In 2002 we visited the huge, traditional clan-houses of rural Fujian Province. Access roads are being built, b&b activities beginning, whole villages turned into living museums awaiting the arrival of tour buses. It was one face of an explosion of economic development that has already turned China's major cities into futurist fantasies and created a tidal wave of commercialization now beginning to inundate the countryside. Hong Kong and Singapore proved the compatibility of authoritarian governments and free-market economics. That formula is now transforming the whole of the world's largest nation.