Modern Chinese Secret

Between all the natural disasters from the flooding in Pakistan to forest fires in Russia and man-made disasters like the functioning of the U.S. Senate comes an underreported story about what's happening in China. The Chinese have been dealing with floods just like the Pakistanis, but that's only one of their problems.

The Chinese are now dealing with a massive traffic jam on the main road through northern China that started nearly two weeks ago and at one point stretched sixty miles. The road has been the site of new construction, and motorists have been trapped in the gridlock for so long that people are sleeping in their cars an unrefrigerated produce is rotting in trucks. Motorists are lucky if they move at least a mile a day, and villagers along the route are selling food and water to the stranded drivers. It is that bad.

This is all due to the cost of China's rapid industrialization and its new role as manufacturer to the world, especially the United States. (The Chinese ecomony is now the second largest national economy, behind the U.S., having surpassed Japan this month.) Coal mines in the northwestern part of the country, supplying necessary power to fuel those factories making the dinner plates and living room bookcases you buy at Wal-Mart, are the main reason for the traffic increase along the so-called Beijing-Tibet highway.

So the next time you're stuck in traffic, be it in Atlanta or Los Angeles, remember - it could be worse. In China, it is.