Maggie's Farm

Last year, my wife and I spent three highly enjoyable weeks vacationing in China. From Beijing to Hong Kong, signs of a flourishing middle class as well as great wealth were everywhere: nice clothes, fancy cars, tall buildings, expensive cameras, a leisure class with enough money to take vacations... Enormous fortunes being made by some, as the Chinese fervently embrace "trickle down" capitalism, but that's not to say poverty is anywhere close to being eradicated in this Communist nation. Street beggars, disfigured and neglected cripples and amputees, dilapidated housing next to posh hotels and skyscrapers were everywhere to be seen. None of that would be tolerated these days under the soft capitalism in the US, whose current Supreme Leader issues calls to "distribute the wealth." For the Chinese, it seems the pros of nearly unbridled capitalism far outweigh the cons. There are some worrying signs that the economic bubble in China may be ready to burst. I hope that does not happen; I truly wish them well. It would be an enormous tragedy if the benefits of capitalism for the growing middle class in China were badly tarnished by an entirely avoidable economic collapse.

I don't think Nixon deserves historical credit for "opening China," if that's what you mean. In his early rabid anti-Communist phase, he did much to keep that nation closed. Nixon was against China before he was for it.