Sharing everything

Tanzania also practised socialism, which was more or less similar to China, up until mid 1980s. Therefore socialism was about sharing. We thought that in China cars and bicycles had no owners. If someone bought a car or bicycle it became everyone's property. The cars on streets were left with keys dangling in the ignition. Anyone could drive to his/her destination and park the car there. That way, somebody else could do the same. And the same went for bicycles. The story was that this was the highest level of socialism. But we failed to ask ourselves who would put fuel in the car and maintain it. My colleague in Zambia told me that last month when he went back for a short leave he bumped into a middle-age man in one of the Lusaka commuters bragging about the same thing: "In China cars have no owners." This was our childhood myth, and far from the realities.

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