WATCH FOR CHINESE FIREWORKS

Every society changes from one day to the next. But the economic and social transformation in China, especially since the beginning of the reform era in December 1978, has been particularly startling. Mao regimented the Chinese people, oppressed them, clothed them in totalitarian garb, and denied them their individuality. Today, they may not be free, but they are assertive, dynamic, and sassy. A mall-shopping, Internet connected, trend-crazy people, they are remaking their country at breakneck speed. Deprived for decades, they do not only want more, they want everything. Change of this sort is inherently destabilizing, especially in a one-party state. . . .

Leaving China a half-decade ago, an American banker remarked: "There's a billion people here who don't like following instructions." If anything, Chinese society since then has become even more willful. It may not always be defiant, but it is frequently disobedient. For better and also for worse, we have entered a period marked by the emergence of a great people from millennia of autocratic rule. For better -- because a nation that can barely govern itself will not be capable of dominating the other 200 countries on the planet. For worse -- because so turbulent and fretful a society is unlikely to rise peacefully, or to accept its role as a great power in orderly fashion. Thirty years after the death of Mao, the Chinese people have unfinished business to conduct, and their transition into the future is unlikely to be smooth.

-- Gordon G. Chang, China In Revolt, CommentaryMagazine.com, December 2006