The Longbow Papers

The Grand Hotel offers some of the finest accommodations in Urumqi, the frontier capital of Xinjiang, the vast western province of China bordering Central Asia. A swanky first-floor bar swarms with Chinese businessmen dressed in expensive suitss, sipping Johnnie Walker. A twentieth-floor fitness club caters to Chinese yuppies trying out gleaming new Nikes but never working hard enough to sweat out their hair gel. But there is one thing the Grand Hotel doesn't offer: a view. When I got to my eighteenth-floor suite, the bellboy showed me the room's amenities--satellite television, a plethora of little liquors--and proudly pulled back the drapes so I could get a good look at downtown Urumqi, a beautiful city. Unfortunately, I could see little through the gray air. Few buildings were visible, though I knew they were there, just outside my window. The bellboy smiled. "Nice view," he said.

Sad to say, he was right. Of the several weeks I have spent in Urumqi, that day was one of the clearest. Later that afternoon, some of the smog lifted, and I could see the stunning mountains surrounding the city, a rarity. Meanwhile, on the road outside Kashgar, a city southwest of Urumqi, mines and construction outfits belched smoke into the broad desert sky, making the air a thick particulate soup; when I ran a wet cloth over my face, it turned black, as if I'd been in a West Virginia mineshaft. My driver, and everyone else in a taxi with me, incessantly coughed and spit soot and phlegm on the car floor. And Xinjiang is hardly unique. For years, Western observers and some Chinese have worried about China's enormous problems: a sclerotic economy clogged by mountains of nonperforming loans; a rapacious gerontocracy allowing its people slightly more freedom while simultaneously cracking down on groups that organize against the state. But largely ignored has been perhaps China's biggest looming disaster: The Middle Kingdom is hurtling toward environmental catastrophe--and perhaps an ensuing political upheaval.