Far-Reaching Freedom and Increasing Prosperity

By HELMUT MATT

SPEAKING about today`s China, we are looking at an up-and-coming, dynamic and rapidly developing country whose economic power has become a global benchmark. Some Chinese cutting-edge technologies are gradually occupying the world market, Chinese consumer goods have become an integral part of the world`s shopping centers, and Chinese travelers also dominate the tourism sector.

What seems to be quite natural today was hardly conceivable not so long ago. Personally, I had my first encounter with a person from China in the mid-1980s. It was only a few years earlier that the country, which at that time had been largely sealed off, had begun to open up cautiously to the outside world and to introduce important reforms at home. In this context, some Chinese students were allowed to travel abroad for exchange programs.

The friendly young fellow student I met at my university in Germany at that time was Li Jie. She had come to Germany to learn the German language for one semester at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Freiburg. Despite language barriers, many good conversations took place between us at that time.

It was quite exciting for me to learn first-hand about life in China. Li Jie, on the other hand, was curious to find out more about what moved people in Germany.