I agree with you here David, and I've been to China several times. US history is full of anecdotes of how serious wrongs were righted (or at least turned in the right direction) through regulation. As we grow in numbers, I would expect this would become more true.

Concurrent with that, I think there is great need to separate government and business. It ought to be one of the jobs of government to provide sensible regulation and to provide an atmosphere in which business can thrive.

We've seen a loss of perspective when business tries to regulate itself. And especially away from the US (places like Russia, Venezuela, etc. etc.), large nationalized companies have their profit goals competing within the government for sensible regulation. In those cases, the profit motive always wins.

There ought to be a constant arguement about how much regulation is too much or too little. That's where the interface of politics and business should be.

In China, the government still holds the majority stake in firms like CNPC, CNOOC, and other giants. There is a clear conflict of interest between their desire to grow and their desire to grow clean. My view is that this will eventually change, but it is going to take the Chinese having an awakening similar to the environmental movmement in the West. Continued openess to the outside world (events like the Olympics and via business contacts) is what will let these "outside" ideas start to take root.