When my college classmates in China graduated in 1982, their salaries averaged $100 a month now they all own at least one apartment and boast flat-screen TVs bigger than my family’s minivan.īut this voyage from Third World basket case to global powerhouse has not been without its challenges. Twenty-five years ago, in 1989 - when millions of Chinese marched for more freedom and less corruption in demonstrations that ended with a crackdown around Tiananmen Square - China’s per-capita gross domestic product, a measure of its economic output, was a paltry $403 a year. The erstwhile “sick man of Asia” now boasts the world’s second-biggest economy and has more trade with more countries than any other nation. To say that China has transformed itself over the past several decades is an understatement. Why did he stop? Clearly he doesn’t know how to grab opportunities when he sees them.

In Beijing, the entrepreneur lands another date and, taking that woman home, slows down at a yellow light. He risked her life back there at the crossing. When they arrive at her house, she won’t invite him in. Driving her home, he accelerates through an intersection as the light changes to red. In Palo Alto, a young woman goes out to dinner with a Chinese entrepreneur.

In the late 1990s, a joke circulated in Beijing depicting the difference between a go-go China and the all-too-staid United States. John Pomfret, the author of “Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China,” is working on a book about the United States and China.

Age of ambition by evan osnos