China Diary: Power Play

For the past year I’ve been visiting China on an average of once a month on business. These are my impressions


Beijing is being spruced up for the Olympics, now just over two years away. Huge tracts of land have been cleared of their previous inhabitants, many of them living in small, courtyard-based neighborhoods known as hutongs, and turned into building sites, with high-rise apartments, office buildings and shopping malls going up at an astounding pace. Right now the Beijing skyline is dominated by cranes (a French construction engineer working here said that there is more building going on in Beijing than in the whole of France) but by late-summer in 2008, Beijing intends presenting a sparkling and very Western face to the world.

Which is all well and good, but the effect may be marred somewhat by the mass slaughter of Olympic visitors on the roads unless the authorities do something about China’s driving culture. Beijing and the country’s other large cities are not alone in suffering from traffic problems; most large metropolitan areas around the world are similarly plagued. But China is definitely in a league of its own when it comes to mule-headed and very dangerous driving.

Most drivers around the world, certainly those in countries which aspire to Olympic status, accept the principle that pedestrians are also allowed on the road – if not the principle of pedestrians first. In virtually all the countries that I’ve visited, drivers wait for pedestrians to cross (I’m talking about crossing at marked pedestrian crossing points with traffic lights showing green) before driving through an intersection.

In China, however, drivers seem to regard pedestrians as an affront to their right to drive where and when they want to. When the light turns green, the Chinese driver goes for broke, irrespective of how many pedestrians are in his way. You cannot walk the streets of a large Chinese city without seeing cars bulldozing their way through crowds of pedestrians legitimately crossing the road at green lights.

Not that the pedestrians seem to care much, mind you. Like the drivers they seem to have adapted to a culture in which the car has the right of way. They simply wait for the cars to pass through or edge their way around them when the cars get stuck in traffic.

Most visitors to the Olympics, however, will have grown up in a very dissimilar environment and will cross roads instinctively, in the belief that a pedestrian crossing and a green light give them the right to do so. China runs the very real risk of sacrificing all the credit it is trying so hard to earn on the altar of driving madness.

A Chinese friend of mine explained it thus: The car, he said is a symbol of status and power in China, and what is the sense of having power if you don’t exercise it? The Chinese driver regards his possession of this symbol as sufficient reason to throw his weight around when challenged by puny pedestrians.

Another explanation is that driving is new to the average Chinese and a driving culture has not had time to develop. Twenty-five years ago, private cars were hardly seen on Chinese roads, which were the preserve of swarms of cyclists and the odd official limousine. So, not only those driving on the road today are relative newcomers but so are those teaching them how to drive. Any culture is only as good as those who hand it down. If driving teachers don’t propagate the values of consideration, safety and regard for pedestrians, those who learn from them are unlikely to practice them.

Whatever, the reasons, China’s roads give a revealing glimpse into one of the less salubrious characteristics of a society which is trying so hard, and with a good deal of success, to join the club of developed nations. The Olympics are regarded here as the culmination of that process; China’s coming of age. It would be a pity for the party to be spoiled by the blood of visitors on the streets.

The authorities in Beijing would be well advised to redirect some of the effort and expense they’re investing in preparations for the Olympics to road education. Not only for the sake of the visitors but for the Chinese themselves. Not having experienced orderly roads, they may not be aware of their civilizing value. To paraphrase Robert Frost, good drivers make good neighbors.