Orders of Magnitude

While going through airport security in Sydney, Australia on my way to Shanghai, I finally got my membership in the 21st Century Travelers Club. My briefcase had to be sent through the x-ray machine three times because all of the adapters and cords for my electronic devices made it impossible to completely see through the bag.

I thought about that incident during a long walk through Pudong, a thriving suburb on the outskirts of Shanghai. If Pudong is the new China then there’s a lot to like—modern new high rises, gleaming office towers, enormous traffic lanes for bikes and those electric scooters that seem to be everywhere. But you have to multiply everything by at least a couple of orders of magnitude when you’re in China. For example, I had to walk for an hour before finding a place to buy a soda. Where does everybody go to shop for groceries?

All that time going nowhere fast gave me plenty of time to check out my surroundings, to look beyond the glossy veneer of a new suburbia and take a peek into the future.

As I passed a humongous new high-rise housing complex, replete with a high fence, security guards, and newly planted gardens, I looked up and noticed that almost every porch had clothes hanging to dry. Either the emerging upper class of Chinese society is being particularly energy conscious or they don’t have clothes dryers. I’m betting on the latter. And it seems like only a matter of time before “keeping up with the Joneses” injects even more uncertainty in world energy prices.

China’s road to the future is full of speed bumps, has no guardrail, and can’t be shut down for repairs because everybody’s driving over the speed limit twenty-four hours a day.

It holds an increasing portion of total global debt, produces the most manufactured goods, has the biggest population, holds the dubious distinction of having 16 of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world, and has to build a city twice the size of Houston, Texas every year just to accommodate the largest migration of people from rural areas to cities that has every occurred in the history of the planet.

I just hope China’s leaders know how to drive.