The giant awakens: China is a (surprise)capitalistic nation determined to succeed, even if it requires bending some rules.

On Jan. 18, my plane left Tokyo bound for Shanghai, China, on the last leg of the 16-hour journey from my home in Minneapolis. I was looking forward to my first trip to China but with mixed emotions. Would I be greeted--and perhaps followed--by communist soldiers during the next two weeks? Or would I arrive in a land of poverty where peasants work for pennies on small remote farms or dirty factories in extensive manufacturing complexes, grinding out thousands of illegal copies of products developed in other countries?

Or would I find something else entirely?

Actually, I found all of this and more in a huge country of more than a billion consumers. China is moving quickly from an agrarian society run by a tight-fisted communist government to a production-oriented, market-driven economy pushed by entrepreneurs and private investment.

China seems to be at the point that the United States was about 1900: a country whose population was eagerly moving from small, isolated farming communities to throbbing industrial centers, with all the pros and cons those dislocations involve.

I arrived at the stylishly modern Pu Dong Airport, where I was greeted by my host and guide, Mike Tomberlin, and David Turner, president of Tomberlin's Outdoor Group, one of several companies that Tomberlin operates. Also joining us was Judy Huang, my translator and a Tomberlin employee.

Tomberlin maintains a large, three-bedroom apartment for his American employees who travel frequently to China. Turner is one of several Tomberlin executives who spend many months each year in China, connected by phone and Internet to company headquarters in Augusta, Ga.

During the ride from the airport, we went over the tight travel schedule for the next several days that would take us to manufacturing facilities throughout China and Taiwan. The operations ranged from the government-owned Linhai Company Ltd. in the Jiangsu province that operates a joint venture engine plant with Yamaha, …