Truck and Barter

FasTracKids in China

Chinese society is truly changing;

“Gao Ruxi of Shanghai Jiao Tong University conducted research in 2003 that showed that 15.4 percent of the city’s 17 million people — about 2.6 million — were rich enough to own a house and a vehicle.

Another report, from a Chinese research group called Horizon, estimated that in 2003 there were 569,000 families or individuals in Shanghai with liquid assets of at least $62,500.

FasTracKids, which started in Shanghai in 2004, has since opened two more outlets here and another in Guangzhou, and it is planning a fifth in Hangzhou.

The private program’s after-school sessions are held in brightly decorated classrooms, where fewer than a dozen children, typically 4 or 5 years old, are taught by as many as three teachers. The program emphasizes scientific learning, problem solving and, most attractively for many parents, assertiveness.

“Parents like myself are worrying about China becoming a steadily more competitive society,” said Zhong Yu, 36, a manufacturing supervisor whose wife is a senior accountant with an international firm and whose son 7-year-old son has been enrolled in the junior M.B.A. classes. “Every day we see stories in the newspapers about graduates unable to find good jobs. Education in China is already good in the core subjects, but I want my son to have more creative thinking, because basic knowledge isn’t sufficient anymore.” ….

“Americans respect people who came from nothing and made something of themselves, and they also respect rich people,” Mr. Wang added. “In China, people generally don’t respect rich people, because there is a strong feeling that they are lacking in ethics. These new rich not only want money, they want people to respect them in the future.”

Indeed, some of the newly well-to-do have broadened their quest for respectability, enlisting their children in charity activities at the same time as they push them into classes aimed at getting them ahead.

Shan Lei, 31, a homemaker and former investment specialist whose husband is a shipping executive, said the family had invested $100,000 in a golf-club membership and had introduced her daughter to the sport, along with piano and skating lessons. They also manage to squeeze in charity work with AIDS orphans.

“Golf is played by the upper classes, but I want her to recognize there is social diversity,” said Ms. Lei, who is not related to Rose Lei. “I want her to care for others in the society.”...

Un-Atlantic Economic History from Brad de Long

Brad de Long is running a list of useful economic history books which are not biased towards North America;

Fernand Braudel, The Structure of Everyday Life (Civilization and Capitalism: 15th-18th Century)

Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350

K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750

Tirthankar Roy, The Economic History of India 1857-1947

Some books commentators added;

Brook, Timothy. (1998) The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ian Brown, "Economic Change in South-East Asia, c.1830-1980." (1997, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford UP)

Reid, Anthony ed. Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia. 1983.

Adas, Michael. The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice. Frontier, 1852-1941. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1974. .

The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation By John M. Hobson

The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
By Kenneth Pomeranz

China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience By Roy Bin Wong

Nils Jacobsen 'Mirages of Transition: the Peruvian Altiplano 1780-1940' (Berkeley: University of California Press)

Anand Yang's _Bazaar India: Markets, Society, and the Colonial State in Gangetic Bihar._ (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1998; New Delhi:

Victor Lieberman (2003) Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830,

Abu-Lughod, Janet L., editor Sociology for the Twenty-first Century: Continuities and Cutting Edges

The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History

T'Ang China: The Rise of the East in World Historyby Samuel Adrian M. Adshead

An Ottoman Tragedy: History and Historiography at Play
By Gabriel Piterberg

See also;
Why China Stagnated -- Economic History As Lesson
Why Europe and the West? Why Not China?
The World's First Corporations
History of the World in Seven Minutes

Blogs- Book Pundit, Civilisation Pundit,

The coming clash of China and India

China has been recently courting the countries of South Asia;

“According to a report this year by Dr. Mohan Malik, professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii, ‘Beijing is skillfully employing economic and military means to draw Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka into China's orbit.’

‘Beijing's main objectives are said to be access to raw materials, commodities, natural resources and access to South Asian markets for Chinese goods and to expand China's influence in the region. However, China's support for India's smaller neighbours suggests that gaining access to markets and natural resources is not the only reason behind Beijing's South Asia policy: Beijing also wants to make a point on the limits of Indian power,’ he adds.

''In fact, aiding "India-wary" countries in South Asia to "concircle" (contain and encircle) India has long been an integral part of China's strategic calculus. As a rising maritime trading power, Beijing is also seeking once again to project force into the Indian Ocean in the manner of the fleets sent out under the command of Admiral Zheng He nearly 600 years ago during the Ming Dynasty,'' Malik concludes.”

Related;
China's top advisor meets Maldivian president
American and Yugoslav to be deported
Work to commence on new museum funded by the Chinese

A recent episode Foreign Exchange;

“China is modernizing economically; that no one denies. But there is a great debate about whether that economic modernization is leading to political change. Is China reforming its political system? To discuss this issue we’re joined by Hongying Wang, who is a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and also at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Let me ask you; a statistic that is often bandied about, 87,000 protests in China last year compared with 10,000 ten years ago--what does this mean? Is it the sign of political unrest that some are reading it to be?”

Dictators Watch- Burma

Wal-Mart’s Communist Party Branch

“The world's leading retailer giant Wal-Mart has seen the establishment of the first branch of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the first branch of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC) in one of its outlets in the northeastern city of Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province….

Wal-Mart has set up 59 outlets in 30 Chinese cities since it entered China in 1996. It has more than 23,000 employees in China, including over 700 in Shenyang”

Via Spontaneous Order

Related;
China Digital Times
Forget the World Bank, Try Wal-Mart; Between 1990 and 2002 more than 174 million people escaped poverty in China, about 1.2 million per month. With an estimated $23 billion in Chinese exports in 2005 (out of a total of $713 billion in manufacturing exports), Wal-Mart might well be single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, about 460,000 per year.
Fight poverty by shopping at Wal-Mart?
Managing Governments: Unilever in India and Turkey, 1950-1980

Carnival of Podcasts

Ray Canterbery, an author and economics professor emeritus at Florida State University, talks with Bloomberg's Tom Keene about economic theory, Canterbery's book "A Brief History of Economics: Artful Approaches to the Dismal Science" and U.S. economic policy.

Dan Griswold, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy, talks with Bloomberg's Tom Keene from Washington about China's currency policy, the benefits of imports from China to the U.S. economy and the need for increased national savings in the U.S.

James Galbraith on economics and contributions of his father.

How many logics? If we think about logic at all, we probably think of it as one and indivisible - truth is truth and an argument is either valid or it isn't. But perhaps we need a logic that is more subtle than that, one that allows for degrees or truth. This, it turns out, is the Australian way. For more see the blog of the guest.

Hearing Voices - the invisible intruders
Around 10% of the population hear voices that aren't there. Some people can live harmoniously with them, but for those whose voices are associated with a psychiatric illness, they can be frightening and menacingly real. We discuss the latest research on how auditory hallucinations occur in the brain, what it's like to live with voices in your head - and the healing power of the international Hearing Voices Network

U.S.-China Trade, Exchange Rates, and the U.S. Economy
Featuring Nicholas Lardy, Institute for International Economics; Frank Vargo, National Association of Manufacturers; and Daniel Griswold, Cato Institute; One year after China’s modest currency reforms, the issue remains a sticking point in U.S.-China trade relations. Critics argue that China’s yuan remains grossly undervalued, bestowing an unfair advantage on imports from China at the expense of U.S. producers. Other observers contend that benefits from trade with China far outweigh any concerns about its currency. Policy options range from doing nothing to aggressive diplomacy to imposing steep tariffs on Chinese imports. Three experts on U.S.-China trade will discuss the status of reform in China, the impact of U.S.-China trade and exchange rates on our economy, and what change, if any, should be made in U.S. economic policy toward China

Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel—Why Everything You Know is Wrong

Two Views on Global Development: Revive the Invisible Hand or Strengthen a "Society of States"? Deepak Lal and Ethan Kapstein.

U.S. Trade Policy in the Wake of Doha: Why Unilateral Liberalization Makes Sense
Featuring Jagdish Bhagwati, Professor of Economics and Law, Columbia University, Senior Fellow in International Economics, Council on Foreign Relations and Daniel Ikenson, Associate Director, Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute

Israel, Lebanon and Palestine
Ross Burns; Former Australian Ambassador to Lebanon and Syria in the 1980s, South Africa and Greece in the 1990s and in Israel until 2003'

Human Betterment Through Globalization by Vernon Smith
Via Café Hayek

Christian Emissary of Kublai Khan
Before Marco Polo plied the Silk Route to visit the great Khan in the 13th century, the Mughal Emperor sent out a Christian emissary to retrieve relics from Jerusalem and send a message to the Pope. His name was Rabban Sawma and his story is told by Professor Sam Lieu

The Prophet Muhammad He came from desert obscurity in the sixth century, to become a leading figure in the prosperous Arabian town of Medina. The Prophet Muhammad went on to found a religion that would dominate the Middle East in just a century after his death. Interview with Reza Aslan

Coping by cutting
The incidence of self harm is rising and there's a search for understanding and solutions. Princess Di admitted to it. As many as 1 in 5 young people are likely to deliberately hurt themselves to release internal tension and pressure. What is it, and how can parents handle it? Reporter, Jane Shields

Bird flu: risks, laws and rights
Scientists, lawyers, politicians, security forces—everyone's walking a fine line with avian flu, between the rights of the individual and the rights of the wider public. When a pandemic happens each of us will be on our own, as the authorities look at the big picture. Reporter, Ian Townsend

Business, design and Innovation
By Design is intrigued by the connection between design and the marketplace. To look at how design and economics are further embedding themselves in our cultures and what inhibits this if the connection is not happening, our discussion this morning focuses on design and innovation

British ex-ambassador discusses US role in Middle East

Defining obesity; A powerful expert committee in the US has plans to alter the definition of healthy weight levels, which will result in almost 40% of children aged 6 to 11 years being defined as 'overweight'. We speak to Ray Moynihan and Michael Gard on how the West got so worried about being fat

Darwinian aesthetics
When Darwin first published Origin of Species back in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was, to put it mildly, a revelation. His theories radically altered our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us...and it seems the aftershocks are continuing to this day. There is a growing academic movement that aims to apply Darwin's theories to the study of art and literature. But what does the survival of the species have to do with art? Professor Dennis Dutton is a philosopher at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He is interested in the study of evolutionary psychology, or Darwinian aesthetics, so he's bound to know the answers.
Listen online

Anwar Ibrahim - Shakespeare, Islam and Democracy
Anwar Ibrahim is a guest of the World Shakespeare Congress in Brisbane and he lectures there on Shakespeare this week. What does the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia have to say about the Bard's influence on him, especially during his years of imprisonment? Anwar Ibrahim also lectures this week at the University of Queensland on Islam and Democracy in Asia and other parts of the world. These two subjects are disparate but their common ground is a world recognised scholar and political thinker. Find out more on Encounter this week

Design island; For its size, Tasmania can boast a disproportionately high number of creative people, and at a recent design forum the mostly Tasmanian-based designers and craftspeople discussed the challenges many artists in far-flung places face; of isolation, and of regional identity versus international style.

Adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - what is it and what can be done about it? We'll also look at some assumptions and controversies surrounding this condition. One of the commonly asked questions is whether adult ADHD really exists

‘You Must Use The Bath' is an exploration of a little-known part of Australia's Colonial history - the emergence and widespread 'take up' of Turkish Baths. It's a tale of entrpreneurial spirit and, at the time, many claimed 'whacky vision'. However, the larger-than-life Turkish Bath devotees were not to be diverted and there were soon baths in all major cities and regional centres

Behind The News - a profile of Dr Peter Russo
For 50 years journalist and academic Dr Peter Russo told Australians about Asia and about themselves, but it was often not what they wanted to hear.

Free to learn - the history of progressive education in Australia
If the words progressive education mean anything to you at all, they may well conjure up the name Summerhill—probably the most famous progressive school in the world—in England, where children can choose whether or not they go to lessons, and are free to do pretty well what they want

Joel Shurkin, biographer of William Shockley
Robyn's guest this week is author Joel Shurkin, who's written a biography of William Shockley, the Nobel prize winning inventor of the transistor. Shockley was an extraordinary man whose work gave birth to modern electronics, yet on a personal level, his colleagues felt he was deeply flawed. It's suggested that he had reverse charisma; he'd walk into a room and engender instant dislike! We take a look at Shockley's fascinating and tragic life

Barbara Biggs has been a journalist, a prostitute and a property developer. She has written three books about her remarkable experiences. She talks to Robyn Williams about why she chose to expose the man who abused her when she was young. What was the point of enduring public attention and the law courts so long after the event? Do victims need to revisit distress in this way?

Dr Jim Cotter and the 100 hour challenge; The 100 hour challenge is not for most of us. You run for that length of time, across country, with hardly any sleep. Dr Jim Cotter has done it and studied the physiological implications. How much water do you need to keep going? Do branded sports drinks help? How do you prepare for such an ordeal - or for regular jogging that normal people do?

Defecation, Copulation and Exclamation: A Social History of Swearing
Six hundred years ago the English were known to the French as "les goddems" due to their propensity for foul language. English-speakers' long-standing partiality to oaths, profanity and ethnic slurs reveals much about our shifting understandings of sexuality, class, race and humour

Lifetime Economics; Bob Blain is one of the world's leading economic reformers. He believes that today's monetary system has stalled and has failed to complete its evolution. He proposes developing a more sustainable world economy by adopting an "hour of work" as the world monetary standard, a way to share work and wealth more equitably.

Journalists and their sources

Which lies matter - which ones don't? Are some lies now so much a part of daily life that they've lost their sting? Today on Life Matters we look at how we deceive and are deceived on a daily basis

Listing love's loves; Peta Logan unpacks tales of unrequited love in one of the many lists in James Joyce's novel, Ulysses

Correspondents and Fixers
Have you ever wondered how foreign correspondents fly into the latest disaster zone and instantly report with authority? The answer is The Fixer, a local, often taking extraordinary risks

The Strange Case of Dr John Bodkin Adams
Medical historian Dr Jim Leavesley from Margaret River in Western Australia tells us the story of the medical murder trial of Dr John Bodkin Adams, who practiced in the English seaside town of Eastbourne and who was beneficiary to no less than 132 wills

Green Power; Author Christine Williams has written a book called 'Green Power'in which she tells the story of environmentalists who have changed the face of Australia.

We the People
The Constitution of the United States of America, adopted in 1788, became the first formal blueprint for a modern democracy. What happened to the expression of those democratic ideals during the twentieth century - the American century

The creative brain; Stephanie White studies Australian zebra finches and how they sing. They learn a standard song but need to maintain it and add creative flourishes. In research just published in The Journal of Neuroscience she reveals that the gene linked to this singing may well be the same as those involved in human speech. Not only does this have relevance for investigating speech disorders, it may also have implications for creativity. Stephanie White is a professor at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).

An Inconvenient Truth
David Fisher reviews director David Guggenheim's film, An Inconvenient Truth, which features former US Vice President Al Gore's 'travelling global warming show'. In the wake of defeat in the 2000 election, Al Gore re-set the course of his life to focus on a last-ditch, all-out effort to help save the planet from human-induced irrevocable change

Dark Paganism and Deep Blue Religion; Witches' Sabbats that include death rituals are frightening, but they have a therapeutic value, says PhD student Marian Dalton, a witch who practices Dark Paganism. And strong communal values are also evident, says paganism researcher Dr. Douglas Ezzy from the University of Tasmania. Paganism's earth-based spiritualities often exclude the importance of the sea but sociologist Sylvie Shaw has discovered that "deep blue religion" is alive and well

The New Animism; The oldest living religion, Animism, has a new advocate in pagan expert, Graham Harvey. We also hear from practising pagans in South Australia

Mentoring and sport; For some young athletes negotiating the off field demands of expectation and celebrity can be a difficult part of the game, so who's there to guide them?

The New Arab World; Dubai, Oman, Qatar

A Witch's Brew; It is barely fifteen years since Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan emerged from the shadows of the Soviet Empire and all now find themselves facing enormous environmental problems

GREEK COMEDY
But how did Greek comedy evolve? Why did its subsequent development differ so radically from that of Greek tragedy? To what extent did it reflect the anxieties and preoccupations of a nascent democracy? And can it be said to have left any lasting legacy? Listen online

India struggles to catch China
The rapid growth of the Indian and Chinese economies have transformed the two countries in recent years. But this prosperity has also brought other problems.

A review of developments in Latin America over the past year, particularly the Bolivian and Mexican elections

Nature Podcast; untangling foodwebs, our Neanderthal heritage, lungfish dammed, military secrets, graphene hits the scene, the origin of the ocean floor, and paramutational phenomena

More on science; Brain-computer interfaces, science and the battle of the sexes, human transmission of H5N1, science and religion, deep sea secrets, the unshelled mollusc, tropospheric radicals, and atomic tweasers

Forensic Economics 101
An interview with Forensic Economist Don Frankenfeld

From Google Authors; Gene Sperling, Hal Varian, Seth Godin, John Battelle, Barry Swartz,

Charlie Rose Show; with Fouad Ajami, Christiane Amanpour

Other videos; Investment Opportunities in China, Leveraging India as India Stands Up, Our Lives Our Facebooks, The Next Fifty Years of Science

The Great Yuan Debate

Has China's Yuan Tinkering Changed the Global Economy? Debate between Nouriel Roubini and David Altig at Wall Street Journal Econlog.

Roubini;

“Here's the point: Unless China changes its exchange-rate policy, it will be impossible to control this unsustainable monetary, credit and investment boom.

Letting the currency appreciate will allow a soft landing in three ways:
• It will slow down the politically unsustainable growth of exports, as protectionist pressures are surging in the U.S.
• It will lead to less forex intervention and will thus slow down the rate of growth of credit.
• It will allow China to increase interest rates without having to worry that this increase would lead to even more capital inflows. Right now, China can't increase interest rates -- which needed to cool down the economy -- if it keeps its peg because more money creating inflows will occur if rates go up.

Thus, I predict that by the end of 2006 China will let its currency appreciate by at least another 5% relative to the U.S. dollar.…”

Altig;

“That said, I think there is one big part of the picture you have not touched on, and that is precisely the state of financial-market development in China. My guess is that currency appreciation alone will do little to fundamentally resolve the imbalances that concern Nouriel and others. I believe that because I believe the crux of the problem has to with underdeveloped capital markets and the preponderance of credit allocation through a banking system lacking the controls expected of modern economies.

I would side with those who say exchange rate flexibility and a more robust internal financial system should go hand-in-hand, and are the prerequisites to broader reform and stability. I put special emphasis on the latter, and it appears to me that the slow pace of currency reform has a lot to do with Chinese determination to simultaneously implement a wide range of financial-sector reforms, of the sort that seem to arrive daily.”

Political Podcasts

The Foreigner’s Gift
Fouad Ajami, Author, The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq; and M. Khadduri Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

The Rise of China's Soft Power
Joseph Nye, Lan Xue, Ezra F. Vogel and Anthony Saich (moderator)

Is China the Paramount Power in South East Asia?

Dr Milton Osborne at Lowy Institute gives a summary of his recent paper The Paramount Power: China and the Countries of Southeast Asia. Listen to the podcast.

New Economist has more on the paper.

Miscellaneous on China;

Political and Economic Introduction to China from British Parliament’s research group

Web users urged on China policy

Why China Stagnated

Hidden factors may diminish China's actual trade surplus

No link between fast growth and corruption or pollution?

According to World Bank country director of China, David Dollar;

“In general, China's transition to a market economy appears to be both more advanced and somewhat less damaging than we thought. Only 8 percent of the firms in this random sample of manufacturing are majority state-owned. Though they control one third of the assets in the sample, this still suggests a larger private sector than previous estimates. The extent of the transition varies dramatically:, from 99 percent private firms in Wenzhou or Jiaxing on the southeast coast to 60 percent in Anshan in the old northeastern rust belt. But in the cities where the private sector flourishes, firms reported far less red tape—from faster times through Customs to fewer days dealing with bureaucracy and less frequent demands for bribes.

While corruption is inherently hard to measure, we get pretty good response rates on the question of whether firms have to pay bribes to get loans from commercial banks, which are still largely state-owned. In southeast cities such as Hangzhou or Xiamen, 1 to 2 percent of firms report paying bribes to gain loans; the figure is above 10 percent in more than 20 cities of the center and west.”

Related;

Huangbaiyu - a new village being built in rural China - comprises homes that aim to test building materials, technologies, techniques and working processes- a model for zero energy consumption. Listen to the podcast.

Architects Without Frontiers- Listen to a podcast discussion with a member, Sam Crawford a Sydney architect concerned about how architecture can be perceived as a plaything of the privileged. In this piece he talks about his commitment to building a youth centre in Malawi.

Green China?

Alleviating Indoor Air Pollution in Poor Rural Areas of China -webcast- (should we be spending millions on indoor air pollution or on something else?)

Cars in China- Some Facts

"Twenty years ago, I was driving a tractor — I was a model peasant! There were almost no cars in China. I didn't learn to drive until 1988.Under Deng Xiaoping, I got lucky because I was uneducated. Educated people think in traditional ways, but Deng said we should take chances."
- a Chinese businessman who now owns a major cement factory in Beijing

Ted Conover has an interesting article about Cars in China in NYT;

“The figures behind China's car boom are stunning. Total miles of highway in the country: at least 23,000, more than double what existed in 2001, and second now only to the United States. Number of passenger cars on the road: about 6 million in 2000 and about 20 million today. Car sales are up 54 percent in the first three months of 2006, compared with the same period a year ago; every day, 1,000 new cars (and 500 used ones) are sold in Beijing. The astronomic growth of China's car-manufacturing industry will soon hit home for Americans and Europeans as dirt-cheap Chinese automobiles start showing up for sale here over the next two or three years. (Think basic passenger car for $10,000, luxury S.U.V. for $19,000.)…

China's first modern expressway, the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Superhighway, was built in the early 1990's by the Hong Kong tycoon Gordon Y.S. Wu. Wu studied civil engineering at Princeton in the mid-50's, when construction was beginning on the U.S. Interstate Highway System. At the same time, the New Jersey Turnpike was being widened from four lanes to many lanes, and Wu has said it inspired him. (His powerful firm, Hopewell Holdings, is named after a town near Princeton.) Though Wu ran short of money and the ambitious project had to be rescued by the Chinese government, the toll-road model of highway development caught on.

Wu's Guangzhou-Shenzhen Superhighway was the beginning of an infrastructure binge that seems to be only picking up steam: the government recently announced a target of 53,000 freeway miles by 2035. (The U.S. Interstate Highway System, 50 years old last week, presently comprises about 46,000 miles of roads.) Some new roads, especially in the less-developed western parts of the nation, are nearly empty: China is encouraging road construction ahead of industrial development and population settlement, assuming those will follow….

If highways in China's west are so far awaiting traffic, easterners have the opposite concern. As we headed south from Shijiazhuang toward Zhengzhou, the roads packed with vacationers and truck traffic, Zhu jostled for position with all the other people who were late getting where they were going. His style of driving helped me understand better why China, with 2.6 percent of the world's vehicles, had 21 percent of its road fatalities (in 2002, the most recent year for which figures are available)….

Three Gorges Dam, one of the largest construction projects in history, seemed a fitting first attraction for our trip, evoking superlatives in this land of superlatives. It has cost an estimated $75 billion so far (including corruption and relocation costs); it will require more than a million people to be relocated; it would generate more hydroelectric power than any dam ever had; and it spans the Yangtze, the third-longest river in the world. The reservoir began filling up in 2003 and has six years left to go; it presents a huge military target….

The next morning we hiked through the misty, craggy hills of Shennongjia. The area, known as "the Roof of Central China," is a Unesco biosphere reserve of 272 square miles, with six peaks measuring up to 10,190 feet above sea level. It was equally famous, among our group, as the home of China's Bigfoot. This creature, in the local lore, lumbered through the mists with a big-bosomed mate; an artist's rendition of the hairy couple appeared in the corner of a park billboard. But though the trails were beautiful and mysterious and we could imagine an ape-man happy there, none were spotted….

My test question was speeding. National highways were typically posted with limits of 50 miles per hour, and expressways up to 75 miles per hour, and the orientation brochure that each driver had received from the Beijing Target Auto Club insisted that we adhere to those limits. ("This is only self-driving, not car racing!" the brochure read. "Speeding is not necessary.") Yet all the drivers, including Zhao, paid the rules no attention whatsoever, often driving 100 m.p.h. or more. Police cars were seldom seen; when drivers spotted them, to my surprise, they paid no attention at all. The cops rarely used radar, it turned out, and they almost never tried to pull you over….

The more instructive comparison, as we stood on this fancy bit of highway surrounded by rice fields and, here and there, people at work in them, was with the rural poor, the peasantry, the hundreds of millions of Chinese who do not yet (and, you imagine, will not in their lifetimes) share this prosperity. Many villages still are not connected to roads at all. When an expressway just south of here was completed last year, I was told sotto voce in Beijing, a series of demonstrations by peasants at a toll plaza delayed its opening. They were angry because the road had taken their land, and this, we are now seeing, is the story all over China: the government itself counted nearly 80,000 mass protests in 2005 alone. The country's economic growth is fantastic, the urban atmosphere heady. . .but then you see through the glass the peasants just in from the countryside, burlap bags at their feet, looking utterly from another planet, representatives of hundreds of millions of others, almost standing still while Zhu and Li zoom on by…

Creeping along on the highway, we talked about how the Beijing government was trying to control the huge new popularity of cars: one solution to the growing chaos of the streets has been to severely restrict motorcycle use in the city. Zhu thought that was better than Shanghai's fix: trying to cut down on car ownership by setting a high price (presently almost $5,000) on car registration. Trying to ease traffic and cut down on accidents, Shanghai had even banned bicycles from many main streets, news that still amazes me.

An ebullient atmosphere surrounds the automobile in China. You can see the excitement continuing, even growing, as more people buy cars: China now has fewer than seven of them for every thousand people, roughly the same level as the United States had in 1915. Everyone expects the ownership rate to keep growing, which means there could be 130 million vehicles on China's roads by 2020. By 2030, according to one estimate, there could be as many as in the United States…

While I was in Beijing, the journal Nature reported that the city's air pollution was much worse than previously thought. Concentrations of nitrogen dioxide have increased 50 percent over the past 10 years, and the buildup is accelerating. According to The Wall Street Journal, Beijing's sulfur-dioxide levels in 2004 were more than double New York's, and airborne-particulate levels more than six times as high. Last year China enacted its first comprehensive emissions law, but it is expected to have little effect on the transport sector's copious carbon-dioxide emissions, which by 2030 are expected to exceed those of the United States, the world's largest producer. The nation's growing demands for gasoline make it increasingly our competitor for the finite global supply; by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency, China may be importing as much oil as we do.”

Related; Cars in China

What the yuan can learn from the yen

A policy brief from ADBI on current and future issues for the Chinese economy; deals with various issues and challenges including regional imbalance, economic reform, exchange rate, and the PRC-Japan relationship.

Related;

Growth in jobless a problem for Asia as exports surge; China's economy grows at 10%; its employment grows at 1% - UN Report.

Why China Stagnated

China and Globalization

The Looming China Crisis

The "divisible by nine" rule; The "divisible by nine" rule is a tradition that the People's Bank of China follows when it changes interest rates