Change

The first in a series of dispatches from China.

In my upcoming book, A Country that Works, I wrote that America, along with the rest of the world, is going through the most profound, transformative economic revolution in world history. This revolution is televised, googlized, and globalized, on your screens and in your face 24/7. It is relentless and unending.

Traveling to China for my fifth trip only puts this reality more in my face. There is so much here to write about, but let me first talk about what has changed for my friend's grandmother throughout the course of her life.

Think about it: "Madame Fong" was born a peasant in a farming village in Western China in 1916. She married young and spent the first 40 years of her life with no plumbing. No running water. She cooked over an open fire.

Then came Mao and the Great March, leading to the Communist takeover. Her village had regular meetings with the local Party to discuss "theory and practice" - as told by the Party. She lived through the Great Leap Forward which brought famine to the country. Then the Cultural Revolution changed her life forever.

Her husband was a farmer. He had no formal schooling but nonetheless became literate. He helped his fellow villagers by reading and writing their letters, and with other tasks that required his skills.

The Party was jealous of his standing in the village and his education, and when Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution, he was arrested and killed.

Back then the nearest city seemed like a lifetime away. A new widow, she desired to leave, but instead she remained to raise her family. Her only son went off to study and became an educator, but he wanted to leave the country for a better life in the U.S. For 12 years he waited to immigrate to America, where he went from being a school principal to a dishwasher.

But he also watched his only daughter arrive to our shores speaking no English, and yet she grew up with opportunities he never had and graduated with a degree from Stanford University -- the gift of the American Dream.

Back in China, this extraordinary woman eventually moved into the city with other family members, in an apartment owned by the government, and survived.

Here is the punchline: Before the opening of China to the market, this 90-year-old lived through the Agricultural Revolution, as private property and more efficient farming took hold. Then she witnessed the Industrial Revolution as peasants moved from farms to factories, leaving rural towns for urban centers.

And now, she is living amidst the Knowledge Revolution as the Internet, cable TV, and global communications are readily available at her family's fingertips.

Her children in China own 11 small businesses. Her grandkids have computers and video games. They drive nice cars, and her son bought his newly married daughter - a naturalized U.S. citizen - a 3-bedroom condo, complete with a modern kitchen and bathrooms, to begin her new life.

The world is changing rapidly, and China is Ground Zero. Something big and unprecedented is happening in our world, and next...?

Wal-Mart goes union!