...well it's true. They don't pay attention, drift over the lanes, and rarely signal. But when it's the whole nation driving like that together, it's a thing of beauty. It's more like people walking together in a crowd than cars driving in an orderly fashion down the freeway. It's actually more like a race track at 60 kph than anything else... everyone just sorta goes where they want, and it's up to you to simply understand who's got the right of way based more on who's got better track position rather than rules.
Though, our driver did manage to rear-end a guy on the way to the hotel from the airport. Accordion effect backup resulted in us full ABS braking into the bumper of the car in front of us at about 2 mph. Neither our driver, nor the guy we hit seemed at all concerned about stopping to trade info.
The other thing about Beijing traffic: no trucks. No pickups, no SUVs, no semis, and just once and a while a mini-van (usually the Chinese version of the famous 80's toyota van geared up as a delivery van). Traffic is basically made up of only new german sedans (VW, Audi, BMW, Mercedes) with the occasional Hyundai or Buick.