I spent a year working at a university in China in 2002. With the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown looming, I wanted to solicit some thoughts from my former students. Unusually — but perhaps not surprisingly in retrospect — I did not hear back. I did hear from friends who are currently studying abroad. The following views are from one 27-year-old originally from Fujian province, who came two years ago to do a Master’s degree in Canada. Anonymity was requested.

Caption: Undergraduates stand in front of a Chinese national flag after three minutes of mourning for Sichuan earthquake victims at Fudan University in Shanghai May 12, 2009. REUTERS/Aly Song

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Q: What are your thoughts on June 4th?

My knowledge about June 4th is from a three-hour documentary called Tiananmen. I know it’s definitely illegal in mainland China but these things always appeal to college students. I admire the courage of the protesters and their passion for this country. It’s quite difficult for me to imagine people acting the same nowadays. On the other hand, I don’t think those protests were well-organized,  and things seemed to be out of control when they were close to the end … Chaos won’t do any good to this country. We all know that China’s political system is not good, but what is better?

Q: How do you see life in China now?

Life is better, at least for people living in cities. The widespread use of computers and the Internet make it possible for us to find out hidden facts. Although the government has set up the Golden Shield Project [sometimes better known as the Great Firewall of China],  one doesn’t need to be a computer science expert to figure out how to deal with it.

Caption: Job-seekers visit booths of companies at a job fair held for graduates in Changchun, Jilin province, November 22, 2008. REUTERS/Stringer

But it seems that nowadays most people — and frankly speaking, myself included — care more about how to make life better than things such as democracy. Maybe it’s because most Chinese are still poor. Maybe it’s because of the way we were educated. Sometimes we college students do talk about the “lack of democracy”, but I guess most of us do not have much of an idea about what democracy really means. According to our textbook, the communist style is the only true democracy in the world, though most Chinese students just say this to pass the exam. Our government seems to be more open than before, but you can still catch the smell of autocracy everywhere. For instance, college students are not allowed to have a valid ID on their university BBS (bulletin board system) without reporting their true name to the network administrator. This makes it easy for them to track who said what in case there are “improper” political concerns on the BBS.

Q: How do you see China’s future?

I’ve seen enough trouble with these “one-child” generations, but I still believe the new generations are capable of making our country better, both in economy and politics. We’re better educated, and have more opportunities to learn from the outside world compared to our parents’ generation. For me, the most impressive part of the younger generations is that most of them know how to think independently and question instead of merely accepting what they’re told.

I do wish the day will come, however, when we Chinese people don’t need to ask before an interview, “Hi, is this an anonymous one?”

Caption: A Chinese honor guard is entangled in his flag during a welcoming ceremony for Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak outside the Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen Square in Beijing June 3, 2009. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause

-- Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own --

China has talked about plans to allow foreign companies to float on its domestic stock markets for at least a decade, but that's all there has been: talk.

Now would be a good time to convert some of that talk into action. Beijing has been struggling with its own investment strategies: the state gets feeble returns on the U.S. Treasury bonds it owns, and its equity stakes in foreign financial firms are well under water.

So why not diversify by allowing 1.3 billion Chinese citizens have a go rather than a few bureaucrats working for China's sovereign fund? The many might even do better than the few. And it would give Chinese savers a chance to buy global blue chips at credit-crunch prices.

The idea of opening up China's equity markets to foreigners may seem fanciful, but it dovetails with another big national objective. China wants to build Shanghai into a global financial centre by 2020, but that requires a deeper and internationalised equity market. Only when that is in place will foreign money descend on Shanghai, together with an army of bankers, lawyers and accountants.

The market capitalisation of Shanghai is now the world's fourth largest, but it is dominated by state-owned firms with only a handful of foreign joint ventures and a few private companies.

The market is off-limits even to many of China's own best and biggest companies, such as the world's largest telecom operator China Mobile and China's top offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC.

They are listed in the offshore market of Hong Kong and despite their expressed interest to return to the mainland, continue to fail to win the green light from Beijing.

Indeed there is no other country which relies more heavily on offshore financing than China. One fifth of the foreign companies listed on Nasdaq are from China, the largest percentage in the world. By pushing its top companies to list abroad, China has gained foreign capital at the expense of the development of its equity market.

Meanwhile back in Shanghai too much money is chasing too few good listed companies. The same companies are often valued at a premium in the mainland versus in Hong Kong.

Chinese investors need more and better investment opportunities. China needs to realise the competition of the 21st Century is not just about amassing capital, but also about building companies that can create wealth.

WHO COMES FIRST?

In the past decade, most of the barriers to open equity markets have been removed. China completed a share reform programme that allowed formerly untradeable state-owned shares to trade, and China's accounting rules are now similar to global standards.

A big block remains in the shape of China's capital controls, which prevent firms from repatriating profits, but the State Administration of Foreign Exchange recently said it will consider relaxing the controls once foreign companies are allowed to list.

When China first talked about introducing foreign listed companies a decade ago, Unilever, whose Lux soap 20 years ago was as coveted in China as Louis Vuitton bags are now, was expected to be the first.

Although that seems unlikely now, multinational manufacturers are still expected to be interested in the hope that a China listing can raise their profile in what is seen as potentially their biggest market.

Instead, first in line will probably be foreign banks keen to raise money in China to fund their local operations. As things stand, their yuan deposit base is too small due to their limited branch network.

HSBC is said by British officials to be in discussions to be the first foreign company to go public in China. The bank, with a Shanghai branch office that opened some 150 years ago, has gained a lot of goodwill for promising not to sell its strategic investment in Bank of Communications while other foreign banks rushed to the exits.

A full listing of foreign companies will offer an upside for China Inc. in that domestic firms with global ambitions will be able to bid for firms using their own shares and Chinese shareholders will have a say on global deals.

In addition, by allowing the Chinese to buy a piece of the world's blue chips on their home soil, the change will assist in the country's ambitions to make the yuan an international currency while keeping a certain amount of capital controls.

China's leaders have made clear they see the credit crisis creating opportunities to flex their financial muscles. Here's one opportunity they shouldn't let pass them by.

-- At the time of publication Wei Gu did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. She may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund --