Steve DeCollibus, Managing Editor, Circuitnet

Today China enters into the main stream of world culture. Many of us in the electronics industry have been part of the emergence of this country and have participated in the evolution of China from a third world internally focused country to an emerging global economic and cultural engine.

This new China will be presented to most of the world for the first time this evening as the summer Olympics kicks off in Beijing.

I recall a walk I took in Beijing 20 years ago during one of my first business trips there. Much of the land that holds sky scrapers today was farm land and the development of the new city while in full swing had just begun. You could tell the world was about to change and many including myself were predicting dire consequences for both China and the rest of the global economy.

What I have always remembered from this walk was the five students who stopped me to ask if I would sit with them for a while so that they could practice speaking English to an actual American. Twenty years ago there were only few of us walking around the city on any given Sunday morning.

We sat down and had tea in a small shop and proceeded to have a very polite and interesting talk about their country, Beijing and their futures. All spoken in very clear and precise English with very little stumbling on their part. What impressed me the most about these kids was their hunger for knowledge.

The intensity and optimism they brought to the discussion and the happiness they found in social exchange. I have always found Chinese people at their leisure to be fun loving and happy. At work I have found them to be intensely focused on doing a job correctly and in learning process and technique.

We still have much to learn about each others cultures but the process has begun. This summer I am part of a day camp motor pool that is transporting 4 thirteen year olds to and from their sailing lessons. Yesterday on the way home three of them were practicing the Mandarin they are learning in the local junior high school. They were laughing and having fun doing it, I did not understand a word they said.