Today is our last day in China. We were met by our guide for breakfast at our Xian Hotel and were driven to the airport. X'ian, like all the other airports in China that we passed through, was very modern and is comparable to any international airport. I guess, the Chinese government wants the tourists to see the very best in their infrastructure and therefore spared no efforts to make them equal or better than most airports in western countries. Our guide helped us through the check- in process and it was time to say good bye to her and board our flight to Beijing. The flight itself was little more than an hour. When we landed in Beijing, we had to go from the domestic terminal to the international terminal. Not knowing which bus to take, we decided to walk to the international terminal which took us about half hour .

Now, we were really worried about our left luggage in Beijing. The hotel staff in Beijing Sheraton were supposed to deliver our main luggage that we left behind. So I decided to call the duty manager at the hotel to tell him that we are at the airport and waiting for our luggage. He told me that his guy is already at the airport looking for us! I was just amazed at their efficiency. I called the guy's cell phone to find out where he is in the airport and I bumped into a guy also on his cell phone. Guess what, he was the guy who is delivering our luggage! What a coincidence! I gave him a generous tip and picked up the two huge suitcases from him and proceeded to the international check in.

Our flight back to US is scheduled to depart at 3:30 pm and after check-in, we still had some time. We were directed to the Business Class Lounge where I had time to reminisce on the past 12 days in China.

China is an amazing place and Chinese people are perhaps the most nationalistic and disciplined that I have ever seen. Because of their long history of subjugation and humiliation by the western powers and the Japanese, they are very cautious about foreigners and do not open up to them easily. In spite of this fact, we were able to talk to our guides and others that we met on forbidden topics of politics. The long years of communist thinking is certainly ingrained in people over 45 years old. They are very proud of their accomplishments under the communist regime. They do not seem to mind the oppressive (by western standards) regimens the government imposes on them and really believe such measures are required to make China great again. I was curious about their opinion on the "one child" policy. To my surprise, no one that we talked to was critical about it and thought it is the key to their economic progress.

The younger Chinese think very differently. They are just like young people anywhere in the world - more concerned about things such as fashion, internet, I-Pods, etc., They have seen the unbridled expansion of capitalism and free markets in their life time and they are absolutely wedded to these ideas. The specter of American style consumerism is beginning to take hold among the younger set. Shopping Malls are being built everywhere that caters to the needs of the younger people. The forced equalization of wealth espoused by the communists are no longer subscribed to by the population including their "communist" leaders. Dung Xia Ping, the architect of the current liberalization policy, once said " Making money is not a sin and to be rich is beautiful."! The younger generation is also obsessed with learning English. Everyone I talked to truly believes that becoming fluent in English is the key to success in their life.

True to any capitalistic system, the economic status between the urban rich and rural poor is enormous in China. The vast rural part of ancient China has not changed much in a thousand years. However, the gleaming cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing are monuments to materialistic prosperity of the urban super rich. In fact, China now is the second largest consumer of Luxury Goods ( Rolls Royces, Guccis and Armani etc.) in the world after USA. There is no stopping of this vast population moving headlong into  hyper consumerism. I suspect that China will replace USA as the most capitalistic country in the world in our life time !! Here is an extract from a recent news report from New York Times:

Extracts from New York Times article:

Move over, New York. This year alone, Shanghai will complete towers with more space for living and working than there is in all the office buildings in New York City. That is in a city that already has 4,000 skyscrapers, almost double the number in New York. And there are designs to build 1,000 more by the end of this decade.

China's real estate market is so hot that miniature cities are being created with artificial lakes, and the country's nouveau riche suddenly seem eager to put down as much as $5.3 million for a luxury apartment in skyscrapers with names like the Skyline Mansion.

"There's no doubt what is happening in parts of China is on a scale we've never seen before," said Richard Burdett, professor of architecture and urbanism at the London School of Economics. "But more importantly, it's the fastest pace of development in the past 50 or 100 years."

Such developments dwarf anything being built today in the West. "I'm working on a master plan for a 46-kilometer riverfront area," said Robert Egan, who runs a landscape architecture firm in Beijing called Place Makers. "Scale like that doesn't happen in the U.S."

A top-of-the-line unit at one development project has a 25-acre palm-shaped artificial lake, which brochures say will feature docks with berths for private yachts.

China's heavy reliance on coal to power its overcharged economy has already made it the world's second-largest producer of greenhouse gases, after the United States. And the World Health Organization says China has 7 of the world's 10 most-polluted cities.

China's housing rush is being fueled by mortgage rates around 5 percent and huge inflows of foreign capital. But the boom is also driven by landmark government housing reforms from the 1990's that for the first time since the Communist revolution of the late 1940's allowed Chinese to acquire their own homes rather than live in government housing.

As a result of this privatization, thousands of new residential projects are rising in the bustling coastal provinces. And sprawling satellite towns and luxury villa developments are sprouting in what was once farmland.

The boom is most evident in the largest cities like Beijing, which will be host for the 2008 Olympics and is now draped in construction projects that are straining water and power supplies. Every big city seems to have plans for a central business district. And every big housing project seems to have a Phase 1, 2 and 3.

There is, of course, a dark side to this boom. In the scramble to reallocate land and create boomtowns, China has spent much of the last decade demolishing millions of old homes and buildings and relocating tens of millions of people, many against their will.

In his report, "China Eats the World," Mr. Rothman of CLSA predicted that in coming years, "the Chinese dragon will stay very, very hungry."

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