Ross Terrill

The mood in China as the 1980s begin, and a post-Mao policy line is consolidated, is one of cautious hopefulness. There is a fervent desire for progress, blended with an acute awareness of the limits on future possibilities. Of all the differences since the great but oppressive Mao Zedong was embalmed in 1976, there are four which stand out.

The issue of China "joining the world" is an old one. There have long been contacts between China and other civilizations, yet the Middle Kingdom was for most of the time either superior or passive (or a blend of both) toward others. And once they discovered Chinese civilization, Europeans for their part often took China for fantasy rather than reality. Voltaire, like foreign self-styled Maoists today, tried to join China to the world philosophically by finding preferred universal values there, using reluctant China as a distant lever against a close-at-hand society he disliked.