Cars in China

Frequent and positive is the news here in China about the automotive industry. The emotions and statistics here are as different from those back in America as they could be. Sales are booming, production is growing, and new companies are getting financed and putting new models into the Chinese car market. People are either thinking about buying a car, getting ready to buy, or driving their new car home from the dealership. This article (as well this one) about just how explosive the growth has been got me more about something that has rattled around my brain for a while.

I don’t doubt that Chinese people have or will soon have the cash (Chinese people are really debt averse) to buy cars (more than they already have). I know that they have the first world lifestyle aspirations and a strong sense of entitlement that they should live at first world standards. Nor do I doubt that the government’s subsidies to the car industry and campaigns toward ownership to help grow the ever important GDP will aid the two previous factors to drive up car ownership in China. But, and it’s a big but, I don’t know where in the hell Chinese people are going to drive or park their cars. Now, China is a big place, but the problem is that people don’t live in about 1/3 to a half of it because it’s either desert or the barely inhabitable Tibetan plateau. Chinese people are instead tightly packed along the Pacific coast, in cities much like Changzhou (or cities that will be like today’s Changzhou in ten or fifteen years). Which means that their cars are tightly packed into these cities. Right now, before the forecasted explosion in ownership. So, I think that my observations and concerns are pretty legitimate.

Currently, when I ride around Changzhou (on my sweet one-speed bike with a basket), most people are either riding bikes, electric bikes, electric scooters, or riding the bus. There are of course private cars, taxis, and supply/service trucks and vans. But most people are using bikes, scooters, or the bus-and many that are on the bus used a bike or scooter to get to the bus stop. The roads are packed, the sidewalks cluttered with parked bikes and scooters, and traffic jams are the norm. The pollution here is pretty bad, and I don’t need to write anything for you to know that pollution here is an issue (to say the least). Bikes and scooters don’t spew out any exhaust-and the food and electricity (respectively) used to power them can both be produced renewably with low emissions. That’s with bikes and scooters.

The thing with cars is that they’re big and heavy. And they take lots of energy. And put out a fair amount of pollution. I took some pictures around campus of some bikes and scooters and some cars parked. The bar napkin math is pretty easy to do; cars take up way more space. China has space, but not that people want to live in-which means cities that are more crowded, more polluted, louder, and countless other negative things. You can look at the pictures, and I simply think that the cars simply can’t fit. Not even close. China ought to learn from the problems in the American transportation system and not try to repeat it. They have the political power, industrial know-how and lack of eminent domain laws to create awesome public transportation networks very efficiently. But it seems instead that people are choosing to literally get the country stuck in one big traffic jam, in between nothing but endless parking lots.