Choices large and small

SHANGHAI, Feb.15 -- I'm 10,000 miles from home, and all I can think of is economics.\nNot the big topics the word "economics" suggests, like China's joining the World Trade Organization or the massive problems facing this country's financial industry. No, the economics which concern me at the moment are more immediate. I am trying to decide whether or not to turn on the heat.\nThis is a pressing issue, far more important than any statistic showing a troublesome -- or even a heartening -- trend in foreign direct investment. The heater in my bedroom in the apartment I share with two other students near the campus of East China Normal University is expensive to run, by Chinese standards. If I decide to warm up the room, I will be billed an additional fee at the end of the month.\nThe additional money isn't much, just a few dollars. I could easily afford it. Yet, after living in dorms and apartments where utilities were included in the rent, the concept of adjusting my comfort level to my environment instead of the other way around is new to me. Having the choice of using a scarce resource (in this case, electricity) presented to me as a question of spending money has done more to make me an environmentalist than any smug speech at an Earth Day rally ever could.\nWhether I should shiver in my jacket or pay extra for warmth isn't really the only economic issue weighing on my mind. Being in China means being confronted with a myriad of economic choices. So does being in America, of course, but the unfamiliar context makes those choices stand out.\nPart of that unfamiliar context is using cash. In the States, like many people, I use my debit card to pay for books, restaurants, tickets just about everything. That's not an option in China, where plastic is nearly unknown. (Citibank only started offering credit cards the week before I arrived.) For a miserly soul like mine, parting with "real" money -- even if it has pictures of Chairman Mao on it -- is a lot harder than signing a charge slip.\nThe larger questions of economics influence my life here, too, although I have no say in answering them. Gleaming new skyscrapers dominate Shanghai's skyline. In places, the city looks more vibrant, more urban, more modern than Chicago or Manhattan. The foreigner wonders at these magnificent structures and concludes this is a city on the move.\nBut the impressive cityscape is made possible only by a government that holds back the urban working class and the entire countryside to create showpieces like the 88-story Jinmao Tower (www.jinmao88.com). To the ruling class, which still calls itself Communist, it is now more important to create fantastic buildings than to take care of the mundane business of running a city, like taking care of sanitation. Even the locals here don't drink the water.\n In many respects, the government of China faces the same choice I do between essentials and luxuries. Turning the heat on instead of putting on a sweater is nice, but it is hardly necessary. Neither is it necessary for a city which cannot yet find tenants to fill the buildings it already has to build yet more skyscrapers.\nAmerica's government is better at making economic choices than China's, but presidents and governors are hardly immune to putting resources in projects which are more impressive than useful. And as the government prepares to go to the moon, build a missile defense system that won't work and complete thousands of other tasks, I wonder what essentials we are foregoing in favor of these luxuries.