Chapter 85 Postscript

In December 1850, at the age of 45, Tocqueville wrote letters to his friends in the seaside town of Sorrento.For more than a decade, he has been famous in Europe and the North American continent for his book "On American Democracy", but since then he has been troubled by finding new writing subjects. He wrote in the letter: " As I traveled through the mountains of Sorrento, I began to search for a subject that had to be contemporary for me and provide me with a means of combining fact with thought, history with philosophy itself. In my opinion, This is the condition of the question..." "Youth passes, time passes, and middle age is reached; life is short, and the range of activities shrinks... I can only consider contemporary subjects, and in fact, only the public is interested, and I am interested Things of our times." In these letters, Tocqueville announced that he would create a monograph on the French Revolution, which is his other great handed down work - "The Old Regime and the Great Revolution".

I remember that it was the midsummer of 2010. I had been to Sorrento. It was a very beautiful small city in southern Italy. Residents built houses on the hillside, facing the sea. The paths were winding and cramped. There were flower shops and exquisite coffee everywhere. museum.I lived there for a few days and wandered through many mountain roads in the small town, but I didn't know that the most pioneering thinkers in Europe were wandering here more than a hundred years ago.At this moment, I started writing this book. When I read this anecdote by chance while looking up materials, I suddenly felt a different kind of intimacy. Counting my age, I was already forty-five, and I was feeling sorry for the white hair. Life and time go by, and I am anxious about writing day and night.

For anyone who studies academically, the choice of creative theme is always the most important.Zhang Wuchang, a senior economist, once said: "Problems can be divided into important and unimportant. To learn, you must find important starting points. Life is so short, and a person's creative period is even shorter. It is very difficult to choose unimportant issues and work hard. It is easy to end an academic career in a blink of an eye.” I have a deep understanding of this.Since 2004, I have started to conduct empirical research on contemporary Chinese enterprises. The inspiration for this project came from several discussions when I was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. I found that Westerners know little about China's economic rise and are biased. In 2007 and 2008, I published the first and second volumes of "Thirty Years of Stirring: Chinese Enterprises 1978-2008". , "Two Millenniums: Chinese Enterprises from the 7th Century BC - 1869", thus completing the overall narrative of Chinese enterprises. In 2010, I also published "The Biography of Wu Jinglian". Through the biographical writing of this most famous contemporary economist, I sorted out the evolution trajectory of macroeconomic theory after the founding of New China.For nine years, this series of writing has consumed the best hours of my life, and now it has brought me to this book.

At the moment of writing this book, China's reform has reached a crossroads.My state of mind at this time is very different from when I decided to write in 2004. Readers who are familiar with my works should understand it.If we say that I still had the excited mentality of a "visitor" back then, then today I am like a traveler holding a thin-bodied porcelain, fearful in my heart, and only want to make progress. I would like to express my gratitude to many people. They are my teachers, schoolmates, professionals who accepted my interviews, and many authors who inspired me. Deputy editor-in-chief, my editors Wang Liuquan, Yu Yanlong, Chen Lixia and Hu Zhiyuan.

Of course, I am most grateful to my family.Wu Shuran is already a high school student who is 1.63 meters tall. I have written so many business books but still haven't cultivated her interest in economics.Twenty years have passed since Shao Bingbing married me, and I dedicate this book as a souvenir to her. All errors and inappropriateness in the book are my responsibility.British historian John Arnold said in "The Source of History" that there is no "single truth" in history, "because no fact and truth can be said outside the context of meaning, interpretation, and judgment."The facts we see and the conclusions we make are always limited by the perspective of the times and the context of meaning. Tocqueville is no exception, and this book is no exception.