Chapter 1: If You See Something, Say Something Summary and Analysis

In September 2010, Tom Friedman traveled to Tianjin, China, to participate in the World Economic Forum summer conference. Just five years before, a three-hour car ride from Beijing was the only way to get to the over-populated, dirty city. In 2010, there was a sleek modern glass building that housed an ultramodern station for the world-class high-speed train that raced at 72 mph to the renovated city of Tianjin. The beautiful new conference building was built in just eight months. He compared that time frame with the Metrorail in his Maryland hometown that had been under construction for almost a year to just for modernization.

Tom checked around and found that people who rode the Metrorail from Maryland to DC had gotten used to the horrible sounds it made while running and...