For a moment we basked in his nascar ish dexterity. Then he slammed on the brakes. In front of us, the road was clogged with coal trucks lined up behind an inspection station far down the road. We’d been funneled into a classic Chinese bottleneck.

Unfazed, Mr. Zhang made a 180-degree turn and headed west on the eastbound expressway. I braced for the inevitable crash. Then, just before we regained the toll station, he swung right and headed for the center divider, past a gigantic, disabled semi stuck perpendicularly to the flow of cars. The half-dozen policemen who stood around the truck gave no sign of noticing us. Through a gap in the divider, Mr. Zhang found an eastbound lane reserved for passenger cars and turned into it; asthe 5,000 villagers exhibit high levels of lead in their blood. June 2007: Up to 20,000 middle-class Chinese congregate outside the city government headquarters in Xiamen to protest a proposed chemical factory. The protesters were alerted by an anonymous cell phone text message (rumored to have been sent by Xiamen University professors and students). The city cracks down on anonymous web posting. July 2007: Farmers near Mount Emei in Sichuan Province block a highway, demanding $1.1 million in damages from an aluminum company they claim contaminated crops. Ten are injured and five detained when police clear the road.

—Jen Phillips

CHINA EATS THE WORLD

the emergence of China as a dominant economic power is an epochal event, as significant as the United States’ ascendancy after World War II. It is in