China on the Capitalist Road

In 2005, China experienced more than seventy five thousand public protests in rural villages and urban factories. These bursts of discontent appear to have made a deep impression on China’s party leaders. As in nineteenth-century Europe, the specter of revolution calls forth reform. But the capitalist road has lots of twists and turns. A recent trip to Beijing presented a myriad of images:

• A Hyundai factory with 1,100 young male workers privileged to work six twelve-hour shifts weekly on ultramodern assembly lines, producing five different car models
• The Wal-Mart retail store in the University district with more red-shirted employees than shoppers
• Posters in English warning that law breakers will be “severely punished”
• A battered flatbed truck, piled high with folded cardboard boxes, blocking traffic in an old-style residential district
• A Chinese professor systemati...

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