This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchel.

It is 1994.

Cheyenne, a city in China, the People's Republic of China, undergoing a transformation from a poverty

damaged culture, 5,000-year-old culture, poverty damaged by geopolitics and the insistence on the

Chinese Communist Party to brutalize the population in the 50s and 60s and 70s. And here we are 1994.

And the author, Ann Stevenson Yang, has returned to China.

She was there once before as an editorialist, returned to China, representing a business

council, and she's invited to Xihan's presentation of business and business and

manufacturing and development. And she arrives and is ushered into the hall and taken upstairs,

and there's a velvet curtain, and it pulls back. 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.

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 miracle.

The screen pulls, the velvet curtain pulls back.

And what do you see and what do you do next?

Good evening to you, Anne.

Good evening, John. Thanks for having me. It was nuts because, you know,

I'm just this, this, you know, 20-odd-year-old person from Washington, D.C. I don't know a thing about

...