Thanks for a very interesting report on China. The reporting from the countryside was eye-opening and depressing.

However, there appears to be a disconnect in your premise. Your view seems to be that "China's economic 'miracle' is rotting from within" because political oppression and environmental destruction exist along side extraordinary economic gains. I say extraordinary because even if the growth is only 8 percent, or "no more than Japan and South Korea achieved during their take-off phases," that is as high as any country has ever managed without unbearable inflation. And Japan and Korea are worthy peer groups when measuring economic results. China's economic dynamism which in turn funds an assertive internationalist government is the reason the world sees China as an impending superpower.

Since my first visit to China in 1985 when I took a train from Beijing to Tianjin to judge a software contest at a university, the entrepreneurial instincts of the Chinese impressed upon me the sense that I had met natural capitalists. I marvel to this day that they were ever communist. Every Chinese I meet in business who is an A player will inevitably tell me about his plan to own a business someday. These are not Party parasites, but men with dreams of being little kings. One of the biggest changes I noticed last time I was in Hong Kong was that Wan Chai was no longer a red light district but rather a string of design shops for everything from fancy fixtures to custom electronics to sell to the visiting Chinese business owners shopping for their new villas.

The communist party today is a power structure, not an economic philosophy. The old Chinese government factories are relics from an unnatural act. The government carries them to keep the peace but they don't grow them. As a result they will be an ever smaller percentage of the rapidly growing capitalist economy.

None of what I say excuses China's brutal oppression of its own people or the total disregard for its land or the air and water of the entire region. Those issues just don't have a lot to do with whether or not China is an emerging superpower. China's economy is run by natural capitalists with an appetite to compete on both cost and engineering a better mousetrap. Countries that have a lot of competitive innovative companies tend to become quite rich. China has the confidence, ambition and population to apply that wealth to securing a position as one of the world's few superpowers.

"I merely want to record the words and impressions of some exceptional Chinese men and women, who mostly suffer in silence, raising when they can the demand for a free nation—a 'normal' nation."

When I went to live and work in post-communist Eastern Europe in 1991 I heard again and again the almost heart-breaking refrain, "All we want is a normal life!" This is not "relative" or "just their culture"; people in despotisms everywhere know that what they are subject to is not a normal, humane way to live.

Thanks for the interesting article about China. I have been led to think that China would, eventually, lean towards democratic principles because of the overwhelming western influences of cars, TV's, and the like but it seems the party will forever keep its foot on the neck of freedom, while making it look like there are a lot of happy people in China.

I work in a high-tech field and have met many Chinese nationals, who are great people with a work ethic I much admire, but few of whom want ever to go back home for obvious reasons.