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"I came when China didn't have refrigerators or televisions. Now my brother (who lives in Beijing) has just bought a second car," said Tang, 50, a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh who immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1980s, after toiling in a labor camp during his youth.

Now when he returns -- either to see his family or to guide students through a study abroad program -- Tang can't find anything that is wanting in his hometown Beijing or any souvenir to bring from the States that doesn't bear the "Made in China" label. Even miniature Statues of Liberty, Tang quipped, are manufactured in China.

Besides those commonplace "Made in China" tags and NBA star Yao Ming, Americans are getting familiar with the Middle Kingdom these days through endless news reports on the country's buying frenzy, fueled by its roaring economy.

Most recently, a Chinese government-controlled company angled unsuccessfully for oil company Unocal. The bidding war courted congressional intervention and fanned the kind of envy directed at Japan in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Some Americans -- including those in Congress who fought to stop the Chinese takeover of Unocal and those who want quotas on Chinese textile imports -- fear that the United States' most important trade partner is shaping up as an economic rival.

Local Chinese-Americans and China specialists counter that the perception of a rivalry is based on ignorance and misunderstanding.

"The idea of the collision of Chinese and American economies is false. The idea that Chinese prosperity is dangerous to the United States flies in the face of anything the United States' foreign policy has tried to accomplish in the (last) half-century," said Tom Rawski, a Pitt economist who has studied China's economy since the late 1960s. "Are we better off when our neighbors are starving?"

Rawski said China's headline-grabbing bids -- for Unocal, the household brand Maytag and China's hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics -- show how much the Communist-ruled country is heading in the direction the U.S. has urged other developing countries to go: open-market capitalism and globalization.

Growing up in Hong Kong, Hilda Pang Fu heard her father, who had volunteered as a military doctor during World War II, tell stories of fighting alongside the American GIs in southern China.

She came to the U.S. in the 1970s for higher education and settled in Point Breeze after earning master's degrees at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University.

After more than half a lifetime in America, Fu has a foot in each culture and sees more common ground than differences. She envisions a China that again stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S., this time in the global economy instead of on the battlefield.

"I just think from our history and culture, (China and the U.S.) could be the best of friends," said Fu, who oversees summer programs for high school students at Point Park University. "Of course, we have our differences, but we value the same things. We're goal-oriented, we value accomplishment, we value diligence."

Census 2000 data show that 6,300 people of Chinese descent live in metropolitan Pittsburgh, accounting for a mere 0.3 percent of the population. Seven counties -- Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler, Beaver, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland -- make up the metropolitan area.

Yet, the region's Chinese-American population is diverse, including scholars and scientists from mainland China, immigrant professionals from Hong Kong and Taiwan and native-born people of Chinese parentage.

Although few said they've felt any tension as China's role in the global market grows, many agree that the language barrier and the ethnic group's reserved stereotype may contribute to the ignorance other Americans have about China.

"The challenge is not to teach what people don't know about China," said Tang, the Pitt political scientist, but to temper "the bias, the perception, the fixed idea that people grew up with."

To that end, Tang has taken time from writing academic books to lecture widely on the new China, especially before younger audiences. Last fall, he spoke to hundreds of high school students at a World Affairs Council event.

He is now preparing a talk next month before history teachers from the mid-Atlantic states. For that, Tang has a ready title: "Ten Myths about China." The No. 1 myth, he said, is that China is a repressive regime where citizens are too scared to speak their minds.

Despite his years in a labor camp, Tang said he now enjoys the freedom he's found in a stronger China. He travels frequently to the country to survey public opinion and teaches every summer at a four-week program for Pitt students called Pitt in China.

Once there, his students are often surprised to find a freer and more vibrant China than the authoritarian, Communist regime they learned about in their history books, Tang said.

As an intern at a business magazine, Caijin, in Beijing this summer, Ivy Wang, 20, of Fox Chapel, found herself caught in a mix of feelings about China, where her grandparents lived before fleeing to Taiwan in the 1950s. Wang grew up in Murrysville, Westmoreland County, and is a junior majoring in English and history at Yale University.

"To an outsider, China can seem inscrutable and alien. I personally find China to be at once very alluring and a bit threatening," wrote Wang in an e-mail message while on route to Xi'an, an ancient capital city in western China.

"It's alluring for its culture and history and for the dynamic changes it's undergoing right now. But at the same time, the way of life can be very different, and a lot about the way it works isn't transparent."

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