[sustran] Re: nytimes article on cars in china

[Chris Bradshaw]

Craig,

I took the time to read the article, what turned out to be more of a
travelogue.

Since the car seems to be more useful for longer trips, rather than for
commuting or shopping (thanks to congestion and, I suspect, a shortage of
places to park it at destinations), I was surprised that they didn't embrace
car-rental or carsharing.

I was struck by the reference to sharing:

> "Oh!" Longyin said. "My father is saying: 'There is no such thing as a
perfect person. Everybody makes mistakes. Mao saved many people, but
to do it he had to sacrifice his son, his wife, his whole family —
everything. Now he's gone, but I want to go back to that time, when
people shared everything."'

> But do you really want to share everything? I asked Fan. Wouldn't
sharing equally mean that a privileged few wouldn't be able to own new
Volvos?

> "I think now is a necessary period," Fan said, as his daughter
translated. "We have to advance."

This shows that there is a certain amount of guilt about the ability to
afford cars, and the fact that they are privately owned, while so many are
still quite poor.  I wonder how sustainable this inequitable distribution of
wealth is in China.

Part of my motivation in promoting car-sharing in Canada is that it might
become an alternative to private-car ownership to the parts of the world who
are discovering "development" later than the West.

I found it interesting that the middle-class man who accommodated the
journalist and his interpreter was partly motivated by having his gas and
toll expenses covered, plus being able to share the costs (and space) of his
hotel rooms.

Chris Bradshaw
Ottawa