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The darker side of China's economic "miracle"
Before planning for and making the trans-global trek to the most populous country on Earth, I knew mainland China mostly through television and movie screens. My sinologists were Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Egg Shen, the crotchety shaman from "Big Trouble in Little China" -- a Cabinet of advisers who left me, ahem, unprepared for my recent voyage east.
Thus, I was thrilled when, upon arriving here, a Peace Corps volunteer handed me a 1997 tome called "Red China Blues." Written by Chinese-Canadian journalist Jan Wong, the book tours a nation on the verge of superpowerdom, and it ends by suggesting the country's industrialization means "the future of China may be the West's past."
One excursion hardly makes me a China guru, but I can report with some confidence that when it comes to economic growth, Wong is right. China is walking in our shoes -- and that's not necessarily a good thing.
On my trip (which you can read more about at Openleft.com), I've seen America circa 1900: coastal metropolises of towering wealth hemming in a polluted and destitute heartland. Two Chinas, as John Edwards might say -- one you constantly hear about and another hidden from view.