Country Driving

Published in 2008, Peter Hessler’s non-fiction book Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory is the third installment in a trilogy that documents the sweeping economic and cultural changes that have occurred across China in recent years. Peter Hessler, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a former Beijing correspondent established himself as a skilled documentarian with best-selling books River Town and Oracle Bones. In Country Driving, he focuses on the transportation revolution occurring in China and its effects on Chinese cities.

By the year 2030, China is slated to complete a system of expressways connecting all of its cities with populations above 200,000. The country only began to build expressways in 1988, which makes this endeavor that much more significant. As part of his research, Hessler travels from Beijing all the way to the Gobi Desert, documenting his findings as he traverses the land and experiences first-hand the infrastructure that sustains what he refers to as “the greatest migration in human history.” As it currently stands, one-tenth of China’s billion-plus population is set to make the move from rural areas to cities and factory zones. Although China has only recently adopted an automobile culture, the nation aims to have more highway miles than the United States within the next decade.

Although China has long been looked to as a world leader in sustainable transportation, with large investments in transit and a high-speed rail, it is now moving quickly towards car culture and rapidly developing into a nation of drivers. Owning a car has become a status symbol, one that the rapidly expanding middle class is buying in droves. In Beijing, a city with a population of 22 million people, 1,000 new drivers register every day and even more cars are purchased. After the Chinese Community Party came to power in 1949, they confiscated all private automobiles. Ownership of one’s own car has only been permitted since the mid-1990s, and since that time, China has been adapting its infrastructure to suit the needs of drivers as quickly as possible.



The book is divided into three sections, each focusing on a different aspect of the transportation revolution. In the first section, Hessler describes his journey across the Great Wall by car. This is still a very novel approach to travel within the Chinese mainland, and most of the population remains unfamiliar with the concept of driving and road rules, which Hessler finds is reflected in the contents of driving courses and tests.

Hessler observes people learning to drive in a city called Lishui. The hopeful drivers spend the first day practicing shifting gears with the motor off. Most of the people participating in the course do not own a car of their own but see the skill of driving as something to aspire to, as well as pertinent information for their résumé. In China, the lack of driving skills becomes even more problematic due to planning blunders related to road building, a concept almost as foreign as driving itself. Heller notes that in some neighborhoods, the traffic lights and turning lanes have been inadequately thought through so that it actually poses a danger, especially to inexperienced drivers. This combination has produced high crash fatality rates. In 2001, with only half the number of cars that exist in the United States, China had twice as many traffic deaths. As the number of people who own cars continues to grow, so does the concern surrounding road safety.

The second section of the book examines the changes experienced by one family in the village of Sancha, a rapidly growing tourist destination for people from Beijing. Hessler takes a close look at how the changing surrounds effects the family and the way they think about education, employment, and housing.



In the third section of the book, Hessler writes about land development, explaining how new expressways through southern Zhejiang have contributed to the province’s transformation from underdeveloped countryside to a series of factory towns. Hessler documents his own experiences traveling from town to town to ask the locals what is manufactured there. New roads have had a transformative effect on urban development in the area.

As cities expand outward, rural land collectively owned by villages is converted to urban land and granted to cities. Local jurisdictions then sell development rights and use the income to pay for roads and other facilities. Once the buildings and infrastructure are completed, the cities lease the properties and split the profits with the developers. Scholars from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimate that coastal cities rely on real estate development for half of their total revenues. This system offers strong incentives for cities to constantly expand. Lishui, for instance, spent $8.8 billion in infrastructure between 2000 and 2005 to attract factories—more than it spent on infrastructure during the previous 50 years combined.