THE GREAT REVERSAL The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 ...

is for more, deeper, faster change. Problems arise not from "too much, too fast," but from "toolittle, too slow." Worrisome inflation may require a pause, a mandatory period ofconsolidation, but that is only one small backward step in the grand march forward down theroad to full privatization in the sphere of production and untrammeled freedom in the sphereof circulation. On the eve of the final decade of the twentieth century legions of Chineseeconomists, social scientists, and officials are eagerly rediscovering Adam Smith and busilyengaged in reinventing the wheel -- the great myth of the "free market." For them, all theprofound and bitter lessons inflicted on China during the first nine decades of this centuryand the last six decades of the previous one seem to have faded quietly away into the mistsof time, never to plague the living again. Foreign media pundits, almost without exception,echo these Chinese voices and urge them on toward new heights of pragmatism.One might have expected a more sophisticated response both from within China and fromwithout, but ever since Deng Xiaoping came to power and launched the reform in 1978 veryfew voices have been raised in criticism anywhere on the four seas or the six continents. InChina many people, high and low, have indeed questioned and even protested, but althoughthey have sparked continuous internal challenge and debate very little, if any, of the conflicthas surfaced. Since all media are in the hands of those who support reform -- whether thestate, state-sponsored organizations, or private entrepreneurs, this is not surprising. But thathardly accounts for the lack of critical voices from abroad.Meanwhile, in the United States, we seem to have arrived at a situation that curiouslymirrors, in reverse image, the 1950s when I first returned after seven years participation in theChinese Revolution.page 13Then I was one of a handful of persons speaking out in defense of what the Chinese peoplehad wrought under Mao. Over the years the climate slowly changed. Here and there,concerned young scholars raised additional sympathetic voices. By 1972 even that diehardNixon reversed himself, traveling to Beijing and beginning the legitimization of Mao'sdominion in Western eyes. Thereafter China gained friends at an accelerating rate until by1978, when Deng Xiaoping changed course, the whole Western establishment lined up insupport. The experts quickly concluded, over Chinese protests, that the new courserepresented reform "capitalist style."As Deng's policy unfolded to all but universal applause, I found myself sliding back into"glorious isolation" once more, a lonely if not entirely lone critic of what seemed to me to bean unnecessary and probably calamitous reversal of the self-reliant, planned nationalreconstruction of the previous thirty years.I did not leap from defender to critic overnight, however. As an old friend of New Chinaliving abroad I was certainly free to speak out. But at the beginning of the reform period Iconsciously avoided passing hasty judgment. I decided, with uncharacteristic forbearance, towait and see what the new regime, with most of the old heroes gone, would do. My particular