This article looks at the best country for technocrats. Wu Jisong, a compact man with glasses and an easy smile, holds one of China's most difficult jobs. In a nation beset with droughts, Wu is in charge of making sure there is enough water not only for people to drink but for the textile and other industries that drive the country's rapidly growing economy--and guzzle natural resources at a troubling rate. Wu is in the right country. China has some of the world's most daunting technical challenges--and perhaps the greatest number of high-ranking technocrats to deal with them. China's lack of democracy gives remote planners incredible power, and they've used it to start construction on the world's highest railway, from Qinghai to Tibet, and one of the world's longest bridges, 36 kilometers, from Ningbo to Hangzhou. While intellectuals don't usually last long in government, the technocrats are seldom buffeted by the--winds of political change because they focus on hard facts rather than lofty ideas. That's one reason the unassuming Hu Jintao, the former deputy director of the Construction and Development Commission of Gansu province, rose so quickly through the political ranks.