[Rick Lee]

China's gov't. is becoming less involved in their industry every day. But there's still a long way to go. Walk around any mid-large-size city (midsize there is like NYC here) and tell me you feel like you're in a communist country. There is more stuff for sale there than I've ever seen here even at Xmas time. It's an extremely vibrant economy and I never met anyone in a city there that wasn't 100% optimistic that things were only gonna get better. Yes, the countryside is a few hundred years behind the rest of the world. But the young people leaving there to go work in the cities will transform that in due time. It's a big place and it will take time. If you ever walked around in an eastern bloc country back in the 80's or before, that was real communism. Everyone was equally poor unless you were part of the political elite. I suspect China was a lot like that back before Deng started liberalizing the place. Lots of millionaires and middle class folks in today's China have nothing at all to do with politics. There is no welfare, no gov't-mandated retirement system like soc. sec. You're truly on your own there. If ours weren't a litigious welfare state, I think we'd be far better off. The only way we will beat China is by sending lawyers there to ruin the place.