I'm John Batsch with my colleague Mary Kistel, Executive Vice President Stevens Incorporated,

former Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State and in Hong Kong where Mary and I

first began correspondence in Hong Kong for the Wall Street Journal

editorial page observing then the two the two different versions of China.

That was the Hong Kong version,

which had its own rule of law and courts and markets conditions prevailed, a very prosperous and gem of a city.

My son, when he was a teenager, was invited to visit Hong Kong, he traveled there and he still raves about the city that he toured on

the underground and walked up the hillside. Beautiful, but today it's glum because

it's been crushed under the boot of the Chinese Communist Party.

The additional twist here is that that same boot seems to have crushed the mainland after

crushing Hong Kong.

Mary, I begin with the expectation

that there is no easy answer to the Chinese economy.

They're trying to stimulate the markets. They're trying to entice foreign investment.

They're trying to take over the buildings that can no longer be completed by the now

failed Evergrand and its competitors and you have identified in past conversations.

The real problem is the Chinese Communist Party.

Do they see it married?

Your measure, the Chinese are very hard-working people and they

understand what solutions mean. Do they see that the party is the problem? I think

it's important to distinguish between the party and the Chinese people and not to conflate the two.

Because you're right, the Chinese people are remarkably hard-working, entrepreneurial, very capable, and you see how they've prospered in free nations like the United States or in Taiwan or in Malaysia and other places to which they've emigrated.

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