The Short March

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The Short March is underway across the country. "Everyone knows in its cities, China is building up — but it's also building out," says Jing Ulrich, managing director and head of research at JP Morgan in Hong Kong. In Beijing, a high-speed rail link will bring cities like Tianjin, 70 miles (113 km) away, into commuting distance by this summer. In places such as Chongqing to the west and Dalian in the north, says Ulrich, the same pattern of development is taking shape: up — and out.

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Life in China's Suburbs

Companies all over the world, who have fed China's long-running urban economic boom, are already beginning to benefit from its suburban phase. The average size of a house in New Songjiang is more than twice that of the average downtown Shanghai apartment, and now we, and our fellow suburban pioneers, are stocking up with stuff. In our house we have drapes that were made in Tianjin, and tile flooring from Kunming, but also bathroom fixtures made by Kohler (headquarters: Kohler, Wis.) and consumer electronics from Samsung and Panasonic. Our town's central shopping mall — which looks as if it could be in White Plains, N.Y., or the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles — has had a KFC and a Pizza Hut up and running for the past year. In late summer, New Songjiang passed through one of globalization's initiation rituals: Starbucks opened its first branch here.

The economic effects of the Short March are the easiest to discern. Others — political, social — are like aftershocks of an earthquake: you know they are coming, even if you're not quite sure when, or exactly how powerful, they will be. One, I'm certain, will be environmental. New Songjiang is supposed to be linked, by 2010, to central Shanghai when a spur on the light-rail system is completed.

But everyone who moves here will still own a car, because this is a suburb, right? When we lived in Shanghai, my wife walked out of our apartment to a street market a few blocks away to buy vegetables every day. Here, you drive to the store. In China, the car, almost as much as the new apartment or house, is a badge of honor among the newly minted middle class. If the neighbors I've met are any indication, many people will still drive into town rather than commute on a crowded train. This, despite the fact that it costs the equivalent of some $6,000 to get a license plate that allows you to drive on Shanghai's highways. Zhang Wenming, who lives just behind us, drives to work every day and says he'll continue to do so. But Shanghai is already gridlocked and smoggy and getting worse by the day. That's part of the reason my wife and I, with a 3-year-old daughter in tow, moved here — our daughter had developed a persistent hacking cough that she couldn't seem to shake. By 2010, in and around Shanghai there will be some 2,600 miles (4,200 km) of new highways that didn't exist in 2000. And millions of new cars will be traversing them. Shanghai may make Los Angeles on a bad day look as clear as a bell.

Ironically, all of these new suburbs in Shanghai, mine included, bill themselves as environmentally friendly. And relatively speaking, they are. There is green space here — large grassy parks and small lawns, which don't exist in the city. But things have hardly started yet. I recently asked a retired Shanghai city planner how much thought had gone into the environmental consequences of the Short March. He sighed. "We know people will probably have to drive more. There will be more cars on the streets everywhere. But there are other important factors to consider." Such as? He paused, and just rotated the forefinger of his right hand in front of him, over and over. His meaning was clear enough. Nothing is more important to China's leadership — nothing — than keeping the economy ticking over, in making sure those in the middle class have decent new places to raise their families, and that there are jobs for workers in places where, not long ago, there were only watermelon fields.