Davos Newbies

“In the US, there are nine cities with more than 1m inhabitants. In China, there are 49. You can be travelling across China, arrive in a city that is twice the size of Houston, and think: I’ve never even heard of this place.”

That’s from The Silicon Valley of China by Rob Gifford in the latest issue of Prospect. The volume of fascinating reportage from China is enormous, but there seems to be plenty of room to astound and provoke readers (minor example: the very witty article by Peter Hessler on driving in China in the latest issue of The New Yorker – and not available online). I think Gifford’s comparison between India and China was particularly striking. It’s worth reading his lengthy series of comparisons, but I think New Economist was right to single out the following:

Incidentally, a post on Davos Newbies comparing China and India elicited an unusual number of comments for this blog. The good news is that the two most populous countries in the world are making great strides in bringing hundreds of millions of people out of severe poverty and deprivation. Beside that fact – one of the great accomplishments of the modern-day world – the comparisons seem far less important.

Until a few years ago, I did a reasonable amount of work in Australia. As many visitors find, it’s a country that is very easy to love: staggering natural wonders, easy-going, wonderfully nice people, a very go-ahead business climate, interesting, cosmopolitan cities, great food. But for the last decade there has been one supremely perplexing fact. In John Howard, Australia seemed to have re-elected multiple times the world’s nastiest democratic politician.

President Bush is worse from a global perspective than Howard because he has vastly greater power. The only good thing that could be said about Howard is that he could have a relatively limited impact on the world outside Australia.

This weekend, the lucky nation finally undid its misdeed and chucked out snarling Howard for the likeable, cerebral Kevin Rudd. I met Rudd a few times when he was the shadow foreign secretary for the then-opposition Labour party. His fluent Chinese is mentioned in every profile of Rudd that I’ve seen, but I was also struck by his interest in really digging into difficult policy ideas. He not only had an interest, but he was very quick to absorb complex issues, and he was astoundingly good at thinking and responding in an open, honest way to probing questions. (That, of course, was when he was a second tier politician of an opposition party. I hope he continues to display these qualities as the political leader on a nation.)

I wondered when Gordon Brown became prime minister whether he’d be a good test case for whether true intellectuals can actually succeed in political leadership. In Rudd, we have another clear test. I think it’s certainly a good thing for Australia, and it may even be a good thing for the world.

Special bonus: The race is very close but it looks like Howard will lose his own seat in Sydney’s Bennelong.