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George, China is amazingly open these days. Everyone I met is quite up to date on world affairs. For example, I just spent three days in Liaoning province. It is just north of North Korea. I was the only non-Chinese in the best hotel in Benxi - quite a novelty to them. This is a place so rural that farmers are called "peasants" without any sense of discomfort at the word. In a meeting with various political officials, the Vice Mayor for Agriculture passionately volunteered his sorrow over the space shuttle tragedy, saying that we live in a "global village" and that this wasn't just an American event, it brought sorrow to the whole world. I spent a great deal of time with a Mr. Dai, who, born a "peasant", now employs 50 people in an amazing variety of interlocked sustainable agriculture ventures - cattle, brewing, forestry, rainbow trout raising. He has been elected the head of his village because his fellow villagers see him as an example of how they can escape from centuries of desperate poverty in subsistence agriculture. He aspires to employ about 200 in another 3 years. Through the auspices of the China US Center for Sustainable Development, we are helping him to envision a sustainable village to raise the living standards of the villagers. Through an interpreter, Mr. Dai asked how I felt about the impending war against Iraq. I told him that I felt that "preemptive war" was not the "American Way" and that our position was embarrassing to me. It seemed like the simplist answer to a very complicated question. He then offered that this wasn't a war about threats to the US or about terrorism or weapons, it was about control of oil. In his view this wasn't preemptive at all, this was commercial (imperial?). He then offered that China would eventually support the US in the UN because our commercial relationship was too valuable to China for them to risk our disfavor. Quite astute from a peasant entrepreneur in the middle of nowhere. This isn't the China we grew up with! Your correspondent in China, Rus Perry (electronic mail, March 4, 2003)
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