All Roads Lead to China just came out with a fascinating, but way too short, post on a few interviews of Shanghai's underclass. It is called, "It's All About Hope and Opportunity in China" and I urge everyone to read it.

All Roads' post touches on the sorts of things China Law Blog used to discuss a lot more often when when we first started oh so long ago.

I can remember writing a number of posts and comments where I would talk about how the Chinese are more like Americans than many realize. And how I have always felt far more "at home" in China than in what I see as for more hierarchical and formal societies like Korea and Japan.

The All Roads post brought back some fond memories for me of one of my longest and best China friendships. Excuse me for a rare burst of maudlin here, but it all goes back to a case I was handling in Qingdao where I and a Qingdao lawyer ended up spending the better part of two days together waiting for a ship to come in to Qingdao's port and then hunting it down once we heard it had arrived. We had a lot of time to talk and one of the things I will never forget about our conversation was how we both saw our countries so similarly.

We talked about how what we most liked about our country was how it was still possible for people from poverty to rise up and achieve just about anything. And of how this belief is so essential to the fabric of both our countries. This belief is our core. And this now very wealthy, exceedingly well educated Chinese lawyer knew of this from the heart as he is one of 13 children from a tiny village whose father had a 4th grade education.

We then talked about what most concerned us about our respective countries and we both again said that our biggest concern was how this was changing. We both talked of how the wealthy are starting to live in gated communities and send their kids to private schools and we both worried about the long term impact this might have on our countries' futures. Our two law firms eventually established a formal affiliation, but it has always been built more on our friendship than on any piece of paper.

All Roads' piece talks about the hopes of the financially downtrodden to do better by their next generation. CLB's Steve Dickinson is always telling me of conversations he has with waiters and waitresses and others in China's less respected jobs. And what he says reinforces what All Roads is saying. That these people believe their hard work will pay off in a better future, if not for them, than for their children.

When I was in college, I took a course on revolutions and the two things I best remember from that course (in fact, probably the only two substantive things I remember from that course) where that revolutions typically spring from the urban middle class (this is obviously less true of China than of most countries) and they spring from those who believe the elites have blocked the paths upward.

Rich, put me down as someone else who would love to see more of your street interviews.

Just a few random thoughts....

What do you think?