can get a son as their one allowable child. Most laborers belong to a danwei, a state work unit, that controls everything from the right to change residences to permission to have that kid. The Freedom House organization, in its annual Freedom in the World report, says, “China continues to have one of the worst human rights records in the world and the rule of law is nonexistent.” I had come to Shanghai for an academic conference with, of all things, a libertarian think tank. The confab was officially sanctioned and cosponsored by a Chinese university. Why would Communists invite to their country people who are absolutely woolly on the subject of freedom? There were folks in our delegation who think Ben and Jerry’s ought to be able to sell Morphine Mint, and folks who, at a certain hour of the evening—when sufficiently full of cobra blood—mutter, “I have just two things to say to Timothy McVeigh: ‘IRS.’ ‘3 A . M .’” But it turns out that libertarians are the only policy boffins in Washington who favor free trade, no matter what. And free trade is the only freedom on the Chinese agenda at the moment. Libertarians reason that government has no business telling independent citizens whom they can do business with or why. And some libertarians have a further theory that trading fried chicken and Pepsi with the mainland Chinese is like trading smallpox-infested blankets with the Plains Indians—that the Communists will come down with a fatal case of Western values. So the libertarians would talk about individualism and responsibility, legal self-possession, civil society, and natural law. And the Chinese would stare into the middle distance, applaud politely, and ask us if China was going to get most- favored-nation trading status without kissing the business end of Boris Yeltsin. The other thing the Chinese wanted to know about was Social Security privatization. This, like free trade, is a policy favored by libertarians, but not for the reason the Chinese gave. A “pro-market” Party cadre told the audience that “too high Social Security benefits encourage laziness.” The academic conference was like being sent back to college unstoned and less practiced at doodling. The Chinese college students’ amateur simultaneous translation didn’t help. Usually the kids got just the nouns: “Problems China reforms industry strategy 1950s structure.” Afternoons and evenings, there were
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