THAT CHINA'S NATIONAL PEOPLE'S CONGRESS convened last week is not news, though it provided the occasion for prime minister Wen Jiabao's first address to the rubber-stamping body, a 90-minute affair which, quite predictably, was well received. That China released two dissidents, Wang Youcai and Phuntsog Nyidron, may be news, if it portends a greater sensitivity to pressure from international human rights advocates and even a slight loosening of the regime's grip on the political system. That Wen announced China will address the economic imbalances that threaten to turn its phenomenal growth into an equally phenomenal bust is news. China has accounted for a larger share of world growth in the past seven years than has the United States, making the health of its economy important to far more than its own 1.3 billion people.

China's trade policy, and especially its burgeoning trade surplus with the United States, is now front and center in the debate over the propriety of George W. Bush's (somewhat) free trade policies. A combination of resurgent Democratic protectionism and a sluggish jobs market has Americans worried, and White House campaign-planners are trying to figure out how to counter that new recruit to the protectionist cause, John F. Kerry, without completely abandoning the president's commitment to free trade.

Voters' fears are understandable: As many see it, China is taking jobs away from textile workers, furniture makers, and appliance assemblers, to mention just a few industries decimated by imports. Free trade makes the U.S. economy stronger and more efficient in the long run, as the much-maligned chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers pointed out, to the consternation of Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress. But in a political season, the long run is a few months, and economists' assurances that it all will end up with rising living standards, lower prices, and job creation count for little. Nor do the worries of the White House seem to count for much in China, which seems unprepared to offer more than a token response to American fears--understandable, in the context of the economic problems of a nation that is in the grip of perhaps the most profound and rapid economic change ever experienced by a major country.

Consider this: Some 300 million of China's 1.3 billion people have moved from country to city since the economy was liberalized in the later 1970s. That about equals the total population of the 15 member states of the European Union, and is considerably more than the current population of the United States. By 2020, 250 million more Chinese are expected to leave their villages, putting an additional burden on urban infrastructures ill-equipped to handle that load. Little wonder that the minister in charge of the Chinese government's think tank calls the emergence of China as an industrialized country "the most profound social transformation in world history." And little wonder that the Chinese authorities are having difficulty coming to grips with the necessity of phasing out inefficient state-run enterprises that at least have the virtue of providing jobs to the millions moving off the land.