PUBLISHER'S VIEWPOINT
June 2006
How China Will Change Our Lives

By one of those weird convergences, I finished Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse, just before I spent 11 days in China and Japan. Both the book and the trip were more than eye-opening: Taken together, they changed the way I see the world.

I headed to Asia to attend Hotelex, a growing foodservice show with an increasing presence of American, European and Japanese equipment and supplies manufacturers. All the big suppliers in our industry want to be part of the phenomenal growth occurring in China, and not just because the country will host the Olympics in 2008 and a world’s fair in ’10. The current growth in hotels alone is mind boggling, and our friends at Yum! and McDonald’s will build hundreds of restaurants in China this year.

So, a look at the show was important. And it also gave me a chance to visit several American, Chinese and Japanese E&S factories. We joked that it was my “Ice Tour of Asia” because I visited a Scotsman/Enodis plant and Manitowoc’s large new factory in Hangzhou, two hours south of Shanghai. And on the way home, I also stopped in Japan to tour Hoshizaki’s headquarters near Nagoya.

"China's transition to a first-world economy will double worldwide demand for industrial metals."

Of note, Scotsman has just expanded its factory, and Hoshizaki is building in Souzhou near Shanghai, where a number of American companies have operations. Everyone is betting China is going to need a lot of ice and other foodservice equipment.

Which brings us back around to Jared Diamond. Diamond is an evolutionary biologist. In Collapse, he analyzes how and why several ancient and modern societies fell off the cliff, folks such as the Mayans and Eastern Islanders and Haitians and Rwandans. It’s a fascinating and frightening book. There’s no way to describe it other than to joke, “Whatever you do, don’t cut down all the trees.”

And he writes a chapter on China that I strongly recommend you read. He examines all the stresses and strains on the environment and worldwide resources that China’s growth is creating.

He says something simple and heart-stopping: The transition of China from a third-world to first-world economy—given China’s huge existing population—will nearly double worldwide demand for core industrial metals, including steel, aluminum, copper and lead, and thus impact economies and the environment around the globe.

And, he adds, “It is doubtful whether even the world’s current human resource use and impact can be sustained. Something has to give way.” When you stand atop a skyscraper in Shanghai and see high rises holding 20 million people as far as the eye can see, and have read Collapse, you realize the next 50 years are going to be very interesting.

As we’ve already seen from the run-up in costs for materials from which foodservice equipment is made and the energy we use to run it, the impact on our business will be profound. Unless we want $20,000 reach-ins and soaring check averages, we’d better get serious about recycling and energy efficiency. Now.

Cheers,

Robin Ashton
Publisher