The current generation of car batteries are not only extraordinarily heavy, and sizeable, but also pretty hard to dispose of in a green way. Even with their size and weight they still fail to provide impressive statistics.

I really hope there are good evangelists such as Dennis promoting research into more efficient technology. I really think there is a danger that we all adopt this technology early, and dump the technology en masse as soon as something more efficient comes along.

Great interview by the way! Dennis is very easy to listen to, and I am certain he has a bunch more stories to tell.

I find Dennis's story very moving. I even feel quite emotional to hear him talking about coming to China in 1984 (I was only 2 back then!) and being enthralled with the culture and people which had been completely blocked from the outside world. It reminds me of another Poddie friend who served in the U.S. military during the Cold War and now travels to China regularly. He says he still finds it amazing that he can walk on the streets of China, work with Chinese co-workers and try to connect with the culture. We are all very lucky to be part of this dramatic transformation.

On a different note: Memories, Chengdu late 1984, hot chicks and tough guys in high leather boots and trendy jackets drinking and brawling in the bar at the Jinjiang Hotel, while serious laobaixing were dancing in a small café near the river to amazing pop tunes - old with young, men and women, men with men and girls together. And the rumour of the night - now public dancing will also be allowed in Beijing! You could just sit down and see China opening up in front of your eyes.

your 'scenes in Chengdu late 1984' is evocative, but I wonder what it all means.  (It actually brought to my mind Red Dust.)  

Scenes in Chengdu (substitute pretty much any sizeable city outside Shanghai) 25 years later.  Not much different really - a few people dressing up and displaying some of the artifacts of Western culture.  I don't know that they really were 老百姓 in those days but I do know that 老百姓 these days are not dancing in the cafes.  

Mind you I am not arguing that failure to adopt Western culture is a bad thing (rather the reverse.)  I am just asking, what does 'opening up' mean, then and now?  

Here's my point: .. in 2009 a band playing American 'pop tunes' in a Chinese city of five million plus is likely to attract a crowd of maybe a hundred people (I'm being generous). Most of them foreigners.  

Interesting?    

When you had spent some time living in China in the seventies the experience of "opening up" in the eighties could be quite overwhelming and always fascinating.

By the way, the trendy people mentioned had created a very special Sichuan style - outside influence could have been Russian. The people dancing were just ordinary citizens - the musical influence Western, but I think filtered through the dance hall tradition of preliberation China and Hong Kong, and with strong Chinese flavor.

I don't know about now, but not long ago there was a flourishing dance hall culture in many Chinese cities - places where foreigners were not especially welcome.

The reaction in your band scenario just shows how fast things change. In the mid seventies I managed to gather a crowd of several hundred very friendly people by just standing on a street in Tianjin - today hardly anybody cares. Fortunately.

Still, all that aside, if China really wanted to cut back on emissions, it should go back to the transportation that was in vogue in 1984, the bicycle... led of course by the splendid example of its partner, the U.S.!

'Opening up' is a complex social as well as economic phenomenon (forgive me for getting serious).  I am sure that it is all that you say (eg. fascinating), specially as you experienced China when it was relatively 'closed'.  I just resist getting unequivocally warm inside at the notion of 'opening up', even at the economic level, because a market economy produces many 'bads' along with the 'goods'.  China has its share of 'bads', the most obvious being environmental pollution.  The drive for economic growth and status has spurned other industries that harm the culture and even destroy the lives of innocent people.  Unfortunately this all gets counted as Gross Domestic Product, so the proud headline GDP figures conceal some nasty and damaging activity (as it does in the West.)  

As for the other matter - the adoption of Western ideas and symbols (eg. the dance craze you mention) I am an agnostic - I don't really have a strong view.  Mainly because it just that, symbolic - it hardly reaches to the deeply held values in Chinese culture.  I would be personally disturbed if there was a serious loss of local culture, but I don't think that there is much risk of Chinese culture being damaged by a few dance halls.  What I was saying above is that it would appear that the 'opening up' in respect of things like dancing to Western music (apart from the 'ballroom dancing' phenomenon which I think has now been almost completely Sinofied) is very marginal.  I think Chinese values are fairly safe from Western influence.  The influence running in the other direction may well be stronger, since 'opening up'.

If you'd like to learn more about the clean energy issues we are addressing, and the eight initiatives developed by Chinese and American teams, please visit our website: www.cleanenergyforum.org.

I'm largely agnostic about any particular form of technology--there are many, many solutions that will help us live in a cleaner world. The key is to be as innovative in creating policies, financing systems and a cooperative program as we are in developing new technologies.

One final note: I do believe electric vehicles would represent a big step  forward. Not only do they reduce or eliminate emissions, they also can be recharged at night, using wind (which tends to blow at night) or existing plants that are operating anyway. Lower carbon, cleaner atmosphere, less reliance on imported oil--a triple win!

Great to hear from the man himself. A few days ago, a report on CNN said that investing in clean energy research would be a lot cheaper and productive than simply trying to cut emission. What's your take on that?