Editor's Blog: Shanghai no surprise

It's my first time in Shanghai and it's been a real mixed bag so far. Today has mainly been spent at an HP conference all about mobility - it's a global event that happens to be held in China this year. More coming up on that shortly.

But yesterday I found my feet and caught up with an old friend, Dermot. He's Irish (he famously did voice coaching for Tom Cruise on the film Far and Away - but don't hold that against him) and isn't connected to the tech economy in any way.

It was interesting spending an evening with him, from the point of view of someone who teaches a UK curriculum at a private school here, and seeing how what he said related to silicon.com's own observations from a tour of several Chinese cities a year ago.

I remember visiting South Korea at the beginning of 1998 and seeing the after effects of that - huge building projects that had seemingly been abandoned overnight...

From the point of view of someone who has lived here a while, he hasn't exactly set us straight on what our reporter noted 12 months ago. If you hear people painting a picture of an economy full of opportunity, with plenty of rough edges and pitfalls aplenty ahead - then they're probably right. At least that's what I got from Dermot. Along with a hangover, though that's another story.

I'm still withholding judgement. I'm no China expert. I met Dermot while living in Japan in the early 1990s and since then - and just before then - this side of Asia has seen some big bubbles burst.

The boom at the end of the 1980s was abruptly halted in Japan - while still an economic giant, its stock market has never really recovered and the economy has been sluggish ever since - and the end of this year will see a decade since high-growth in several tiger economies of east and south-east Asia hit a temporary roadblock.

I remember visiting South Korea at the beginning of 1998 and seeing the after effects of that - huge building projects that had seemingly been abandoned overnight.

I'm not doubting China's ongoing progress. But with a stock market bubble of its own and crazy-fast expansion, we can expert some jerks along the way. It's just the way economies work.

I'm sure some prominent economists have doubted that. It just strikes me that when you can't think of the last time you heard someone urge caution then that's probably the time to start worrying.

More on China later this week. For now I have to get back to what I must say is an HP event that has surprised me for its scale. There are plenty of product announcements and some good high-level insights about where that company - now officially the largest player in IT, execs proudly proclaimed earlier - sees mobility and wireless heading.

For starters, check out this neat location-specific, iPaq-based service made available for free today under a Creative Commons licence. Here it is explained by one of our sister sites.