Man Of The Year: Visionary of a New China

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signed a private trade agreement worth $20 billion: China will export oil to Japan in exchange for Japanese steel and factories. In a ceremony last month at Peking's Great Hall of the People, Teng attended the signing of a seven-year, $13.5 billion trade and cooperation agreement with France Its projects include French help in developing Chinese telecommunications satellites and TV broadcasting, the modernization and extension of a steel complex, and the construction of power stations, a magnesium plant and other facilities. Most important, France landed an order for two 900-megawatt nuclear power plants at nearly $1 billion each.

The Chinese went to the Swedes for cooperation in mining, railroads and telecommunications, to the British for $315 million worth of coal-mining equipment, to the Danes for help in improving Shanghai and other ports. They browsed in Sweden, France and England for modern weaponry with which to rearm their badly equipped military forces. They will probably make only a few selective purchases at first, because of their shortage of capital. Chinese and Americans kept up brisk negotiations. Coastal States Gas Corp., a U.S. firm, agreed to buy 3.6 million bbl. of Chinese crude, the first shipment to arrive early this year. In accordance with its aim to double annual steel production, to 60 million tons in 1985, China signed an agreement with Bethlehem Steel for the development of an iron mine at Shuichang, in Hopei province.

The wa11 that has so long imprisoned China in its immense, opaque privacy collapsed so fast that some imaginations projected a regretful vision of the Middle Kingdom overrun by Instamatics and McDonald's. (In fact, the Chinese have consulted McDonald's executives about possible fast-food techniques for use in China.) Inter-Continental Hotels plans to build within three years a chain of 1,000-room hotels, complete with swimming pools and saunas, in Peking Canton, Shanghai and other major cities. Hyatt International has proposed the construction of hotels with a total capacity of 10,000 rooms. Pan American and several other airlines have entered bidding for landing rights in China to bring in the tourist trade on a major scale.

The Chinese are taking crash courses in foreign languages. More than 1 million copies of Radio Peking's English course have been sold in the capital. Some 10,000 Chinese students will be dispatched to study overseas, a development that will exert a profound, lasting effect on Chinese culture as the students return. Some of the cultural juxtapositions are startling: Haute Couture Designer Pierre

Cardin went to China and received permission to stage two fashion shows there in March. When Teng went to Japan his wife and the wives of four other officials on the trip were turned out in trimly cut silk jackets and pants, an elegant change from the monochrome Mao suits that were for years the Chinese woman's revolutionary uniform.

Chinese stage shows and movies are in rapid transformation. The Peking Cinema College reopened this year after having been suspended for twelve years The country's first X-rated film, a Japanese movie about prostitution, was shown to Chinese audiences and even defended by the Kwangming Daily, which said that it greatly enlightened and educated the Chinese audience." The newspaper went on to argue that young people must be freed from the