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By Root 3944 0

in the United States. During the nineteenth century, when the first wave of American urban development swept westward, European visitors were amazed to see new settlements spring up as if overnight. Their sense of wonder resembled the way outsiders now feel in China, where development zones turn into instant cities. But the longer I stayed in Lishui, watching the factory district come to life, the more I noticed key contrasts. It wasn’t simply a matter of a different age, a different culture—the fundamental motivation for settling a new city was also different. And there was a distinct narrowness to the groups of pioneers who showed up in a Chinese boomtown. Back when many American towns had been founded, the first wave of residents typically included lawyers, along with traders and bankers. A local newspaper often began printing while people still lived in tents. The first permanent buildings were generally the courthouse and the church. It was certainly a tough world, but at least there was some early sense of community and law.

In a Chinese boomtown, though, it’s all business: factories and construction supplies and cell phone shops. The free market shapes all early stages of growth, which is why entertainment options appear instantly but social organizations are rare. No private newspapers, no independent labor unions—such things are banned by the Communist Party. Religion might flourish at the individual level, but institutions are weak; in Lishui’s development zone nobody built a church or temple. There weren’t any law firms or nonprofit organizations. Police and government cadres were almost as rare—they showed up only when there was some opportunity for profiteering.

On the Jinliwen Expressway, my first encounter with authority occurred in July of 2006, when I received a speeding ticket. It was fully automated: I didn’t learn about the fine until I returned the Santana to the Prosperous Automobile Rental Company. Their computer showed that I had been photographed while driving ninety-six kilometers per hour in an eighty-kilometer zone. The fine, a total of about twenty-five dollars, was deducted directly from my deposit.

After that first violation, the floodgates opened wide, and I collected tickets in factory towns all along the expressway. One camera caught me outside of Qiaotou, the button town, and then I got fined in Jinhua, famous for producing underwear. The most tickets I received in a single day was three. Once in Lishui I got nailed twice in less than an hour. I was not a reckless driver, and my prior record had been spotless—in five years with a Chinese license, I never had a violation until I went to Zhejiang. But the authorities in the south were quick to figure out the entrepreneurial potential of speed traps. They posted cameras at confusing intersections, and on the expressway they set up radar guns in places where the speed limit suddenly dropped without reason or warning. Local drivers memorized the locations, and I did my best to do the same, but there was already so much to think about. For one thing, I had to watch out for bosses in their Audi A6s, driving a hundred miles per hour and then slamming on their brakes right before a radar camera. I never saw a live cop on that highway.

“It’s a good business for the police,” the manager at Prosperous Automobile told me, whenever I complained about another fine. And he was right: police officers invested as private stockholders in radar cameras, which paid dividends. If a Zhejiang cop contributed six thousand dollars to an expressway speed trap, he collected 7.5 percent of the proceeds from each ticket. Investors were limited to four per camera, and rookie cops weren’t allowed to purchase a share until they had accumulated a certain amount of seniority. High-ranking officers could buy into multiple cameras. There was a lottery system that determined which cops got which locations on the expressway. This industry even had a corps of private moneylenders, because people knew it was safe to loan money to a cop who was buying into a speed trap. Like