Isabel Hilton: The Olympics party is over. Now China has to c...

Lavish parties tend to leave a hangover as the problems of daily life, put aside for the celebrations, come crowding back. China's Olympic party is not likely to prove an exception. The full legacy of the extraordinary events of 2008 in the People's Republic of China will take many years to emerge, but in the short term, a number of pressing problems are clear.

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Planners know China's development model to date, while impressive in its results, is unsustainable: it is too carbon-intensive, too polluting and too inconsistent in its effects. Like every Asian tiger before it, China, the biggest tiger on the planet, has to meet the challenge of moving up the value chain, from T-shirts to hi-tech, from low-end production to high-value innovation, from energy-intensive to climate-friendly production. In recent years the early coastal industrial zones have begun to enter that stage, with waves of factory closures the harbingers of a new phase in the country's development.

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