China Is Not Red Anymore by Wendy Liu For those whose concept of China is frozen in the 1970s and for anyone who would like to know about today's China. 16. An Afterword For China, with a history of 5,000 years, 50 some years of the People's Republic under the Communist Party of China is but a quick curve in an endless river. 20 of those 50 years have been under epoch-making reforms initiated and led by the same yet a changing party. Mao Zedong China was red. Deng Xiao-ping's China was fading red. Today's China under Jiang Zeming is positively multi-colored. There may still be some patches of redness here and there represented by more conservative members within the Communist Party Central (CPC) leadership or in the Chinese government apparatus. But China as a country on the whole is definitely not red anymore. The End, May 2001. About the author: Wendy Liu grew up in Xiant, China. She missed the normal middle school education as a result of the Cultural Revolution, but did get a BA in English in 1977 from Xian Foreign Languages Institute. After graduation, she worked for the foreign affairs department of the provincial government. She went on to do graduate work in Beijingt International Relations Institute, and then joined the faculty of the new Shenzhent University in 1983. There she also became a freelance writer on social issues. In 1986, she entered the School of Social Sciences of Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA and received her MS degree in Technology and Science Policy two years later. She returned to Shenzhen to work as an editor of an economic journal published in HongKongt. She also worked as a consultant for China Development Institute, the first independent think-tank in China. She has lived in Seattle since 1989 and is now an independent China business consultant. As a freelance writer, she has also written opinions for local as well as regionalpapers, on US-China relations and issues in the news. This is the second time she is contributing to the Chinese American Forum.(CAF) CAF is a non-profit, non-partisan and non-sectarian organization. Its goal is to provide an open and public forum to cultivate and promote mutual understanding between Chinese Americans and the general public. To achieve that goal, a quarterly magazine is published to address issues and concerns on culture, history, education, heritage and community affairs. For those who are interested to comment and to support CAF, you can be involeved by becoming a member ($30/year) or a subscriber ($20/year) and you can reach us at P. O. Box 719, St. Charles, Mo 63302, and cafmag@earthlink.net.