In September of 1992, a delegation of high-level Taiwanese experts in finance and securities came to Shanghai with the mission of establishing cooperative relations with the Shanghai Securities Exchange (SSE). Their visit was hosted by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), also my host institution, and I was invited to tag along. There is no better way to begin exploring the “special characteristics” of Shanghai's experiments with the stock market than to describe the communication and miscommunication, the messages sent and not received, between the two parties to this encounter.

The day began with a visit to the Shanghai Exchange itself, symbolic center of China's vast securities markets, and site to which all visitors of any importance, foreign or domestic, are first led. The seven-person Taiwan delegation and I, along with a representative from SASS and another from the central Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing (CASS), piled into a van that was to take us from the old French Concessions district, where SASS had its offices, to the city's financial district. My place in the order of things was quickly established. It was discovered that the head of the Taiwanese delegation knew one of my professors from the University of California; as the student of teachers with whom the Taiwanese experts were friends, I was of the younger generation, and hence to be seen and not heard.