A further 20% has been consigned by private Chinese people and about 15% from the storehouses of state-owned antique stores.

More surprising yet, this Westernized normality exists in what remains a state-owned store.

The process of breaking down the retail monopolies only began last weekend with the first auction sales of state-owned stores.

Such dishes are nominally banned, but even state-owned stores sell them.

Residents here said the usually empty shelves in state-owned stores had suddenly been filled.

In the past, food prices have been kept down by price controls that were supported by subsidies to state-owned stores.

Virginia opted for a network of state-owned stores instead.

The country will remove most price controls, seek to make its currency convertible and sell thousands of state-owned stores to private owners.

Drab state-owned stores are a thing of the past.

All of Czechoslovakia's several hundred thousand state-owned stores are being auctioned, a process that officials say should be more than half completed by the summer.