Don't Worry, Be Happy.(China's future)

Every day the headlines warn us about the awesome social, economic and environmental problems confronting China. But however much I read the papers, I still find it difficult to change my view: I am bullish on China. To be a bear on China's prospects is, after all, to be gloomy about the outlook for mankind. China represents between a fifth and a quarter of humanity, with more than its share of creative and hardworking men and women. Make no mistake: if they don't overcome the challenges that face them, the future for all of us will be pretty bleak. So it's not China's success that should worry us, but rather what happens if China fails.

Any visitor to China is overwhelmed by the contradictions inherent in its helter-skelter progress. During a journey in any direction, but particularly from the rich coastal provinces into the hinterland, you cover in the space of a few hundred miles every stage of economic development--from high-tech industrialization to primitive subsistence agriculture. Yet even in China's richest provinces there were pockets of severe underdevelopment and backwaters of tradition--reminders of how difficult it must be to govern a country so extreme in its diversity.

Naturally, any visitor is impressed by the changes in China's physical landscape. The transformation of Shanghai since my last visit 13 years ago was astonishing. But the changes that most excited me were more personal. There was, first, the candor with which people talked about their own experiences during China's darkest days of revolution and tumult. There was the sight of a packed cathedral, with more than 1,000 Shanghai Roman Catholics gathered for Good Friday services. There were the 500 or so young students at Fudan University throwing questions at me about human rights, Tibet, Taiwan and other subjects that might previously have been thought taboo.

Now, please don't misunderstand me. Is this now a country that takes its cue from Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville? Hardly. There are still terrible human-rights abuses. Capital punishment is meted out with mindless frequency. Too many of China's most thoughtful dissidents have been sent into ...