The Meaning to China of Exchange and some Pictures


In light of our departure in a few days to China and prompted by the natural gas well disaster near Chongqing I am reminded that the most obvious sense of exchange these days is of money.

Here are some my photos from a trip to Beijing and Shanghai taken two years ago in January on a trip to plan another educational exchange. The scenes are mostly from the Forbidden City, on the campus of the North China University of Technology (including me with officials from the school) and street scenes and contemporary architecture in Shanghai.

While pondering how to deal with currency in China where non-Chinese credit cards are rare and money exchange is very difficult I read of the explosion of the gas well not that far from where we will be in Sichuan province in Chengdu. The following paragraph in the New York Times account of the incident struck me:

"The oil industry is under great pressure to discover new sources of energy as quickly as possible to alleviate the country's rapidly growing dependence on foreign engery and mineral resources, which has led to surges in prices and supply shortages. Until the mid-1990's, China was largely energy independent, but it is quickly challenging Japan and the United States as the world's largest importers of oil, prompting efforts to secure new supplies domestically and by building pipelines into Russia and Central Asia."
"Energy is a serious bottleneck for China's economy, which is growing at better than an 8 percent pace this year. Long accustomed to protecting its own market from outside oil an gas companies, China has been rebuffed recently by major oil companies and neighboring conutries as its seeks to play a direct role in developing oil and gas fields in the region. That has prompted leaders to put even more emphasis on exploiting its own supplies of natural gas in places like southwestern Sichuan province where the accident occurred."

How long will it be before the conflicts over oil that beset the United States afflict China? And given the political tensions likely to emerge and given the environmental consequences of fossil fuel consumption will this exchange advance or degrade Chinese culture?

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Posted: Fri - December 26, 2003 at 02:25 PM      

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