China hit an interesting turning point earlier this year, and hardly anybody noticed.

Maybe you’ll consider this turning point arbitrary, but I think it bears some meaning in the way that modern China should be understood.

The key date occurred in late December 1978. That is nearly three decades after the founding of the modern People’s Republic of China. Mao Zedong ruled during most of those decades, steering China through vast change, restoring national pride but forcing the citizenry through some rather catastrophic social experiments, like the Cultural Revolution, in which faction battled faction and kids turned on their parents and teachers.

On that late date in 1978, two years after Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping consolidated his power at the famous third plenum of the 11th National Party Congress, opening the door to the “reform and opening up” era that has ushered in China’s extraordinary economic rise.

From modern China’s founding to that key date, 10,674 days passed. Add another 10,674 days, and you come to a date earlier this year (March 13, 2008).

So in short, modern China has lived for more time under the reform and opening up era than under Mao’s era.

And if you don’t think that’s significant, check out this interesting essay. It notes that we are in the second generation now of the “one-child policy” that has been integral to slowing China’s demographic growth and has gone hand in hand with the economic reforms. It says that this second generation of kids -- without siblings and in some cases even cousins – is relying more and more on online networks as a replacement for real life friendships.

The article quotes a Pepsico executive, Harry Hui, saying Chinese young people comprise “one of the loneliest generations in the world.”

So they have turned to technology, like mobile phones, to connect with others.

"The mobile phone is more important than boyfriends or girlfriends for 90 percent of the younger generation," Hui says.