S8 Ep270: THE AWAKENING OF CHINA'S ECONOMY Colleague Anne Stevenson-Yang, Wild Ride. Returning to China in 1994, the author witnessed a transformation from the destitute, Maoist uniformity of 1985 to a budding export economy. In the earlier era, workers slept on de

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 3 January 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

THE AWAKENING OF CHINA'S ECONOMY Colleague Anne Stevenson-Yang, Wild Ride. Returning to China in 1994, the author witnessed a transformation from the destitute, Maoist uniformity of 1985 to a budding export economy. In the earlier era, workers slept on desks and lacked basic goods, but Deng Xiaoping's realization that the state needed hard currency prompted reforms. Deng established Special Economic Zones like Shenzhen to generate foreign capital while attempting to isolate the population from foreign influence, marking the start of China's export boom. NUMBER 5
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0:00.0	This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor. It is 1994. Xi'an, a city in China, the People's Republic of China,
0:18.4	undergoing a transformation from a poverty-damaged culture,
0:22.9	5,000-year-old culture, poverty damaged by geopolitics and the insistence on the Chinese Communist Party
0:29.9	to brutalize the population in the 50s and 60s and 70s.
0:34.2	And here we are, 1994.
0:37.1	And the author, Ann Stevenson Yang, has returned to China.
0:41.9	She was there once before as an editorialist, returned to China, representing a business
0:47.4	council, and she's invited to Shee Ann's presentation of business and business and manufacturing and development.
0:56.7	And she arrives and is ushered into the hall and taken upstairs, and there's a velvet
1:04.7	curtain, and it pulls back.
1:06.9	And congratulations, a very good evening to you. Thank you for this. The book is Wild Ride, a short history of the opening and closing of the Chinese economy.
1:17.9	You are privileged to have witnessed the five decades you preview for us here and then analyze. And this is 1994. So it's the second decade of the Chinese
1:31.1	miracle. The screen pulls, the velvet curtain pulls back. And what do you see and what do you
1:39.1	do next? Good evening to you, Ann. Good evening, John. Thanks for having me. It was nuts because, you know,
1:46.0	I'm just this, this, you know, 20-odd-year-old person from Washington, D.C. I don't know a thing about
1:52.0	business, and I really do not expect to be treated like a VIP. So, you know, I go to this
1:58.4	trade show expecting to be in the audience and listen to esteemed speakers, and then they escort me onto the stage and, you know, I go to this trade show expecting to be in the audience and listen to esteemed speakers.
2:02.7	And then they escort me onto the stage.
2:05.0	And it turns out I am the esteemed speaker.
2:07.7	And everybody speaks only Chinese.
2:09.7	So I have to come up with something to say in Chinese.
2:12.2	So I kind of stumble out a few words.
	...

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