EDMONTON - China's doing things the rest of us don't even know about, and unless we change quickly they will streak past us, futurist Frank Ogden says.

"They are speeding ahead in so many areas because they have the ability to get big things done very quickly," the man known as Dr. Tomorrow told the Construction Specifications Canada conference here.

"They're very smart, they think differently from us, and they have no restrictions on anything," said Ogden, an 84-year-old world traveller who lives on a high-tech houseboat in Vancouver.

In three weeks they relocated the residents of a large city block in Shanghai, bulldozed the buildings and built a 1,000-bed isolation hospital using 10,000 conscripted workers, Ogden said.

On the last day of construction, a stream of ambulances was bringing in patients.

"They work 15 hours a day, every day, with no union interference, and that's what's going to beat us," Ogden told the gathering of architects, engineers and other construction-related sectors.

Their wages have also doubled in the last couple of years to 28 cents an hour, so the workers think they're making big money.

And China's not only manufacturing pots and pans any more. It's producing quality, intricate items such as scientific instruments, he said.

"The infrastructure stinks, but they're working on that. And when they decide to do something it happens in a hurry."

They also have no restrictions on reproductive technology so they could clone people and rent them out to North America, which is facing a shortage of workers, said Ogden, with a wink.

North America's future will be vastly different as China's economy grows and the world keeps moving ahead at warp speed, he said.

Nine-to-five jobs will become a piece of history as we put in almost full days on the job, he predicted.

"We also have to learn much faster or other countries will do it and sell it back to us. The current, inefficient university lecture system will have to replaced, and he sees a day when we're all using new Sony technology that puts information into our brain patterns while we're asleep. "That was in the realm of science fiction for years, but just imagine how quickly you can absorb information that way."

Companies will also have to become incredibly creative to compete globally, Ogden said.

"Don't even think of a box, never mind outside it. Every company should have a smart 12-year-old who thinks off-the-wall. In China they've just grown a monkey's heart, and if you can do that you can do anything."

dfinlayson@thejournal.canwest.com