This part is the tiny peninsula of Macau-as it spells its name, versus Macao in American usage. Right now the very most booming part of generally booming China raises questions like these in a peculiar and intriguing form. What will its growth mean for the global environment? For jobs and prices outside of China? For the military balance of power and the ideological contest of ideas? Such questions about China’s boom are unusually compelling, simply because of the country’s scale. Everyone, everywhere, takes their own prosperity as a sign of cleverness, wise planning, and hard work.įrom outside, the questions concern the boom’s effects-on culture, on values, on old establishments and traditions. Inside the boom zone, people don’t spend much time thinking about how the good times began, or asking how long the boom can last. By chance and by design, I have lived in the middle of several of them: the Texas oil boom of the mid-1970s, Japan’s all-around boom of the late ’80s, and the Seattle and Bay Area Internet bubble of the late ’90s. Today’s boom times in China are interesting in their own right, as economic booms always are.
