization from advances in mechanization, changing tastes and the overall shift to the information age. We’re seeing much more inequality in terms of income and employment, he acknowledged, but much of that inequality is due to a range of factors, many of which go beyond globalization, such as the replacement of workers by robots.

Nonetheless, said Katherine Stone, an expert in labor law at UCLA School of Law, no matter how you measure it, it’s clear that in globalization, “there are winners and losers, and the losers haven’t been adequately compensated or supported.” That could change, she said, with a shift in social policies and economic programs “that might make them winners as well.”

For entrepreneur Kati Suominen, the solution can be found in the work of companies like her own Nextrade Group, which she founded to help governments and corporations optimize public policy and lending, to support trade and digitization. She argued that the digital economy, which enables anyone to open a virtual shop on eBay, for example, is the path to creating new and sustainable livelihoods for displaced workers, as well as opportunities for people new to the work force. “Do we want an America that protects workers whose jobs have been taken over by robots,” she asked, or an America that supports workers who use their ingenuity to get ahead in the new economy?

Yet, Greenhouse pointed out, in Germany, which is in theory a more globalized nation—with more of its Gross Domestic Product going to trade—globalization is not vilified as it is in America. He observed that “one reason is we do not as a nation do enough for the losers in globalization.” What prevents us from providing more support? he asked.

Part of the problem is America’s wrongheaded assumption that we’re “number one,” said Stephen Cheung, president of the World Trade Center Los Angeles. “Number one in what? Obesity?” Americans who insist on the nation’s primacy when our fate is so deeply intertwined with that of other nations, he said, are chasing a past that no longer exists. In the meantime, he said, we run the risk that “other countries will take off without us.”

Another issue, said Nickelsburg, is that “we treat all industrial workers who lost their jobs the same.” In fact, there is a great difference between a 30-year-old prepared to move into the new economy and other workers who “are like Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath,” Nickelsburg added.

The key to turning around perceptions about globalization is in tending to these displaced workers, said Stone. When workers’ well-paid union jobs vanish in places like Detroit and upstate New York, replaced by low-compensation service jobs, that’s not an acceptable outcome, she said. “There’s nothing in the nature of the universe that says being a home health aide has to be a bad job,” she said. The solution lies in changing labor laws to enhance unionization and workers’ collective bargaining power, and offering substantial retraining opportunities, “so when they get new jobs, the jobs are better than the jobs they lost, rather than a steady decline.”

Whoever the “winners” and “losers,” and whatever the path to a better future, the panelists agreed that America should not turn its back on globalization. “There is no case in the economic history of the world where protectionism has improved the lives of the country,” Nickelsburg said.

During the Q&A, one audience member asked whether globalization had negatively affected access to education, which spurred the panelists to remark on both the value of an educated workforce and to lament the lack of support for broad-based improvements in education.

“The critical issue for the 21st century is workforce development and education,” Nickelsburg said. With technology changing the world, lifelong education—keeping up with the changes in technology—is “the most critical issue for a globalized world.”

Yet, Greenhouse noted, “as inequality has increased, the people on top seem reluctant to fund better education.”

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The latest such reminder came when Anbang Insurance Group won a bidding war against Marriott to acquire Starwood Hotels, only to pull out of the deal at the 11th hour, on March 31, vaguely citing “various market considerations” as the excuse for withdrawing its $14 billion offer. The erratic behavior by Anbang, an insurance conglomerate with rather opaque finances and ownership structure, has given pause to investors (and regulators) around the world who’d come to view China and its major enterprises (which typically have some level of state ownership) as an increasingly welcome investor and buyer of assets.

Anbang’s thwarted courtship of Starwood reflects a broader, little understood truth behind the Chinese curtain: the extent to which the country’s leadership remains uncertain, and/or divided, on how best to proceed out in the world. Even as Chinese companies have been busy snatching up foreign enterprises at a record clip in recent years—Swiss pharmaceutical giants, Korean insurers, Canadian energy firms, U.S. meat producers and appliance makers, among them—the leadership in Beijing is conflicted about all this overseas spending, and appears to have drawn a line at the Anbang purchase of Starwood.

The itch to invest abroad is understandable: Chinese companies want to acquire strong global brands (and Starwood, which operates the Sheraton and Westin brands, among others, certainly fit the bill); hedge against a slowdown in domestic consumption and economic growth, and a devaluation of the yuan; invest in markets with higher (or more stable) returns on investments and greater regulatory certitudes. And, of course, in some cases the urge to buy assets overseas is more of a laundering urge, as individuals and companies seek to take tainted money (ill-gotten gains from corruption, for instance) out of the country, beyond the reach of Chinese authorities.

But the government is conflicted. The Communist leaders applaud the instinct to acquire prestigious overseas targets, and to diversify the nation’s holdings and expand its soft power. In many instances, especially in emerging markets such as Brazil and sub-Saharan Africa, Chinese overseas investments have followed a strategy of securing access to essential raw materials and commodities. But many of these investments have proven to be financial disappointments, and Beijing is increasingly concerned about the outflow of so much capital, especially the capital of dubious origins, and is wary of drawing down the nation’s foreign reserves.

China’s economic regulators are also mindful of the Japanese precedent. In the 1980s and 1990s, Americans were amazed, and somewhat alarmed, as Japanese companies acquired numerous famed assets in the United States including the Rockefeller Center in New York and Pebble Beach Co., the golf course operator, in California. This was seen as a sign of Japanese economic prowess at the time, but in retrospect it looks more like a reckless assumption of debt on the part of a corporate Japan eager to pursue returns and growth overseas as a means of avoiding needed restructurings and reforms closer to home. Chinese economic regulators are wary that the wanderlust of the nation’s state-owned enterprises now amount to a similar end-run around needed reforms. Instead of investments in the organic growth of their own (core) businesses, too many acquisitions of foreign companies by Chinese entities would seem to fall under the category of speculative bets intended to mask weaknesses in the core domestic business with overseas profits.

All these conflicting impulses played themselves out in the drama surrounding Anbang’s bid for Starwood, from the initial bid to the eventual withdrawal (reportedly at the behest of the nation’s political leadership) of the $14 billion offer. The company had already acquired prestigious hotels abroad, including New York City’s landmark Waldorf-Astoria for $2 billion, but this ambitious bid by an insurance company ostensibly barred from investing more than 15 percent of its assets overseas proved a deal too far. The pulling of the plug on the bid for Starwood was reminiscent of the government’s ham-fisted, and ultimately panic-inducing, attempts to impose circuit breakers on stock market trading last year.

Chinese direct investment in the U.S. is still expected to reach a new high this year—with an anticipated $20 billion to $30 billion in mergers and acquisitions, a figure that doesn’t count the billions more invested by Chinese nationals in U.S. real estate and other financial assets. But the strange outcome of Anbang’s pursuit of Starwood and questions about its accounting opacity, coupled with political trends in this presidential election cycle, will likely sour U.S. attitudes towards China as an investor in this country, which could raise tensions between the world’s two leading economic powers.

As for China’s leadership, the question of how to think about its overseas investments, and how to regulate them, now becomes the latest test of the country’s commitment to abide by the rules of the global marketplace. As with the stock market and a freely convertible currency, overseas investments present the ruling party with both a vehicle for greater national prosperity, and a threat to their penchant for controlling the nation’s destiny. We should expect more Anbang-like dramas revealing behind-the-scenes conflicts on these questions about how China should engage with the world.

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