The Foreign Service Journal, January 2011

alyst and cities leading the way, hu- tongs (alleys formed by lines of tradi- tional courtyard homes) are giving way to mass housing, transforming the landscape at a dizzying rate. Sparked by the World Expo in nearby Shanghai and a prevailing boomtown mentality, business leaders and investors, eager for a piece of the action, are still piling in. The talk in the expatriate watering holes continues to be of more high-end hotel openings and stratagems to exploit dollar-renminbi fluctuations in repatriating salaries. Much will depend on China’s ability to stimulate domestic consumption to offset expected export losses if the ren- minbi is revalued, a herculean task for planners in Beijing. Nevertheless, the energy, scale and can-do spirit I en- countered make me optimistic that the PRC will continue to grow well beyond the current recession. Still, world-class problems loom on the horizon. Among them will be meeting rising worker and consumer expectations. Suicides at the huge Fox- conn plants, strikes at Honda and acute labor imbalances may all be sympto- matic of what lies ahead. There are al- ready signs that once Beijing gives ground to worker demands, lower-end industries will be lured away to coun- tries like Bangladesh and Vietnam. Also critical — and not just for China — will be how it manages soar- ing energy consumption and an in- creasingly polluted environment. Its total consumption of 2.3 billion tons of all forms of energy last year surpassed that of the United States by 4 percent. While some expatriates complain of corruption at all levels, the determina- tion and creativity of China’s leaders in tackling these problems—amagnitude never faced before—are, I submit, ac- tually grounds for guarded optimism. I hope, however, that as the coun- try’s bureaucrats increasingly take de- cisions affecting the whole planet, West Lake Park’s exquisite natural beauty will serve as a reminder of tra- ditional China and a symbol of hope worth preserving intact — as Central Park in its own way remains for New Yorkers. ■ 34 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 The unanswerable question, of course, is how long can the PRC manage the present, precipitous rate of change?