Where the wide, muddy waters of the Songhua River flow north from Jiamusu to the Russian border, just 150 kilometers (90 miles) distant, the whole of China’s largest treeless prairie sweeps to the horizon. This expanse of fertile grasslands endures the dark fright of cold Siberian winters and the raging winds of Mongolian summers. At night, in the scattered villages, the sky fills with stars so thick and bright that walking along unlit streets is easy.

As late as the 1950s, the Chinese still aptly referred to this region as the Great Northern Wilderness. Virtually every hectare of arable land in other provinces was spoken for and cultivated more than a century ago, but Heilongjiang Province remained a place apart. Here, in China’s far northeast corner, the sun’s straight rays baked unplowed ground never shaded by homes or villages. In the wildest reaches eagles outnumbered people.

Heilongjiang (pronounced hay long gee-ang) is no longer that place. By the 1980s, as China’s population rushed past 1 billion, this expanse of virgin prairie — roughly the size of Syria — had been zipped open, plowed under, irrigated, and sown with seeds for rice and corn, soybeans and sugar beets. By the 1990s, Heilongjiang had climbed to the top of the list of China’s most important grain producers, filling rice bowls and satisfying the growing nation’s appetite for pork, chicken, and beef.

In the first decades of the 21st century, irrigation networks are steadily expanding to allow for more cultivation and higher production. Revenue from big grain harvests, and from coal and hard-rock mineral mining, power the construction of glass-and-steel towers that now define the skylines of Heilongjiang’s cities, particularly Harbin, the swarming capital of nearly 11 million residents. Freeways tie the province’s cities together. Airports, several designed by internationally acclaimed architects, and white-and-blue high-speed trains as clean as polished mirrors link Heilongjiang to the rest of the country. Even in the places still so distant that the rare expanses of prairie have not been broken, cell phone service is five bars strong.

Heilongjiang, in other words, is the expanding China that generates genuine enthusiasm among its own citizens and can intimidate foreigners who are not sure that their nations can compete. It is the China that invites the disdain of U.S. candidates during campaign season. But like an unstoppable wild fire, China also has become the world’s undeniable animating force in the international economy and the global environment.

For the complete article, please see Circle of Blue.