Trouble brewing: Part One

Taizhou is one of the ugliest cities I have ever had the privilege of encountering.

It hugs China's east coast, a rich, industrial city in rich, industrial Zhejiang province just a few hundred kilometres south of Shanghai.

It's a shining example of what a few decades of madcap economic development can do: Thirty years ago, Taizhou had no natural resources and therefore no industry; it was the second-poorest city in the province.

Now, it's the third-richest--riding on a wave of manufacturing wealth that has populated the city's streets with swanky new Mercedes Benzes and Lamborghinis.

Unfortunately that wealth hasn't convinced the city's monied denizens or its (justifiably) smug government of the need for urban design of any sort.

So the streets go in all directions. Most buildings look new-ish but grimy and relentlessly out of place. The pavement is filthy despite veritable armies of street cleaners.


There are dozens of stores selling safes, fancy bedding and ugly plastic children's toys and few restaurants or grocery stores (okay, that's more a personal beef than an urban flaw, and there are plenty of fruit-and-vegetable vendors in the old part of town. There's also a butcher shop/mini abattoir doing a wicked trade selling pigs' heads for New Year's).

Crappy urban design is the least of Taizhou's worries, however: This city is one of those hit hardest by the jinrong weiji--the economic crisis--that has dealt exporters a death blow. Few retailers in the U.S. are clamouring for the Chinese plastic this city was shipping out, and that has Taizhou's elites freaked right out.

Both local and national governments are hoping they can convince China's growing middle class to pick up the purchasing slack. A year or so ago, this may not have seemed entirely outside the realm of possibility: Chinese consumers were buying cars, phones and pricey appliances in swelling numbers.

But even the most loaded new xiao zi's spending was nowhere near his or her American counterpart's credit-hungry habits at the best of times. Now that the weiji's effects are spreading and people are settling in for a long-term global recession, what was already a culture that encouraged saving has become one that promotes thriftiness more than ever.

One Taizhou resident I spoke with, even as she extolled the economic virtues of her hometown, laughed when I asked if she planned to up spending as per Hu Jintao's exhortations.

"I was supposed to buy a house this year. Now, there's no question."

Uh oh.