As I travel to Beijing today for the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference, I'm drawn back thirty-three years to my first (and only prior) visit to the People's Republic of China.
It was a different China in 1978. Just emerging after nearly thirty years of isolation and mostly closed off to the western world, it indeed emphasized the "People's Republic" part of its name. Chairman Mao was less than two years dead and Hua Gofeng, Mao's successor, had only recently ended the Cultural Revolution. Most people still wore the zhongshan (aka Mao suit), carried their copy of the "little red book" (Quotations From Chairman Mao) in a pocket, and the only contact they'd ever had with foreigners was perhaps with visiting Soviet officials. Beijing was a flat city with very few structures taller than the Great Hall of the People.
To enter the PRC from the west, you needed to fly to Hong Kong, take a train across the New Territories to the Lo Wu station, then disembark and literally walk across the border on the wooden bridge. Compare the photo below to the Lo Wu station today.
Lo Wu Station and border crossing 1978
Thankfully, you can now fly directly to and from the US (via inter alia UAL 888, very cheeky, United. Another auspicious note: this is the 8th Annual B-K Conference...a coincidence? I think not).
Auto traffic in Beijing and other cities was nonexistent (there literally were no private cars on the roads, no streetlamps, and cars drove without their headlights on at night). No one except high party officials had access to an automobile. Only two hotels in Beijing were open to westerners, and the rooms had no locks.
And before "Tiananmen Square" took on negative overtones, it was the political and spiritual center of the socialist government, and quite empty most of the time.
Tiananmen Square/Gate, uncrowded in 1978. Compare this vista to last week.
Even then, a trip to the Great Wall was obligatory. But it looked much different than it does today.
Great Wall, 1978. Versus last week.
And in 1978, I would never have imagined that in conjuction with a Chinese law school, a major US law school would be holding a legal conference in Beijing. Much less a conference expressly devoted to property rights, featuring leading American legal scholars and practitioners who have been invited to discuss topics such as "Property as an Instrument of Social Policy," "Culture and Property," and "Property as an Economic Institution" with their Chinese counterparts.
Nor would I have imagined that China would tolerate protests by "middle class homeowners" upset over the destruction of their property or lack of proper compensation, or that we'd be following along with property issues in China, because this is pretty much all you got in 1978:
In case you can't read the sign: "We must adhere to proletarian internationalism. Strengthen the unity between our party and the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations all over the world. Strengthen the unity between the people of our country and the people of all other countries. Especially those of the third world countries. Unite with all the forces in the world that can be united, and carry the struggle against imperialism, social-imperialism and modern revisionism through to the end."
So please stay tuned this week for more from the Conference. I understand we'll have internet access so I plan on live blogging (or tape-delay blogging due to the time difference) to add my observations about if and how the People's Republic recognizes property rights, whether China has any plans to beat us at our own game, what the future may hold, and what more is available to drink besides hot tea, lukewarm orange soda, and maotai (the only beverages available in 1978).
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