In the new, more market-oriented China, even the Corps is trying to transform itself into a corporate conglomerate, battling low farm prices and obsolete factories by avidly seeking foreign investors.

Inevitably, as they lose their guaranteed employment when obsolete factories are closed, as they lose food and rent subsidies, severe tensions will develop.

In giant, obsolete factories, workers speak protectively about state ownership, as if that in itself can prevent cutbacks in the work force.

Americans save far less than is needed to provide the capital to rebuild obsolete factories.

In West Germany, the anxiety has centered on the huge cost of taking over a land of obsolete factories, dilapidated housing and huge social payments.

Rather than offer to tear down an obsolete factory for a fee, Mr. Schwab's companies promised to pay for the privilege.

Even where Communism cracked itself up, however, it left behind gigantic shards, like obsolete factories and the K.G.B. China's managed changeover is already a quarter century old.

The Germans, after unification, tore down the obsolete state-run factories of the east.

In some ways, it would be less daunting if the thousands of obsolete factories were literally bombed out.

The I.M.F. wants Russia to constrain credit that keeps obsolete factories alive and fuels inflation.