On the Scene

A VISITOR who remembers the China of the 1970s and 1980s is easily dazzled by the physical changes in Peking. Mao’s China practiced economic “self-reliance,” that is, a particularly stultifying form of Communist autarky. Mao’s Peking was a grim, poor, and sleepy town, with spare socialist architecture, no traffic on the wide and dusty boulevards except trucks and a few official cars, a million bicyclists, and nearly the entire population (except small children) dressed in drab, Mao-suited Orwellian uniformity. Deng Xiaoping’s Peking, after 18 years of 10 per cent annual growth and economic opening to the West, is a booming capital with an efficient new highway and road system, ubiquitous construction of hotels and office buildings, neon signs, traffic jams of cars and taxis (as well as bicycles), a mushrooming of small businesses, and a well-dressed (Western-style) population. In short, Peking today looks like a modern city. The route to and from the airport used to be a quiet, narrow tree-lined road; now it’s a six-lane toll highway.

Capitalism is clearly flourishing. Indeed, it is flourishing beyond both Chinese and American intentions. The Ministry of State Security, at American urging, has finally launched a crackdown against piracy of intellectual property. Yet in an open-air market within spitting distance of the American Embassy, this writer was accosted by no fewer than five different Chinese murmuring “CD-ROM,” “CD-ROM,” in a conspiratorial tone that suggested a certain lack of confidence in the intellectual-property-rights status of the product. Perhaps the Ministry of State Security (and the American Embassy) need to take another look.

PW

About the Author

Peter W. Rodman

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A VISITOR who remembers the China of the 1970s and 1980s is easily dazzled by the physical changes in Peking. Mao’s China practiced economic “self-reliance,” that is, a particularly stultifying form of Communist autarky. Mao’s Peking was a grim, poor, and sleepy town, with spare socialist architecture, no traffic on the wide and dusty boulevards except trucks and a few official cars, a million bicyclists, and nearly the entire population (except small children) dressed in drab, Mao-suited Orwellian uniformity. Deng Xiaoping’s Peking, after 18 years of 10 per cent annual growth and economic opening to the West, is a booming capital with an efficient new highway and road system, ubiquitous construction of hotels and office buildings, neon signs, traffic jams of cars and taxis (as well as bicycles), a mushrooming of small businesses, and a well-dressed (Western-style) population. In short, Peking today looks like a modern city. The route to and from the airport used to be a quiet, narrow tree-lined road; now it’s a six-lane toll highway.

Capitalism is clearly flourishing. Indeed, it is flourishing beyond both Chinese and American intentions. The Ministry of State Security, at American urging, has finally launched a crackdown against piracy of intellectual property. Yet in an open-air market within spitting distance of the American Embassy, this writer was accosted by no fewer than five different Chinese murmuring “CD-ROM,” “CD-ROM,” in a conspiratorial tone that suggested a certain lack of confidence in the intellectual-property-rights status of the product. Perhaps the Ministry of State Security (and the American Embassy) need to take another look.