So much has changed since the old days of the planned economy that people sometimes forget what the reform was all about.

Today's grocery prices can rise more than 10 per cent in a month, compared with strict price controls 20 years ago. Recently in Shanghai there were public hearings about how the interest from pre-paid tickets were being used. Previously this "small" detail in public money management was never questioned. Back in the mid 1980s, we would not have known whom to ask.

However I am bewildered by the fact that some modern Chinese are confused about the reforms.

Last week, I received a call by a young lady claiming to represent "Ling Dian Diaocha," supposedly one of China's leading research companies. Its English name is Horizon Research.

The lady had called me before, saying her company was collecting "elite" opinions on the nation's major affairs. Each time I was patient and gave my answers and clarified my points to all her complicated, and at times, poorly designed questions.

However, the last time she called, the ignorant premise to her question was simply too much. I had to end the conversation.

She asked: "Now that the purpose of the economic reform has done its job and smashed the 'iron rice bowl,' how I would view the rising demand for government expenditures on social security?"

"Iron rice bowl," I told her, was a practice in the era of the planned economy in which all workers received equal pay no matter how they performed, and never had to worry about suffering financial penalties and losing their jobs.

It was a system, which some economists even called a privilege, to protect those performing poorly once they could get hold of any job. It was not, and never meant to be, a social security system.

A more open and competitive labour market is totally different from having a social security system to cover the basic rights of all citizens.

Unemployment welfare should not be viewed as a compensation for "smashing the iron rice bowl," as it was called in the early days of the reform.

Today it has a much wider coverage, because many jobless workers have lost their opportunities, not because they performed badly, but because their companies had not.

At the same time, all the money directed to aid the unemployed is not simply a protective fund. These people are provided with training for other employment or self-employment alternatives.

In the long run, spending on general welfare will help a government be more effective in guaranteeing citizens' equal rights, and help its economy be more creative and have a better chance for sustainable development.

So the telephone pollster's question, the question her company had given her to ask, was nonsensical by suggesting China was moving backwards from a competitive labour market to a more protected one.

It was like suggesting that a truly competitive economy should be void of any humanitarian value.

So after explaining to her why "iron rice bowl" and social welfare are totally different things, I told the pollster: "Your question is close to an insult, both to me and to your company. And I'm so sorry but I have to terminate this question-and-answer session before you want."

I really could not take it any more.

(China Daily 12/18/2006 page4)