“Let China sleep for when she wakes the world will shake”

So said Napoleon Bonaparte presciently two hundred years ago. I am not sure if Napoleon was focused purely on the military aspects or whether he saw China’s potential in broader terms.

Napoleon’s admonition came to mind during a recent visit we made to China. We spent close to four weeks there and were truly STUNNED by the progress the country has made. The world saw what China achieved in terms of the Olympics in 2008 and in a sense that event is a microcosm of what they have achieved in other respects. Despite all the new construction, the Chinese have made a concerted attempt to enhance and preserve their numerous cultural attractions.

Admittedly my travels were mainly to cities – large and small – and saw little of the rural areas. I talked to several people who have been to China multiple times – some as long ago as 1982 and others as recently as 2000. They all agree that China’s progress is beyond description. A Texan, on assignment in Shanghai, told me China is not a third world or developing country. Its infra-structure compares with that of the US and in some respects is ahead of the US. Six lane highways abound both in small and large cities.

Having an authoritarian regime that brooks no opposition enables them to makes things happen expeditiously. What they have done is to learn from what the West did wrong and plan their cities accordingly.For example, Beijing has six “ring roads” – analogous to the Beltway in DC – and they are in concentric circles starting with one close to the city center and extending to the outskirts of the city. “New Shanghai” which today boasts a skyline that is comparable to any major city in the US was literally farmland fifteen years ago. The train from Pudong airport in Shanghai to the city reaches a top speed of 430kph and completes its 30km journey in 7 minutes! It takes at least an hour to do the same journey by taxi.

The government is Communist but the way business is done is as capitalistic as it comes. Mao must be rolling in his grave at the entrepreneurial, business oriented approach of today’s China. There is a lot of cheap labor and this combined with a very hard-working populace has made China the manufacturing hub of the world. We stayed with a nephew who is on assignment in Beijing and he said that it is the Chinese capacity for hard work and the drive to make things happen that impresses him more than anything else. It is probably the reason that the first phase of the largest hydro-electric project in the world – the Three Gorges Dam – was completed a year ahead fof schedule. As the Chinese guide told us in a quite matter of fact way, “it was to have been completed in 2009 but got completed in 2008 because we are Chinese”!

There must be a human price to all this rapid progress. One can only imagine the number of people who had to be relocated as old buildings were demolished to allow for highways and high-rises to be built. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River has resulted in entire villages being submerged in water and the people rehoused. I did not sense any discontentment by the Chinese but then it is probably not something one would hear about as a visitor. I have heard stories of visitors being impressed by the apparent contentment and acceptance of people in the Soviet Union not long before the whole system came crumbling down.

China is today the financier to the world and especially the US which is financing its gigantic deficits with money borrowed from the Chinese. My nephew, Vivek, in Australia recently sent me a link in the Financial Times which addressed China’s goal of limiting India’s influence and dominance. Coincidentally, there was there was an article in the New York Times about the same time about tension between China and India about territory that is under Indian control which China views as being part of Tibet!

One does have to wonder how much of a threat China would pose if it chose to flex its muscles and aspired to become a dominant and aggressive military power. One of the reasons for the US interest in India as a strategic partner is doubtless because the US views an economically and militarily dominant India as a counter-weight to any aggressive designs China may have as it becomes a super-power.