Doing business on the mainland can sometimes be hair-raising. But there was nothing to prepare me for the moment last Thursday when a few thousand police in riot gear ran out from the underground parking lot at Shenzhen's city hall, just as I was about to cross the street in front of them. Needless to say, I gestured 'after you' as they trundled past with a quiet, almost detached air to the pavement opposite, heading towards some peasants demonstrating against alleged illegal land seizures in the city's Nanshan district. It wasn't a shocking experience; far from it. Everything was so orderly. It took us no longer than usual to gain access to China's most elegantly designed municipal headquarters, and no one seemed nervous about what was going on outside. As our taxi took us away through the police cordon, we had a good look at the protesters - who carried the same weary, confused look as hundreds of millions of other laobaixing (common people) - and the riot police, who were much the same, if younger. The only thing separating them was luck, which had been on the side of those in uniform when they originally landed their jobs. The protesters were clearly angry, but before such a massive display of power, they weren't about to do anything foolish. The same cannot be said, obviously, for the 80,000-plus similar incidents that reportedly happened across the mainland last year. Some of the most awful, including the recent shooting in Dongzhou village and the beating to death of a girl in Zhongshan , have happened in Guangdong, which is still by far the mainland's richest province. But this foreign investor, for one, is undaunted, and is continuing to put his money where his mouth is - across the border. There is nothing about any of this that is surprising, nor is there reason to believe that the socio-political risk of investing on the mainland is higher than it has been in the 161/2 years since the Tiananmen massacre. For one thing, the government is infinitely richer and more powerful, while at the same time it is being led by younger, better-educated, civilian-minded people. For another - and there really need be no other - the people facing them across the fence are richer, better-educated and more civil-minded, too. True, the wealth gap is as worrying here as it is in any developing country, never mind in America's inner cities or France's riot-scarred suburbs. But unlike anywhere else, the economy is growing so rapidly here as to make yesterday's problems seem like last year's. Indeed, I have little doubt that, by the time this column goes to press, the organisers of Thursday's protest will have been given enough compensation for their claims to ensure there is no repeat performance during next year's Lunar New Year season. That doesn't make the system right. Money cannot buy righteousness, nor can hypergrowth be expected to paper over class tensions forever. The Communist Party is going to have to become less opaque. But it is not going to follow the Kuomintang's example and try to turn the mainland into a bigger version of Taiwan within this generation's lifetime. It is, however, going to do whatever it takes to keep the economy booming. As the conversation I had with Shenzhen government officials that day reaffirmed for me, restrictions on commercial activity continue to fall by the wayside at an astonishing pace. The forces of liberalisation and deregulation unleashed a short trot away from where we were standing, by the late Deng Xiaoping in 1992, have a long way to run. Illegal or just unfair land seizures are, sadly, part of the process. They are not going to stop it from continuing. Not yet, at least. Anthony Lawrance is a Hong Kong-based publisher ant@redantmediagroup.com