Ten years ago, on October 1, 1999, I was invited to the western rostrum at Tiananmen Square to watch, amid a sea of red, a military parade in celebration of China's past and future. At the time, I was a lawyer and investment adviser bringing multinational corporate money to China. I also served as a government adviser on state-owned enterprise restructuring and monetary policy. Beijing warmly welcomed the likes of me in those heady days of frenetic inbound foreign investment and hopeful reform.
The grand celebration's defining moment occurred when then-president Jiang Zemin stood atop a Red Flag limousine as it drove through the main gate of Tiananmen, where emperors of past dynasties were once carried on palanquins. Under the stoic gaze of Mao Zedong's portrait, the spectacle was an irony of communist imagery against a momentum of awakening capitalism. One could not help but wonder how China would come to terms with this juxtaposition in the decade ahead.
At that time, the reformist premier, Zhu Rongji , was in the second year of his term, overseeing probably the largest spectrum of financial, economic and enterprise reforms the world had ever seen. Foreign investment was flooding into China. Chinese who had left the country a decade earlier were returning with MBAs and law degrees. Investment bankers courted China's financial enterprises and, when the mirage of the dot.com boom hit, an era of unfettered capitalist enthusiasm gushed over China like the Klondike gold rush. Leveraging paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's adage, 'To get rich is glorious', the Communist Party began to machinate reforms that, within a decade, would dismantle nearly half a century of stagnant state planning.
On another level, what seemed most important to many Chinese and Western observers was the sincere belief that foreign investment, globalised management and education - and, of course, entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001 and hosting the Olympics in 2008 - would change China into a more tolerant, open and humanistic nation. It was hoped that, in this context, China would rise peacefully as a global power, to share responsibility. But is that happening?
Certainly, China is letting the world feel its weight. Domestic problems are more often blamed on foreign interference. Germany and France are chastised the most. Australia's Chinese-speaking prime minister was face-slapped over a bad commodities deal. Since the Beijing Olympics, China has bristled with confidence. China now boasts the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, trade surpluses with just about everyone - but it now also has the world's largest greenhouse gas emissions. Even the White House - held in awe by China's leaders a decade ago - seems humbled in Beijing's eyes. The titans of Wall Street, who once lectured officials on the benefits of liberal capital markets, now lecture at financial crisis conferences about China's model and guess at when Beijing will announce the yuan as the world's global currency. Yes, getting rich is glorious.
But lurking beneath all this confidence is a contrasting jittery paranoia over almost any form of criticism, even constructive. Compare this to a decade ago when leaders solicited diverse opinions on economic and legal reform. Today, riots occur in major cities where people protest at local police abuse and unregulated pollution. Large areas remain in lockdown. Are these just blips on the trajectory towards more glorious richness? Or is China's spending splurge not that sustainable?
