More From Our Geographers

Read more of our interview with Dr. Clif Pannell speaking about the importance of having a better understanding of China.

[China has] about 21% of the world's people, so it's a very significant share of the total human experience on this planet. Therefore, it would be important to us whether we at the moment recognize that or not, the future of this country as its economy develops, as its society matures, as its political and military importance grows is going to become increasingly intertwined with our own lives. So, we're going to have to deal with it and hopefully we can develop a positive and constructive relationship with it. In this way, it's going to be I think something that we need to care a great deal about so that we can manage our own relationship with it in a way that's productive to us.

China today has almost 1 billion 300 million people. The census that has just been completed, my guess is, will show about 1 billion two hundred eighty or eighty-five million people -- that is, the population of the United States with an entire additional billion people. It's hard to sometimes conceive of the human scale in this country, particularly in the more populous, densely populated parts of the eastern part of the country. People are everywhere. I think in the United States we're not accustomed to those kinds of densities, so just the sheer human contact and the interaction by virtue of proximity to others is sometimes a little bit overwhelming for those of us from the United States when we visit there. But this helps us I think understand the sheer human dimension of what this country is -- there's just an enormous number of people there and people whose lives are being played out, who have the same kinds of ambitions and perhaps aspirations that we do, who want the same kind of material things that we have. This, the next half-century is going to be very, very exciting to watch what happens as China's economy develops, as its society matures, as these people begin to get the kinds of things that they have aspired to, how they're going to deal with those, how they're going to want to deal with people outside the country. All of those things are going to be, be very, very exciting to watch.