RECENTLY I had lunch with two Western friends on two separate occasions, and as we talked, there was brief mention of cars.

One friend believed car ownership is an indicator of Chinese middle class.

I argued that even if (a big if) there is such a class, home ownership would be a better indicator.

In Shanghai an average wage earner needs to slave away for five years to buy a car, but at least half a century to afford a modest home (provided he or she does not need food and clothing).

My friend explained that owning a car is "aspirational."

Or is it because cars have higher visibility?

Another friend, after sounding out 23 Chinese girls of marriageable age as to their requirements of their future husbands, found that invariably "financial stability" come to the fore. Which means, first, a home, and second, a car.

Exactly one century after Henry Ford's Model T came into existence, the golden age of car has begun in the Middle Kingdom.

Private car ownership has seen explosive growth since 2002, and in 2009 China surpassed the United States in auto sales, "terminating a century of US auto dominance started by Ford," one Chinese report announced proudly.

In making this happen, our policy makers, in cooperation with big-time overseas auto makers, have manufactured a strong consensus about personal cars' crucial importance as an economic mainstay.

For this to happen in one of the most heavily populated countries on earth, this is nothing short of a miracle. Just think of the amount of rhetoric and sophistry needed in view of the amount of animosity that has built up against cars elsewhere.

Thanks largely to governmental push, the car culture is spreading like prairie fire.

Cars provide an inexhaustible source of topics for aspiring citizens: comparison of the latest driving experience, the minutiae of new brands, ergonomics, the whims of coaches at driving school.

During such talks I often find myself a hapless anachronism.

I was nostalgic for the time around two decades ago when car was only part of official perks and some experts could explain with confidence why mass car ownership in China was unthinkable.

One needs not go far to see how cars have already revolutionized our life.

My wife, a Shanghai native, has seven cousins. Together these cousins now own five cars, and six driving licenses.

Having successfully set up the auto industry as a "pillar industry", the government has been working vigorously to stimulate the consumption of personal cars, at times by offering subsidies and incentives.

Initial concerns about the environmental consequences of duplicating the North American lifestyle gave way to all-pervasive, ever-aggressive auto advertising.

I suspect that some of the most environmentally progressive publications in China today are kept alive by auto ads. That's the irony of market ideology.

GDP boosterism

When a government is gripped by an all-consuming fever of GDP boosterism, it cannot afford to be distracted and disturbed by social considerations.

More and more people tend to view GDP with suspicion, but the things GDP represents have taken root.

When a car is perceived in its pristine state, as a commodity, we begin to appreciate its spin-off benefits: suppliers, roads, car parks, driving schools, petrol stations, car washes and car financing, among others.

Car making has been the No. 1 source of capitalist profit for 76 years, and the leading consumer of copper, aluminum, plastics, iron, lead, rubber, textiles, computer chips, steel, and oil. Car manufacturing cannot disappoint a China breathless for growth.

As the tentacles of the automobile industry extend, we the people are likelier to be beneficiaries, rather than victims, of more cars.

Politicians are reluctant to be seen to be aligned with big interests, but they can always cite the need to create jobs. Thus the slightest drop in industrial activity would provoke clamor for stimulus.

As our field of vision narrows, making obeisance to cars is the only right thing to do.

On Nanjing or Huaihai roads, at some junctions, pedestrians sometimes need to wait five minutes to execute a single crossing.

Motor lanes steadily are being widened, at the expense of pedestrians and cyclists.

Obeisance to cars

In a city of 20 million, parking is a great issue. So cars are parked on the side of the roads, on sidewalks, on entrance areas and lawns.

Parking on the lawn used to be frowned upon, but recently one expert said: Why not park cars on the lawn and remove the lawn to the rooftop?

Everywhere you see campaigns that require residents to adapt to the despotism of motor vehicles.

Pupils are taught that honoring traffic rules is the cardinal virtue of respectable citizens.

Shanghai Daily once reported that "traffic police want to publicly shame jaywalkers and cyclists who violate traffic rules by displaying photographs and videos of their offenses in newspapers and on TV."

That city also once proposed that if a motorist killed a jaywalker, the motorist would be cleared of any responsibility. The proposal was dropped.

It was explained helpfully that early in US automotive history, 6- and 7-years-olds were arrested for playing on New York's streets.

Although annually huge money is spent to send officials on overseas junkets to help widen their horizon, there is little appreciation that for years, some European cities have been trying to return public space, formerly conquered by cars, back to pedestrians.

Rights to walk

That includes banning or limiting motor use, scrapping the traffic lights to allow pedestrians to cross the streets anywhere and anytime, or allow pedestrians or public transport to operate the lights in their favor.

The civilized Chinese have clearly forgotten that the native rights to walk should precede the right to drive a poison-emitting metalwork.

Thus, some European cities are creating environments hostile to cars by closing vast swaths of streets to car traffic.

Munich has been creating incentives for the use of bicycles for several years, as it evolved into "walkers' paradise".

In Barcelona and Paris, some car lanes have become narrower because of bike-sharing programs.

Drivers in London and Stockholm have to pay costly congestion charges to go downtown. And Zurich has been working overtime to torment drivers. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed free flow of motor traffic have been removed.

Meanwhile China is working overtime to administer to the comforts of motorists.

China has already committed trillions of yuan of pubic money to an expressway network that is second only to America's interstate highway system.

State oil giants are scouring the globe for more oil.

And China is still in the initial stage of its growth - it needs 600 million cars to be worthy of the North American standard.