NEW YORK TIMES
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
Watch the Chinese Change Faster Than Others
June 21, 2000
By T.K. Chang
China Unicom, China's second largest mobile phone company, has raised $4.9 billion in Hong Kong's biggest share sale. Its success is an illustration of the astonishing speed at which China and other Asian countries have embraced mobile telecommunications, in many cases much faster than the United States.
The rapid economic transformation of China in the last 20 years, and of Asia in the last four decades, have meant that the Chinese and many other Asians are accustomed to a much higher velocity of change and innovation than other continents.
Paradoxically, because China was so backward, Chinese today have experienced much more radical change in their lives and surroundings. They are therefore much more tolerant and accepting of the new and unfamiliar.
When I first visited Beijing in 1981, there were camels and horse carts along the street, and only a few antiquated cars. The only high-rise building was the Beijing Hotel, which was tightly sealed off by security guards. People wore blue Mao suits and knew almost nothing about the outside world. I brought gifts of ballpoint pens and calculators to my relatives that were gratefully treasured.
Today Beijing is a major international metropolis, with highways jammed with traffic and streets lined with skyscrapers. Businesspeople in suits rush around in luxury cars, while women sport the latest fashions and hairdos. Shops and department stores are glutted with color television sets, washing machines and refrigerators. Private enterprises and foreign joint ventures now make up the largest segment of the economy.
Similarly in other Asian cities, someone visiting after a period of even a few years often cannot recognize the streets, because old buildings have been torn down and entire roads rerouted. From poverty-stricken slums they have become prosperous centers of commerce and technology.
In contrast, if one were to think of a typical street corner in the United States, with few exceptions, it probably looks the same today as it did in 1981. Certain things have changed, but life in general — the cars and electrical appliances that Americans used, the clothes they wore, the jobs they did — have certainly changed much less since 1981 than such things have changed for Chinese.
Change is always upsetting, and people have different levels of tolerance for it. Contrary to popular preconceptions, I have often found thatmy Chinese friends are much quickerto grasp and accept new concepts and technologies than many of my American colleagues.
The number of mobile phone subscribers in China has been increasing at a compound annual rate of 77 percent, to 43.2 million at the end of 1999. The number of mobile subscribers is expected to approach 70 million this year.
The number of Internet users in China has been growing geometrically, and it may well be that in a few years,as Nicholas Negroponte, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has predicted, "the most widely used language on the Internet will be Chinese."
China's imminent entry into the World Trade Organization will only accelerate the speed of change in China. One can scarcely imagine what China will be like if it keeps evolvingat the supercharged rate of the last two decades. Perhaps it will become increasingly tolerant and accepting, not only of new technologies and products but also of new ideas.
[The writer, a lawyer in Hong Kong, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.]