ABSTRACT
The future prosperity of the United States, Canada, Japan, and the richest countries of Western Europe may be contemplated without calling for any substantial energy consumption increases. The task is extraordinary: a fundamental restructuring of a rigid economic system in order to quadruple the national product of the world's most populous nation in a single generation. The need for the price reforms is widely acknowledged in China, but the concerns about economic and social dislocations ranging from higher inflation to elimination of numerous enterprises and higher unemployment and lessened competitiveness on foreign markets will mean tardy progress. The swell of environmental awareness that engulfed Western nations in the late 1960s and early 1970s brought fundamental changes to the ways of planning, building, and operating energy industries. Chinese leaders readily acknowledge the difference, seeing the urban-industrial reforms as "a tremendous, complicated task of social systems engineering".
