The Suburbanization of China

According to a World Bank Report, Beijing may be on track to mimic the United States' auto-dependent development patterns

To be fair, Beijing has a surprisingly extensive transit system (including an eight-line subway, three Bus Rapid transit (BRT) lines, and a 75-mile express train which can reach 217 mph). That's no mean feat for a city with a per-capita income of about $8,000.

On the other hand, most of the city's jobs are on the city's periphery, and its 17 million residents own about 3 million cars. The government is quickly building the type of suburban road system which may only encourage these trends.

While this tendency is most marked in the country's largest cities (excepting Hong Kong), it is alarming for several reasons. Clearly, the hyperindustrialization of China (including plentiful coal and lax environmental standards) poses major ecological risks, both both domestically and globally. Widespread car ownership by China's 1.4 billion people could be catastrophic.

This also means that China will need more and more oil (or other fuel for its vehicles). There will be increasing competition for fuel. If oil is indeed to become more scarce in the near future (a subject for a different thread), some countries will likely face shortages, or at least vastly-increased oil prices.