CHINA'S LEADERS seem sure that innovation can co-exist with authoritarian rule. Their confidence looks more rational than it once did: Chinese firms dominate some high-tech fields. Still, they have to explain a counterpoint: when freedoms increased in China over the past 40 years, greater creativity always followed. Uli Sigg, a Swiss businessman and diplomat, first reached China in 1979, as reformers began to dismantle the Mao-era planned economy. Later, he spent decades building an unrivalled collection of contemporary Chinese art. He was sent to China by Schin-dler, a Swiss manufacturer of lifts, for whom he established the first Chinese joint-venture with a foreign firm. Rather than a capitalist revolution, he describes years of caution, as entrepreneurs worried that open doors would slam shut. He recalls campaigns against Western "spiritual pollution" that frightened colleagues into ditching suits and ties and reverting to workers' jackets in blue cotton. But time and again, opening sparked innovation.
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