Five years ago, Ju Songzhen was an agricultural worker in a village in Shanxi province. He had a reputation as a can-do fellow, but, like his neighbors, he was earning not much more than $30 a month. Then, in response to a daring new government policy that encouraged country people to develop their own moneymaking projects, Ju began building and marketing metal frames for the battery chargers used by local coal miners. Soon demand for his high-quality but economical merchandise started to snowball. Customers multiplied; orders boomed. By 1984, thanks to his success in manufacturing a product that the country badly needed, Ju had amassed a considerable fortune.
All but drowning in his newfound wealth, the 44-year-old entrepreneur began spending, and spending, and spending. He surprised his wife and two teenage sons with a refrigerator and a color television set. He acquired an electric fan and a grandfather clock. He bought a washing machine and a sewing machine, a cassette radio and a stereo system. He purchased three bicycles and four motorbikes. He ordered a Japanese-made van equipped with air-conditioner and stereo. Before long, his small home was so crowded with material possessions that he had a new two-story house built. Even then, enough cash was left over to enable Ju and his wife to take long vacations, flying around the country and staying in the best hotels.
Spending his cash, Ju believed, was a way of helping his country. His neighbors, however, thought otherwise. According to the newspaper Economic Reference, which told Ju's story, "the masses in his village viewed his spending as ostentation. Their erstwhile 'red-eye disease' (envy) toward Ju changed to 'white-eye treatment' (the cold shoulder). Ju found himself ostracized."
The tale of Ju, the all too successful entrepreneur, exemplifies in a small * but revealing way some of the tensions and paradoxes created by the daring "Four Modernizations" policy that has been pursued since 1977 by China's leader, Deng Xiaoping. On the one hand, Ju's embarrassment of riches advertises the potential of free enterprise in China, where even the People's Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, has declared that "getting rich and buying consumer goods is not decadent--especially if it makes life more pleasant." On the other hand, the ostracism suffered by Ju highlights the difficulties of introducing capitalist measures into a state that for more than three decades has regarded the unfettered pursuit of money as a source of evil. If prosperity is encouraged in Deng's China, it is still not universally admired.