#beijing consensus

[vidoetv-blog]

Vidoe.TV

Opinion Journal: ‘A Better Way’

Opinion Journal’s Mary Kissel and Editorial Board Member Joe Rago on Paul Ryan’s ambitious reform plan rollout. Plus, Ted Cruz’s bid to protect Internet freedom, why democracies beat autocracies, and more. Photo: Getty.

Copyright 2016, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

[outofmountains-blog]

A fear-induced rant about Chinese infrastructure (and why I "hate" Shanghai)

Or maybe I'm just antsy for Japan. And anyway, I don't really hate it. It's just that it's so crowded.

Friday afternoon Sulie and I sent Gorjan, Stella and Jakub off on the train to Xi'an, and then we met Lucy for dinner (she left the project a few weeks ago and traveled a bit on her own, and by chance she got to Wuhan yesterday evening in preparation for her flight back to Canada on Sunday, so Sulie and I got the chance to have one last farewell dinner with her). It was a tough goodbye for me, because it was also my own goodbye to Wuhan/Yichang (the two cities, as different as they are, are connected in my mind because they're the only two true Chinese cities I've spent time in). Yes, I'll be back at the Wuhan hostel for one night next weekend as I layover on the way to Hong Kong, but I'm not sure if that counts. Yesterday morning, I struck out alone at 7:00 for Shanghai.

This post is ruined by the fact that I can't upload pictures (internet at this hostel is phenomenally slow), but I promise I'm taking a lot and that I'll get them up at some point.

After the break:

I'm finally afraid of China

High-speed rail; holy shit

Literally how do this many people fit in one city...where do they all sleep?

Japan is going to feel like the straight-up Great Plains after this shit

Be afraid?

If you read American newspapers, you probably know that we're all supposed to be afraid of China or something (news flash: our government deceives and misleads just as much as theirs does). Well, I don't really buy it, for a bunch of reasons. Chief among them? Without Western technology and Western demand for Chinese goods, the country wouldn't be in the place it's in today. Yes, China is building stuff at an absolutely heart-stopping rate, but does that mean the Chinese system is superior to the Western system? No; they have a lot of money right now because we buy a lot of stuff, but once the yuan is finally allowed to appreciate, Chinese exports won't be nearly as appealing and China will have to be satisfied with earthly growth rates. 10% per year is a short-term game, and they know it: hence all the infrastructure spending. Yesterday, I saw that spending at work.

And the fear is finally setting in.

(What am I not scared of, though? Chinese music. The pop music here must be the most manufactured, uncreative, assembly line garbage I've ever heard. Makes Britney Spears sound fresh and innovative.)

First tracks

China is currently building a massive high-speed rail network, about which I have read everything I can find in English. There will be four east-west lines and four north-south lines ("4+4"), thereby connecting all the major cities. About half the lines will run 350 km/h trains (near the limit of what's possible for commercial service on conventional rail) and the other half will run 250-300 km/h trains (still faster than everything but Shinkansen and TGV, off the top of my head).

It's a spectacular system. Construction began on most of the lines in 2008, and it was supposed to finish by 2020. But as part of the stimulus package the government put through during the crisis, most of the construction schedules were pushed up. Now, everything but the Urumqi line and some shorter spurs will be finished between 2012 and 2014. Currently the only operational line at 350 km/h is Wuhan to Ghangzhou (which I will take next weekend). But Nanjing-Shanghai is operational at 275 km/h, and I just unexpectedly rode that yesterday. In the process, I saw unspeakably beautiful things.

I got to the Wuhan train station and entered a massive waiting hall full of (I have since calculated) about 2000 people. And then, to my amazement, what was waiting on the tracks for us but something that looked distinctly like a Shinkansen trainset! I have great pictures of all this, but I can't upload them. The train I took was one of the new CRH2 sets, which resembles the Shinkansen E2-1000 (Akita line) because the first sets were actually manufactured by Kawasaki in Japan. China bought 60 sets and then copied them and now they've built several hundred sets on their own. Hilarious.

They use 8-car sets coupled together (16 cars overall). People stand in the aisles, of course (it's China), so I calculate there are about 2000 people on each train. Now let's talk about the tracks.

The tracks we traveled on from Wuhan to Nanjing were actually just upgraded conventional rail. The train hits about 200 km/h on those tracks (quite fast). Then in Nanjing, we switched to the Nanjing-Shanghai passenger dedicated line (PDL), where the same train travels at 275 km/h. That line and the huge new station it feeds into just opened six weeks ago. Soon, that station will be Shanghai's high-speed hub, once the north-south lines to and from Beijing and Hong Kong is completed in 2012. The station sits right next to one of Shanghai's two major airports, and I only had to walk about 100 meters from the high-speed platform I arrived on to the metro tracks. Talk about intermodal.

Now: why am I so afraid? Well...I saw them building. I must have seen thousands of workers. First, from Wuhan to Nanjing, there was construction pretty much the whole way on the new viaduct-raised high-speed line which runs right next to the current conventional line. So much rail, so many guys with shovels, so many sparkling white concrete ties (it's all ballastless track, German tech). At some points I could see ties laid out for miles on the viaducts with no rails present yet.

And that's why I'm a little afraid: China's infrastructure is already much better than America's in some areas, like rail and arguably highways, and in a few years it will be better in most areas (they're building subway systems in 20 cities right now). Our airport system is fantastic, our highway system is fantastic now although it's falling apart, and the Erie Canal is doin' work up there in upstate NY. I'm not saying we should all move to China. The traffic in most of the major cities is awful (and that's only with taxis and buses--imagine what it will be like 10 years down the road when many more Chinese are car owners). In addition, Chinese infrastructure is totally piecemeal right now. It's split into two categories: pre-boom and post-boom. For example, on the bus from Yichang to Wuhan you will spend 3 hours on a brilliant new highway at 120 km/h, after which you will crawl along for an hour through dirt roads and congested city awful-fests as the bus makes its frustrating way toward the actual terminal. What a joke.

So Chinese infrastructure is far from perfect, but once the government has finished executing its master plan, getting around China will be ten times easier than getting around the good ole USA. And don't worry, they will finish executing that master plan, because if they run short on cash near the end--well, let's just say we owe them a few bucks.

So, yeah, I'm shaking in my boots over here despite everything.

For the interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_speed_rail_in_China

Okay, let's talk about Shanghai

We did finally get to China's showpiece, though in my wide-eyed amazement I think I might have permanently befogged the window of that CRH2.

Shanghai is just so crowded. I wandered around last night, took some pictures of Pudong and the Bund, and met some Harvard peeps...but yeah, it's just so crowded. I don't like it at all. I don't want to talk about it. I just want to talk about trains.

And seriously, Expo is so stupid. No, I'm not going. Deal with it. If I wanted to spend my day crushed between millions of people and peering over all their heads, I would just go...absolutely anywhere in Shanghai.

In that case, let's talk about the Maglev

I will ride it this afternoon. YES!!

Countdown to Japan: 13 days.

[lettersfromtaiwan]

The TT editorials can be a bit hit and miss at times.  This is a hit.

[existentialistmumbojumbo]

When you sell the farm, the farm's gone.

Is it already too late for America? I'm starting to think that the anti-tax, anti-government conservative movement that started in the mid-70s, elected Reagan and led to the terrible Bush Presidency may have effectively destroyed the country, leaving it bankrupt, corrupt, ungovernable, ruled by a wealthy elite -- and we're only now just starting to realize it. To cover tax cuts we stopped maintaining the infrastructure and started borrowing. To satisfy their hatred of government we increasingly stripped away rule of law, regulation, and belief in one-person-one-vote. We are seeing the consequences of all of that coming back to roost now.

[chinaafricaproject-blog-blog]

Beijing or Washington? That is the Question!

In a world full of much uncertainty and in a period of time characterised by an endless flow of seemingly unpredictable events; one thing that is plain to see is the ever quickening shift of power away from the current largely unipolar dominance of the global North, epitomised by the United States of America (US), towards a more competitive and multipolar world in which the more influential nations of the global South, most notably the Peoples Republic of China (China), are gradually increasing their influence on the world stage. These events are clearly the birth-pangs preceding the advent of a new order in our world, and the establishment of China as a world power alongside the US is undoubtedly set to be one of the main changes once the transitory phase we are in is over.

Read the full article on Moneyweb.co.za