TO borrow from Chairman Mao: modernisation is not a dinner party. The lesson of the Shenzhen explosion is that it takes more than investment, infrastructure, exports and the ''two cats theory'' (''a black cat is as good as a white one if it catches mice'') to help China meet the requirements of the 21st century.
The mini-catastrophe in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) - just as the stocks scandal there last August, in which a riot broke out over the distribution of ''share lotteries'' - is evidence of not just simple mismanagement.
It is symptomatic of a national problem: the country is devoid of what can be called a modernisation spirit, a mentality for looking at and running things that has enabled countries and regions like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and to some extent, Hong Kong, toshed their feudalistic past and be at the cutting edge of developments that will radically transform the ''East Asiatic'' model.
The scale of the national lack of fitness for modernisation is alarming given the fact that the two mishaps took place within a year in one of China's most forward-looking cities.
IN a throwback to the late 19th century, Chinese leaders including Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin are convinced that the Four Modernisations could be achieved largely through ''hardware'' such as money, know-how, and foreign engineering wizardry.
It is to the credit of reformist leaders in Guangdong, Fujian and Hainan that they have more or less come to understand that what is equally if not more important is software such as culture, the rule of law, the free flow of information, and specially,the willingness to accept different opinions and to make changes accordingly.