This worries me because there is no more important issue in international affairs than the bilateral relationship between China and the U.S. "Dispatches from China" will be my small effort to bridge those gaps, to provide a voice from the middle between the sharply contrasted American view of life here and the Chinese view of the U.S.

It will also be my personal effort to rationalize the gaps in my own thinking. Because despite a decade of travel and work in China, I moved here with a set of erroneous beliefs that are quickly being altered. Two core ideas I had about China have been proven false, and are fundamental to understanding the reality of China versus the view of it from outside.

The Chinese economy is Communist; it isn't, certainly not in the Cold War sense that most Americans still view this place. Deng Xiao Ping, the Chinese Communist Party leader that 35 years ago set China on its path from a nation of 1 billion peasants to world economic power, said to "get rich is glorious," and the Chinese people have taken that advice to heart.

The country is teeming with entrepreneurs who approach their lives with a passion about the future that is inspiring and energizing to Lao Wai like me. There are more small businesses, more individuals carving out a better life for themselves and their families than in New York, Chicago, London -- anywhere. There are more luxury vehicles on the road in Beijing than most cities in the world, more luxury brands in more high-end malls than anyplace I've been. There are an enormous number of publicly traded companies, on two stock exchanges, most Americans have never heard of that have grown into powerful economic players poised to emerge on the global stage.

Make no mistake, while the Beijing government is active in managing the economy, in many of the same ways Washington manages the U.S. economy, China is about making money in the best capitalist tradition. The over-emphasis by U.S. media on stories about trade disputes and currency valuation tends to distort this vital truth.

The Chinese government controls the lives of its citizens. It does not. The government has been a skillful orchestrator of the emergence of Chinese society, but the evolution and ultimate direction of the country feels like it is being driven at a grassroots level. China is no western style Democracy, but give credit where credit is due. When you consider how far the Chinese nation has traveled in just 35 years of reform, you can't help but admire the central planning that allowed so many individuals to improve their lives, pursue personal dreams and collectively create the modern China.

John Naibitt, in his book "China's Megatrends," writes about the "bottom-up top-down" process through which China has experienced social reform and how that reform was channeled by government policies that placed the welfare of the nation over that of individuals. China is not a good place to be a discordant voice, for sure, but a fine place to be someone who values family, community and personal opportunity.

There is evidence everywhere that citizens are expressing themselves personally in the way they dress, the lifestyles they choose, in the emergence of a vibrant contemporary art scene. But there is also a line that people usually don't cross: It is not a good thing to make waves for everyone else, to disrupt the sense of community harmony that the Chinese so value. The large majority of citizens, it seems, are OK with that. Western media favor stories about dissent, creating the wrong impression that the American thirst for individual freedom is shared by China's citizens. That doesn't square with what I see, read and experience each day.

That's happening to me a lot these days.