As I was casting about for some way to sum up the 30 years in China since the start of the open-door policy, George H..W. Bush saved me the trouble. In a recent interview with the China Daily, an official newspaper, he said: "I think it's not even questionable that people have more freedom than they used to have. Now some people [in the United States] don't understand that. They still regard the Chinese as a bunch of communists."
This is the sort of thing an old guy who doesn't care just blurts out. But it's also true; Western perceptions of China are quite skewed. Moreover, it appeared in a Chinese newspaper. Okay, the China Daily is an English-language paper of small circulation, but the fact that the quote made it into print shows how far China has come since Mr. Bush first set foot here. It was certainly a communist country then. What is it now?
Thirty-four years ago, Mr. Bush came to head up the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, an outcome of Richard Nixon's opening to China and a precursor to the re-establishment of diplomatic relations. It would be four more years before things really began to change.
The event marking that watershed moment — arguably as big a moment as the Communist revolution of 1949 — was the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It concluded in December of 1978, 30 years ago this month. Few grasped that the cardboard speeches of that plenum would change not only China but the world.
By then, Mao Zedong had been dead for more than two years. A power struggle had raged. In the end, Deng Xiaoping prevailed; the tectonic plates of Chinese politics had shifted. The open-door policy was born.
Other things happened that month. The United States and China announced the resumption of diplomatic relations; Boeing sold its first airplanes to the People's Republic; Coke said it was going into China.
Thirty years on, we know what Mr. Deng set in motion. By now, we can almost recite the gee-whiz statistics: the world's third-largest economy, 40 million new Internet users every year, 600 million cellphones, $2-trillion (U.S.) in foreign-exchange holdings and — my own favourite — the planet's biggest consumer of cement. This country has seen the greatest poverty-alleviation effort in history. Yes, yes, we've heard it all. But somehow, knowing this does not quite do this place justice.
I arrived in China seven years after Mr. Deng's triumph, in the fall of 1985. I was employed by a Chinese "work unit." My local colleagues lived in cold-water flats they didn't own, rode ancient bicycles and looked forward to the annual train ride to see their parents in another province. Getting a passport was next to impossible, and you needed permission to read certain papers containing foreign news. Now they own their apartments, many have cars, and they go online to book their holidays abroad. Most surprising, they don't seem to find this transition, in less than a generation, the least bit jarring.
China's rise exhibits many interesting phenomena. One is the often skewed view of China beyond its borders, which is equal parts awe, greed and fear.
Awe, because it's so vast and so old and so storied; China has an enduring mystique (which its tourism promoters hope never fades). The greed comes from thinking that there's something in the China miracle for us: Can we sell them resources, can we produce more cheaply there, can we tap that supposedly bottomless consumer market? And finally fear: What if they not only want to buy our oil and minerals, but also the companies that produce them?
The self-contradictory attitude towards China is now at a peak because of the financial crisis. The Economist asked a few weeks ago: "Can China save the world?" It was an economic basket-case 30 years ago, but we're now counting on China's engine to keep the global economy ticking over. Its recently announced four-trillion-yuan ($720-billion) stimulus package has everyone hoping.
Despite the saturation coverage that China gets, what I hear from most first-time visitors is "I had no idea." That normally refers to China's pockets of affluence, its stunning infrastructure and just what a simply cool place it can be. For whatever reason, after 30 years of China's open door, people don't fully get it unless they've been here.
