Are Chinese leaders worried?
It would appear so. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao recently said he’ll “make sure China maintains a sense of crisis” as it struggles to address its problems; in a sure sign that the government is nervous, people who persist in protesting environmental or political conditions are being hauled off to jail. Chinese leaders have tacitly encouraged a rise in pay scales in an effort to create consumer demand at home, which would reduce China’s dependence on exports. And China plans to invest at least $440 billion in green technologies over the next decade to mitigate environmental degradation. China is also developing rural areas to reduce income disparities between city-dwellers and peasants. But achieving all this will require economic growth to continue at a blistering pace. If the miracle falters, warns Zhou Tianyong, who trains government bureaucrats at Beijing’s Central Party School, China risks falling into a “trap of social and political turmoil, slow economic growth, enduring lack of pro
