When China says jump we need to ask, how high?

At the first university I taught at in China I used to discuss with my students what the campus would be like if every teacher started driving a car to class.

After three years at that university, most of the teachers did have cars. Open spaces and courtyards that once were used by students to roller blade or play badminton were taken over by masses of car owners proudly displaying their new middle class lifestyle.

The other day I was reading through some assessments that Stanley Rosen, an expert in Chinese politics and society at the University of Southern California, was making about the first generation that matured into adulthood after the founding of the PRC in 1949. "They were proud of their thriftiness and lack of material comforts," Rosen wrote.