欧米人が観光旅行にアジアを選んだとする。日本か中国か選択を迫られたらどっち。こういう記事を見ていると、スケールの大きな中国の古代遺跡や近代化が進められている中国の都市を見学に行きたくなる。それを凌ぐ日本の見所はなにか。観光に力を入れている日本にとって、中国はアジアの大きなライバルである。
****
China’s Overwhelming Demand for Resources
By Daniel Gross
Fri, Nov 4, 2011 12:28 PM EDT
Xi'An, China -- There's nothing like a visit to China to get you in touch with your inner Thomas Malthus. The 18th century British scholar is known, centuries after his death, for pessimism about the capacity of the earth and its inhabitants to produce enough food, energy and other resources to sustain the rising population of humans.
The last few centuries, in which rising living standards coincided with population growth, have debunked Malthus. But spend some time in China — and in particular in China's interior — and you'll start to think otherwise.
Shanghai has long been one of the world's large, great cities. To a longtime resident of New York, the amalgamation of skyscrapers is readily comprehensible. Yes, the scale and the pace of growth is impressive, even shocking. But if New York works without overly stressing the planet, so should Shanghai.
The anxiety picks up when you leave the comparatively well-trodden coasts for the interior. Here, you'll find cities that you've likely never heard of, that are as big and sprawling as any in America, and getting larger by leaps and bounds. Like Xi'an, which I visited this week along with a group of journalists.
Xi'an is best known as the location of the astonishing terra cotta warriors. Unearthed in 1974, they lie at the core of the vast burial grounds of Qin Shi Huang, founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of China. (On which more later).
Xi'an today is a huge city (population about eight million and growing) that each year pulls in hundreds of thousands of Chinese from the impoverished countryside. Bumping through the traffic, we passed endless blocks of apartment buildings, office complexes, factories and lower-slung districts destined for development.
When Americans think of industrial parks, we tend to think of a dozen-odd office buildings set along a winding road, or a bunch of low-slung industrial sheds. Here in Xi'an, the parks are themselves the size of cities. We visited the Xi'An National Civil Aerospace Industrial Base (XCAIB), which is in effect a new city a few miles southeast of the ancient city center. Here, office buildings and soaring residential complexes are sprouting from the soil of the 86-square kilometer zone.
Our destination in the afternoon, the Xi'an Hi-Tech Industries Development Zone, was even larger. It took 25 minutes to drive from one section of the zone to the Software Park. Each zone features an imposing headquarters with soaring lobbies, cavernous meeting rooms filled with overstuffed chairs, and immense scale models of the area.
1-2
