Kodak provides more than half of the nation's film and photo paper. What's happened is that the Chinese economy has grown - and grown, like Alice when she nibbled on the wrong side of the magic mushroom. The Chinese economy is now a little smaller than that of Britain or France. But within the next two decades, China could become the third-largest economy in the world, after the United States and Japan, reckons Mr. Lardy. That's a fifth or a quarter of Americans' ability to purchase goods and services.
China remains a one-party, authoritarian state.
Though the control of the Communist Party is gradually loosening, China won't be a Western-style democracy for at least 20 years, guesses Mr. Zhao, raised in Beijing, now a Canadian. The Chinese leadership is aware that continued economic progress requires greater freedom - a shift to free enterprise that belies their party's name. That's magnificent by standards of Western industrial nations. But China needs rapid growth to create jobs for the 3 million plus leaving the farms each year and those further millions laid off by state enterprises. China's growth rate peaked in the lower double digits in 1994, and then fell for seven years.