Eric's Beijing Diary

Steel. Chinese demand for steel is driving up the price worldwide. China already consumes one third of the world's steel supply, and is now paying top dollar for what used to be considered scrap. In America the price of steel is up 70% in some places.

This insatiable appetite for steel is due to the boom in China's economy, which has created a tremendous growth in large scale commercial construction. It's virtually impossible to look out the window in Beijing and not see a crane. I just looked out my bedroom window and counted eight of them. I'm not sure how I feel about how all this frenzied building is going to affect the landscape. One of the most common complaints is that many traditional buildings are being wiped out in favor of quick new high rises. I think I am a little more concerned about what this tremendous move to the cities will do to them. The three great business centers in China are Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzen. Shenzen is very much a fabricated city. It was built to facilitate trade with Hong Kong after Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. But Beijing and Shanghai are traditional Chinese cities that are being drastically changed by the current economic boom. And they are doing crazy things to adjust. Shanghai has decared that bicycles and motorcycles will be outlawed. I don't think that would fly very well in Beijing. But Beijing has problems of it's own. The tremendous increase in personal automobiles has clogged the freeways. This was aleviated a bit when they decided to remove the toll from the fifth ring road, but it can still be pretty bad. Fortunately, I don't have a car, so it really doesn't affect me, but I do wonder where it will all lead.