A Piece of My Mind: New Year for China (Los Altos Town Crier, March 6, 2024
Last weekend I happened by the local community center and saw a queue of parents and children waiting outside, many wearing bright red shirts, ribbons, or hats. Other families were walking away, many with children waving brightly colored pinwheels or carrying red and gold balloon creations and bright red swag bags. Of course, it was the community celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the Year of the Dragon.
I was reminded of my trip to Hong Kong at the turn of the 21st century. Hong Kong celebrated the Year of the Golden Dragon with fireworks, lanterns, and no apparent fear of the impending handover of the colony from British to Chinese jurisdiction.
In those years I visited China several times for business and for pleasure. Deng Xiao Ping had opened the Bamboo Curtain in 1979, and twenty years later the Chinese tourist industry was booming, with Americans and other foreigners eager to walk on the Great Wall, stand face to face with the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xian, and shop on Shanghai’s Bund.
Foreign investors also lined up to enter the untapped market of Chinese consumers. Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the Communist Party as well as President of China during these years, promised that “the Chinese people will firmly and unswervingly follow the path of reform and opening up.” Lia Mingkang, a prominent financier of the time, foretold that “as economic freedoms expand, we are inevitably securing more social freedom and the ability to exchange the information and ideas we need to grow.”
Twenty years later, I have to wonder what went wrong.
Tourism in China was completely shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic. Only in January of 2023, after nearly three years of closed borders, did China cancel all COVID-19 quarantine requirements and reopen the country for international travel. But visitors complain of the high degree of surveillance which prevails not only for tourists, but for ordinary citizens.
The U.S. Department of State currently warns travelers to “reconsider travel” to mainland China “due to the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans, and the risk of wrongful detentions.” The State Department classifies Hong Kong under a lesser warning, telling Americans to “avoid demonstrations”, “exercise caution in the vicinity of large gatherings or protests”, and “keep a low profile.”
Foreign direct investment into China shrank for the first time in over a decade in 2023, as Western governments discouraged reliance on Chinese-based supply chains. President Xi Jinping’s increasing focus on national security has also left many foreign companies uncertain about where they might step over the line of the law. Chinese entrepreneurs who have become too successful, particularly in social media, have had their businesses shuttered, their property confiscated, and even been jailed on suspicion of subversion. Foreign companies complain that their trade secrets have been copied by Chinese competitors.
Add to this reports of Chinese industrial pollution, oppression of cultural minorities, economic deflation, collapse of the housing market, population implosion, and the on-going threat to Taiwan. and that golden time at the turn of the century seems like a fantasy. Then I think of the bright colors and smiling faces at the LACC last weekend and I wonder – when our Chinese-born immigrants brought all this joy to us, did they leave enough behind?
Chinese Puzzle Box 
I enjoyed your reflections of the changes you’ve observed whi