Of course, the projections, and thus the Spenglerian hand-wringing, could prove wrong if China's economy stopped defying the laws of gravity. China's growth has been investment-driven rather than consumer-driven, as in much of the West. That investment, above all, takes the form of the astonishing building and infrastructure projects that have propelled the growth of China's cities -- bullet trains, highways, ports, and giant manufacturing complexes. Local governments issue the debt for these projects, which now stands at a stupefying 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.58 trillion). The city of Tianjin -- number three on the McKinsey list, behind Shanghai and Beijing -- recently announced plans to invest another $236 billion in industrial development over the next four years. If enough of these speculative investments fail, city and regional governments could face unsustainable debt. A recent Economist article, however, argues that those debts have never endangered "the fiscal position of the country as a whole." The claim that China's economy is a house of cards may be an elaborate form of wish fulfillment.
China's urban model is powerful but brutal, like China itself. Cities like Shanghai have bulldozed their past on the way to a glittering future. It's not a model to be emulated, at least in the West: Urbanites, at least in the Old World and New Old World, want to live both on the cutting edge and in the past, and great cities like New York and London and Paris let them do so. But that doesn't mean we can't learn from China.
I cannot read about China's bullet trains and super-modern airports, or the "traffic-jumping bus" described in FP, without feeling mortified by New York's absurdly cumbersome "train to the plane," or the decades of stop-and-start planning that preceded the Second Avenue subway line now under construction. Democracies, of course, cannot sweep away local opposition to infrastructure projects as autocracies can. But as Harvard scholar Edward Glaeser asserts in Triumph Of the City, preservationism -- whether in Manhattan or Paris -- can be an asphyxiating ideology.
But local opposition is not the greatest obstacle to infrastructure development in the United States -- money is. A recent report by America 2050, an advocacy group promoting strategic investments in America's physical plant, notes that after almost two centuries of investment in canals, railroads, ports and highways, U.S. spending on infrastructure has dropped to 2.4 percent of GDP, compared to 4.6 percent in India and 9 percent in China. "No national strategy exists," the authors write, "to build and manage the infrastructure systems needed to sustain inclusive economic growth and our competitive position in the global economy."
Right now, there is zero prospect of significantly raising infrastructure spending. As part of the 2009 stimulus package, Congress authorized $10.1 billion for the U.S. High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program, which would provide grants to states seeking to enhance existing passenger rail service and build new dedicated high-speed railways. Very few states succeeded in securing grants to develop high-speed trains before Congress eliminated funding for the program in 2011. And that was under President Barack Obama. The long-term budget proposed by Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's running mate, would halve discretionary spending as a fraction of GDP over the next decade. The document, known as "The Path to Prosperity," was endorsed by the House of Representatives -- and it does not mention the word "infrastructure." Ryan appears to believe that the private market will supply public transportation, sewer systems and power grids, and repairs bridges and roadways.
Perhaps even more dangerous than the Republican idée fixe over government spending is the chest-thumping braggadocio that insists the United States is the greatest nation the world has ever seen, and has nothing to learn from anyone. When will we wake up? Only, I imagine, when it too late to do much about our plight.
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