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China To Connect Its High-Speed Rail To Europe
MikeChino sends in this excerpt from Inhabitat: "China already has the most advanced and extensive high-speed rail lines in the world, and soon that network will be connected all the way to Europe and the UK. With initial negotiations and surveys already complete, China is now making plans to connect its HSR line through 17 other countries in Asia and Eastern Europe in order to connect to the existing infrastructure in the EU. Additional rail lines will also be built into South East Asia as well as Russia, in what will likely become the largest infrastructure project in history." They hope to get it done within 10 years, with China providing the financing in exchange for raw materials, in some cases.
Through some of the most politically unstable regions of the world. What could possibly go wrong?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Bullet train, as bullet-proof train.
You know... after the Chinese army invades.
Even if it's high speed, I don't think that anyone will want to take the train from China to Europe. Maybe it's a bit of a vanity project. But you have to admit, it's pretty damn cool. I think it would make more sense if the rail connection were not high speed, since most of what's transported will be freight, and moving freight at 350k/h is a big waste of energy. But whatever, it's freaking cool!
I wonder how the track width across different countries is going to work. If I remember correctly, that was a similar problem when connecting the UK to Europe. On the other hand, if this becomes cheap enough for car travel (which it probably already is), Eurasia might become a unified economic powerhouse over the next half century while the US will become a third world country (unless the US decides to invest in itself).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Actually, this is how they plan to deal with their sex ratio imbalance. They are cumming to steal ur yummy wimminz!
So China is building infrastructure that will let them transport goods throughout Asia and Europe very quickly and cheaply. Meanwhile, here in the US, people are fighting against the idea of building highspeed rail even between a handful of cities that are right next to each other.
If we don't turn it around, our economy is going down the tubes.
I suppose it would result in an endless Third World zerg rush on Europe. I'm sure that'll go down well.
Remember that highway networks were traditionally built to move armies around quickly.
For some reason this has me wanting to play Fagen's IGY.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Lets see China + Kazackstan + Russia and ukraine... those are not bad!... they aint building it via iran iraq turkey afghanistan etc.!
And have, since about 1910?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway
This is complete lunacy. Connection China to Europe's High Speed network ?? Through all of Russia, which has no high speed trains ?? In TEN years only ?? It took France 24 years to come where it is now, the Germans about as much time. And the Chinese want to bridge a humongously greater distance in TEN years ?? Propaganda, not more and not less.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
And why not toss in a high speed underwater tunnel to connect up with California's rail network while you're at it? Just think how much easier the territorial negotiations would be...
This would be big, but in practice how efficiently can it run with stops in every country desired by the host country?. I think they could build this, and potentially there are a lot of benefits from doing so. Certainly the Chinese have done well with rail in China by many measures. Fundamentally, this story is more about navigating bureaucracy (a triumph of it's own right) than any particular technical challenge.
I think the bigger news would be if they started work on a railway from China to the US. That would only need to pass through Russia on the way to the US (with Canada if they want direct to the lower 48). The number of negotiations would be much lower, and the ability to safely send cargo through a rail tunnel under the sea would be worth untold billions. Tunneling under the Bering Straight is technically feasible, just look at the Chunnel and other such projects. It's slashdot, give us technical challenges, not bureaucratic ones!
This way, Chinese citizens will be able to quickly leave the country to somewhere that has Google access.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Invasion of Europe, anyone?
Wow, that's some project. And China wants to fund it? That'll surely put them on the map as one of the world's superpowers.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Plans for the new HS2 line were unveiled this week for the UK. 9 years of planning so far, start build date hopefully 2018, finish date 2025. This is only for the first phase to link London to Birmingham. China does the whole thing in 10 years.
Ahh, we are so slow in the UK for infrastructure projects.
Hope the passengers don't mind getting blowed up by terrorists.
Death by snu-snu? I wouldn't mind being "blowed" by an attractive terrorist.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
... and I don't mean just their cheap (and occasionally toxic) products.
Truth is that much of the... alternative income (embezzlement, kickbacks) for bureaucrats tend to come from (large) construction projects. You can bet this product will have severe cost overruns.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
It sounds crazy, but it's certainly possible to build a train that can accommodate multiple track widths. Hell, it's been done before.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Hope the passengers don't mind getting blowed up by terrorists.
Blowed up real good?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dfoVqhQVyQ#t=1m10s
Since when was the UK not part of Europe?
Ignoring for the moment the differences in depth and geological stability between the Channel and the Straights.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I too think this is cool, but are a couple of questions that get to my mind:
Also, I am a little worried about the ambiental impact of the project. High-Speed Trains are as contaminants as airplanes, and here you'll add also all the energy and impact of deploying and maintaining tens of thousands of kilomets of railways. Given that in this case traffic is from both of the extremes of the link(with all my respects to Russia and Turkey), it looks like that maybe planes are indeed a better approach. If it was about joining railway nets already built with some short links, it could, but building thousands of kilometers through desert and semi-desert, no way.
Why can't
A lot of people said that about the USSR, but they were wrong. A politician is a politician, doesn't matter where, when, or under what circumstances, they all act the same.
I think it's doubtful we will ever see a rail over the Bering Straight. I don't think it could ever be a cost-effective alternative to aircraft and ships. That water is deep, it would be too expensive.
...and will move more people than many continent spanning lines do. Sometimes it's not the size but what you do with it that counts!
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Anything that makes it easier to move products, people and materials from one point on the globe to another can't be bad. Just as long as they keep corruption in check and don't crack too many eggs to make the omelette. As a westerner, it certainly looks like most of the problems of this type is tied to perverted intent and selfishness down the chain of command (with regional officials by necessity having to have quite a bit of power due to chinas sheer size). Any mainlanders/expatriates able to comment on how things like this usually winds up?
Emotions! In your brain!
"China already has the most advanced and extensive high-speed rail lines in the world."
No, it doesn't.
You can't run high-speed rail and freight on the same tracks. It's because of the weight of freight cars. They can physically bend the rail enough for you to see it happening. So, the track doesn't stay in sufficient calibration to use for high-speed rail. Indeed, the first thing you do, if you want high-speed rail, is build an exclusive track line.
To be used for freight a system like this would need four tracks at a minimum. Two for passenger and two for freight.
Bruce Perens.
I was looking for the first unrelated US citizen whine post and yours is the first.
That, sir, makes you a winner.
And now let me look for the unrelated Obama (pro or anti, doesn't matter) post.
There have been a number of proposals for doing telecom cables along rail lines across Asia, providing shorter alternatives to the undersea cables. They often get into trouble with either financing or right-of-way across South-West Asia, but if they're building a new railroad, it's easy to add conduits full of fiber at the same time. Earthquakes, landslides, and train wrecks do create risks, but shorter distance really helps latency, and it's usually a lot easier to patch fiber around a section of railroad track than undersea.
On the other hand, you do need signs saying "Hey, Bubba, Don't Dig Here" in many more languages....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Would be the first to go. Obviously this is all a nefarious plot for China to set up troop-transport systems and invade Europe.
Rooting for the yankees is like rooting for herpes.
I'm a French guy living in China. Reading that China has the "most advanced [...] high-speed rail lines in the world" makes me jump on my chair. The HSR trains are rarely going to the announced 240 km/h top speed, most of the time, they aren't even reaching 200. China is just building it's first Shanghai to Beijing in 3:30 thanks to the French technology (to be ready later this year). It still takes 40 hours to travel from Shanghai to Wulumuqi. Exactly where is the advance here? The most advanced country in the world for train is France, with over 6 lines at 320+ km/h all over the (small) country and extending to the rest of Europe (Spain, London, Amsterdam)!
First, it's already much cheaper to ship goods from Asia to America, thanks to the super-barges just crossing the Pacific. They have to go quite a bit further to get to Europe.
Second, the United States already has a well developed rail system. The only reason we don't use it more is because fuel costs are so low in the United States.
Never mind. We're screwed. The sky is falling. Agyugh! RUN FOR COVER!!!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
China has the largest standing army in the world, using only 0.53 percent of its population in all of its armed forces. Also, I suspect the Chinese would use their forces more ruthlessly than the US. Even if someone is stupid enough to screw with China, the Chinese response should prevent any repetition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_total_troops
I really doubt that freight train cars would physically bend the tracks, and if they did, it would hardly be the reason why they don't run freight on high speed rail. Wikipedia states this:
Experience has shown however, that trains of significantly different speeds cause massive decreases of line capacity. As a result, mixed-traffic lines are usually reserved for high-speed passenger trains during the daytime, while freight trains go at night. In some cases, nighttime high-speed trains are even diverted to lower speed lines in favor of freight traffic.
In conclusion: it is the speed differences, not some kind of "track bending" that is the major reason they don't mix high speed train and freight trains.
As usual Slashdot is full of self proclaimed experts that exceeds at making up cool "facts" so they can me moderated +5 informative.
What a great idea. It turns a six hour flight into a 3 day ordeal! What a wonder.
an ill wind that blows no good
we have libertarians and rabidly distrustful antigovernment tea party assholes
to save us, you know, from this evil socialism thing called economic progress
i mean, if we paid more taxes to build things like high speed rail, we might actually live in that horrible thing known as a better country
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...the Orient Express?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Train locomotives can run on electrified lines, Boats and Planes cannot. Boats are great for cheap but they are not fast. Even a train averaging a mere 100 kilometers per hour can make the run in 4 days versus 2 weeks for a ship. Trains are safer than ships on the open ocean.
Electricity for trains can come from any source including uranium based nuclear power plants (which china has) and coal power plants (which russia has). Trains are not dependent on oil.
Through the places were you never want to be stuck in. Believe me, I _was_ stuck in some of those earlier in my life. Never mind 16 border crossings with underpaid corrupt goons with guns rummaging through your belongings. What could go wrong?
Besides, 2 days it's 48 hours and plane London to Singapore is like 14. I cant wait and see a contractor or businessman saying "ah, instead of flying in on Sunday and going home on Thursday, lets leave on Friday night, then leave on Thursday and be back home on next Sunday. Two weekends spent in train instead of my family is just great". Same for vacationers too.
To be used for freight a system like this would need four tracks at a minimum. Two for passenger and two for freight.
First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?
-Contact 1997
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"History has shown that economic interdependence helps to foster peaceful, albeit sometimes tense, negotiations."
I'm not sure people have learned the lessons of the most recent "interdependence"? Just imagine the "stability" if it hadn't worked out?
"The only thing we need to worry about in this equation is religious nutbags that won't listen to reason."
Would economic nutbags be any better?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_total_troops
Personnaly, I'd steer clear of Antigua and Barbuda. 250 troops and nobody is screwing with them. They must be pretty bad-ass.
Have gnu, will travel.
These Asian folks think long term, unlike short-sighted Western politicians.
Rubbish. China is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, and yet it's just now climbing out of a third world status that it's been in for centuries. They're human, fallible as anyone else. They have no more wisdom, insight, or patience than any of their competitors. Looking at their industrial pollution situation, and the race to catch up to the West, they may well have less. They slaughtered and starved hundreds of thousands of their own people... perhaps millions, considering their great famines... in their "Great Leap Forward". The Chinese are not any more wise or farsighted than anyone else. What they are, right now, is driven.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I would have thought that other countries would be against having a random rail line running through their land.
Yes, because Saudi Arabia is an Oasis of secular humanism now. The very model of a modern enlightenment.
Saudi Arabia has lots of money, but it's not distributed very broadly or fairly. Only a few Saudis are actually wealthy.
So they don't really have either prosperity or equality or enlightenment in that part of the world.
I'm not sure if China has thought this through. Have they considered the real possibility of a mass wave of immigration from economically unstable countries like the UK?
F--k... Bruce Perens? What the heck are you up to these days, man? Wait a second, I'll just click on your webpage and find out...
Even though it's phrased trollishly, you've summed up some differences pretty well. In practice, people drive a heck of a lot in Europe too but the roads here are perhaps harder work to do long distances on. But the thing about planes being the fastest way to get around long distance points to another difference. In Europe in particular countries are closer together, as is the perception of a "long" trip. The time cost of travel to airport, waiting around for the plane, collecting bags at the other end, etc starts to dominate the journey pretty quickly and even for international trips it can quickly get to be more hassle than just hopping on a train. Plane travel between European countries is super cheap, though, so it's still often worth doing.
Hey, it worked pretty well for the Romans, right?
The developed world has done it for long - so why not china ? Amazon forests are not being cleared for Brazilians to use - it is to see - to US, EU and now China. Cash is king - and China has Cash while US has debts. China took the fumes and manufactured crap for the US... and next time to see what else US has to offer. ANWR maybe ??
china makes shit that everyone else in the world buys by the ton, likely because the rest of the world is incapable of making the same shit themselves for similar cost, and china would like to see it shipped to end customers faster.
The rest of the world is "incapable of making the same shit for similar cost" because the rest of the world has gotten accustomed to cushy social and medical services, as well to a fairly clean environment. So, instead of living with less security and destroying their own environments, Europe and America have the work done in China. I have no idea whether this is good or bad in the long run (and neither does anybody else). But it's happening because both Western and Chinese politicians want it to happen. The US and Europe could stop this in an instant if they wanted to, no matter what China says or wants.
C. H. I. N. A... that's how you spell zerg.
I don't buy it. There are inconsistancies in the article, eg: "With initial negotiations and surveys already complete, " then "The exact routes have yet to be determined." Well which is it? You can't do a survey if you don't know the route. Also there's no way India approached China for anything. The Indians don't like the Chinese (at least at Govt level). This sounds really cool, but I'll bet a dollar its not going to happen.
Juts to tel you, the High-speed trains in China, also known as the "D" trains, do run on the same track as everything else. Of course, the maglev does not. But, the maglev is a very short run in comparison the the number of High-speed runs in China
China is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, and yet it's just now climbing out of a third world status that it's been in for centuries.
China likes to present and view itself that way but that's a fiction, starting with the notion that something like a continuous Chinese civilization has even existed over the past two millennia. Generally, the societies and civilizations that have existed in the area of modern China have been significantly behind Europe and far behind the Middle Eastern civilizations on major developments (bronze, iron, writing, etc.), and in many ways even behind the Maya. For example, the Middle East had writing 2000 years before China had even a rudimentary writing system. The oldest writing systems still in use today are Greek and Latin, predating (in the case of Greek) the development of the current Chinese writing system by more than 1500 years. Entire civilizations came, flourished for millennia, and perished in the Mediterranean before China even appeared on the scene.
It's probably best to view Chinese civilization as analogous to Northern Europe, in both age and history, really taking off only during the first millennium. And it remains to be seen how much of Chinese civilization developed independently and how much was derivative from the Middle East.
The first US transcontinental railroad, with 1,700 miles of track, took only six years to build. Without heavy earthmoving equipment. There was only one power shovel on the whole project. The Trans-Siberian Railroad, from Moscow to Vladivostok, took 18 years to build, opening in 1913. That was a much tougher job than what China is proposing. It's already possible to get from Beijing to Hamburg by rail. More than possible; it's a major freight route.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_by_country
Country Total network length (km) and Average speed of fastest scheduled train
China 6552 km and 313 km/h ;)
Japan 2459 km and 256 km/h
i wish i could stop
if you ever done business with them, the first thing the contractor on the phone is going to ask, which quality do you want your items. first quality is first quality. your ordinary product produced and sold everywhere, like in usa like in europe. third is the 'chinese' products you know. the cheapest.
Read radical news here
completely banal entertainment
Consider who is being entertained before you label it.
what he meant was 'had the nations been trading properly with each other like post ww2, these wouldnt happen'. and he is partially right.
what all accounts miss is the goddamned wall street crisis, (endless history of repetitions) bringing entire world economy down, and causing fundamentalist ideologies to pop up everwhere.
Read radical news here
Americans, of which I am one, are a funny lot.
When things are going well, we're a spoiled, petulant group of people. We give no thought to the future or even the present. We will let things get as bad as the possibly can in a first world nation.
However...
We are at our best when things are at their worst. We will support each other. We'll give to one another when we have almost nothing individually. We become mindful of the future.
Case in point: if you get a sizeable force and set it against us, we will work together as though we were one being and turn our entire nation into a war machine second to none.
So, in the long run, I'm not too worried.
what's up with all the cynical attitudes?
Cut the chicoms some slack here.
Maybe they're just interested in becoming the dominating power...c'mon now...
On a more serious note, Bering straits, tunnel, America,...
from Beijing to Buenos Aires via Shenyang, Harbin, Khabarovsk (Russia), Magadan (Russia), Anchorage, Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, Mexico City, Guatemala, San Miguel (El Salvador), Managua (Nicaragua), Santo Domingo, Santiago (Costa Rica), Panama, Bogota (Columbia), Caracas (Venezuela), Georgetown (Guyana), Sao Luis , Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Montevideo (Uruguay), and finally Buenos Aires.
No more TSA full body scan bull shit.
New Economic Perspectives
My take is that the rail links between China and India are abysmal so they need to be rebuilt anyways. If I were China (or India) I would be looking at double-stacked, double-tracked freight. Once you've laid that much bed and wire, it is almost trivial to throw in an extra high-speed rail for passengers and fast freight. You don't really need two because high-speed trains will be a lot less frequent than subways and a lot shorter than freights so you can get away with a passing lane every, for example, 450 km (300km/hr trains every 3 hr).
No, that's how you spell turtle-rush.
This could lead to another world war just like the first Occidental-Oriental Railway did in 1914. Imagine the trade advantages.
Stupidity is its own reward.
I don't mean to antagonise the parent, but I have to remark how it's fascinating to watch the parent post go from +5 Insightful to +5 Interesting and all the while I and other posters have provided citations showing that the parent post is, in fact, neither Insightful nor Interesting.
I'd love to see time series graphs of mod points for these posts.
i wish i could stop
ya all that china propaganda even my privately run isp in Canada made a trip
gee wonder what Canada will do without NAFTA
GO FOR IT make our day resource pigs
Why The U.S. Economy Is Dying And Is Simply Not Going To Recover
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
Iranian protestors are mainly centered in the cities, so maybe they are not so bad.. On the other hand some parts of India still has train robbers targetting freight transport.
One has to see this in light of the Orient Express line the Germans attempted to build from Berlin to Bagdad. This would have been a trade link and the oil feed they needed to develop their economy.
But the British economy and collapsing empire was no match for a game against the Germans on a levelled playing field.
Soon enough troubles appeared in the Balkans and World War I broke out. And the line stopped in Turkey.
We shall see what's ahead of the train this time.
For a dot connecting reading of our 20th century history, see William Engdahl 's Oil Geopolitics in the 20th century
I already mentioned this a few days ago (China's exploitation of colonized lands) in the thread about China's new plans to extract a century's worth of energy out of Tibet, but some people didn't think Tibetans (or Uighurs or Mongols) themselves and their status as disenfrancised and repressed people had anything to do with China's colonial resource grab policies...
Well, here again the fine article in Inhabitat goes for the single-minded technocrat approach, not unlike the glory-hungry regime in Beijing, but wouldn't it still be at least remotely relevant to also mention the other non-trade, non-technological aspects of Chinese Communist Party's rail expansion plans?
Namely that a scholar at a Chinese thinktank has stated that "we foresee that in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of people will migrate to the western regions, where land is empty and resources are untapped".
Why is it only a horrific never-forget issue when the 1930s German dictatorship planned for a little Lebensraum expansion?
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
capitalism requires that there be supply and demand. The value of sometthing is related to both. If the supply exceeds the demand, the price falls to zero. This means that for capitalism to function, the demand *must* exceed the supply.
This means you must never build enough houses. You must never grow enough food. You must never make enough clothes, cars, whatever(wealth). This also means there *must* always be poor there *must* always be starving *must* always be unemployment to ensure demand.
We have just seen an example of the supply exceeding demand. It is called a crash. The supply of houses exceeded the demand for them and now, they're literally knocking them down in order to reduce the supply and increase the value of the ones remaining. It's an insane situation.
This is something Silvio Gesell pointed out around 100 years ago. In order to change this, the nature of money itself must be changed.
Deleted
At approximately 250-500 miles, city-centre to city-centre train travel beats out both car and plane in terms of convenience. And that's not even with high speed rail, just regular intercity services.
Puzzle Daze is now my job
Which raw resources? We don't have any. Europe has been importing all its stuff for decades.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Air travel is fast and all but also bloody inconvenient. Slower rail travel could be a lot easier, no chance of being diverted, more cargo, safer, more comfortable.
Air travel has gotten popular mainly because the alternatives are far worse and long distance rail travel is often impossible. But I have actually taken the train to Italy and swiss years ago, and damn it was comfortable. Yes, it takes longer, but if you are on a holiday, then just maybe doing the Orient Express as part of the journey is actually a bit intresting? More intresting then being a sardine for half a day?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
We're still struggling to link London and Birmingham. e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/18/high-speed-rail-route
Pierot rules!
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
... instead of "all roads lead to Rome."
In addition to the obvious strategic implications of China building these rail lines to link together its "virtual" Eurasian empire (by virtual I mean some of the governments, the "stans" are so corrupt or incompetent that the Chinese are soon going to be their puppetmasters. Just look at what's going on in Afghanistan, we fight and die they profit.), I wonder what other conditions the Chinese will put to the countries who will be connected.
For example, will India be allowed to be a part of it? Talk about cutting out the competition!
I don't know how far ahead the Chinese planning horizon is but if they *think* they have a lock down on all effective dissent for the foreseeable future they might be thinking many decades (centuries) ahead. Sounds grandiose but some companies like Toyota have 100 year plans (though I bet they didn't see these brake problems coming).
Anyone else remembers the Simpsons' monorail?
Nope. Bruce Perens is right.
You can't mix really high-speed (i.e. 500km/h) and freight trains. In your article 'high-speed' means "sub 200km/h".
Russia got the same exact problem on Moscow-Saint-Petersburg line, for example.
The rich work on getting more power, but they never do anything with that power, except using it to get more.
Power is security. Except against those with more power. Thus, you always need more power, to extend your security. Even if you have reached global dominance, there is always someone aspiring to topple you (to improve own security, of course). If accumulated power was used actively instead of used passively, as a deterrence, we would see either "evil genius" or "Caligula" or "third Reich" scenarios unfolding in reality and the world would swiftly end in a flash! Since it is not happening (at the moment), we can conclude that all this power accumulation has been in fact defensive (or none reached the level of readiness for their doomsday plan yet).
Michael, this is Mohammed. According to the local girls, Mohammed is a very attractive young man indeed.
Mohammed, this is Michael. He's a little taste of those 72 virgins you've been promised.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
See, when I hear about these types of projects, i think that they can't be all that bad, I mean they offer a lower cost efficient way of transport and offer to pay half of it with labor, while the other countries offer the mats. for it. I wonder if there is a hidden agencda, but I can't see it...the pros far out way the cons here.
My brother works in Indian Railways as a Permanent Way Engineer. He says that his job of track(railroad) maintenance becomes really tough if goods (freight) trains share the same line along with passenger trains. Goods train wagons when loaded are a lot more heavier than passenger wagons causing frequent wear and tear of tracks. They are planning to separate freight lines from passenger lines in the coming years, for faster transit as well as easier maintenance.
Number of troops stopped being an effective metric of military power about 100 years ago. In infantry combat, training and leadership counts for much more (see the Israelis and US ground forces in every conflict since WWII). The Russians used to say "quantity has a quality all its own", but they were kidding themselves.
If you then consider the enormous advantages in armor, naval, and air power that a country like the USA, Russia, UK, etc. would have over China in a conflict, and China is very much a paper tiger.
Even the Chinese know this. The massive size of the Chinese military serves political purposes. First, it creates a large number of people loyal to the government because that's where their bread is buttered. And it also provides them with the means to police/coerce/control 1.X billion people.
Have you ever been to the city center of sufficiently large cities in the USA? There is a reason why people want private autos...
When has capitalism worked so efficiently that it produced so much that what it produced cost nothing? Prices don't fall to zero in any system because doing anything requires energy, which necessitates some positive cost.
Money is only the common denominator of people's values at any point in time.
It is the perception of relative worth that gives money its intrinsic value. Consequently, any method of exchange would do just fine so long as it is relatively easy to convince people that it has relative intrinsic value. A exchange of a bushel of potatoes for a bushel of wheat could just as easily be handled via a barter or via altering magnetic states within a computer, aka electronic money transfer. Its only a question of an equilibration and momentary synchronization of the perceptions between the buyer and the seller. Free gifts and services are only momentarily free as they can exist only temporarily under the expectation of some form of benefit in return at some future date.
Will this be covered by our railcards?
SQL programmer goes to a bar. Walks up to two tables and says 'Excuse me, may I join you?'.
Perhaps the Chinese are funding part of the Tea Bag party to insure that America can't improve its technological infrastructure anytime soon.
Now that one thinks of it, New Corporation, which through the Chinese wife of its owner has extensive business ties in China does carry much of the water for both the Chinese and the Teabaggers in opposing efforts by the US government to make progress on nearly any front at all.
It is curious that Murdochian Gold Worship is the one religion the Chinese seem to tolerate these days.
Big business has seen what works, and it ain't democracy.
You better start the fight now because you sure ain't gonna be able to start it later. Democracy is draining away and the Chinese style corporate state will be on your doorstep sooner than you know it. It's being built right now all around you.
The Russian trans-Asian railroad connected the people and capital of the west with the raw material of the East. China's project would be an update of this. It would be nice to shorten a trip of over a week to a couple days.
I would also recommend the line to the USA & Canada via Russia and then via Bering strait. This strait is only 85 km wide.
It is high time.
It can be build for a fraction of the money which is spent each year to fight the mountain tribes in Eurasia. Besides these tribesmen could be hired to build this railroad instead.
This project would catch the imagination of the people worldwide. This is what I call leadership and global vision.
But the nations that we would think of using terrorism against a rail line don't have modern forces, either. If the Taliban pissed off China, the Chinese could send in millions of troops, with more in reserve. The Chinese could actually fight the Taliban more than a smaller technologically "superior" army.
As for nations with modern forces, they'd be MAD to attack China.
The Russians used to say "quantity has a quality all its own", but they were kidding themselves.
Tell that to the German dead at Stalingrad.
You obviously don't have a car. Ever experienced traffic jam? Travelling by public transport is significantly faster and more convenient than travelling by private car in urban areas, especially during rush hour.
In comparison to Japan and China, there's nothing you could call high speed trains over here. And (at least in Germany) the existing railway lines are being criminally neglected, so I wouldn't even want real high speed unless there's much more state oversight. Real high speed under current management would probably result in a super-Eschede.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWlgbAc3bbM
Iraq had the world's fourth largest standing Army in 1990 at the start of Gulf War I. Modern coalition forces measuring perhaps 1/3 their destroyed the Iraqis in 100 hours of ground war, at a cost of some 150 coalition casualties. And on a per-unit basis, the Iraqis of 1990 were likely better and more modernly equipped than the average PLA unit of today.
As for the Russians in Stalingrad, winter weather and logistical ineptitute is what really stopped zee Germans. The Wheremacht was able to penetrate Russia all the way to Stalingrad before being cut off and overwhelmed, despite numerical inferiority in men (but not materiel). Too far, too fast. And at least according to Wikipedia, the number of troops at the time of the Russian counter-offensive was roughly equal (~1M apiece). So it wasn't quantity that made the Russians win, it was stubborn bravery, plenitful ammunition, and the ability to fight in the Russian winter.
You mean they don't have a communist regime trying to distribute the wealth. The only people who are crying foul about distribution are the poor and left-leaning politicians wanting their votes. They hope to improve the situation of the poor by bringing down others who are better off. I could understand their attacks if they were only aimed at billionaires, but they target anyone who is better off, including the middle class. Like the poor are entitled to the money that the better-offs worked for. It makes no sense.
How many people use a rail line from one terminus to the other? I've taken Amtrak hundreds of times, but the absolute longest journey was D.C. to New Haven in a snowstorm when the airports were closed. The rest were Boston to New Haven, New Haven to Philly, etc. This project puts China at the center of a network and makes other points on the network both more important and more dependent on China.
How long does it take to get to the station?
How long does it take waiting for your train?
How long does it take waiting for connections?
How long does it take to get from the station to your destination?
How often does the train stop? How long does it spend at 0mph? What does that do to the average speed?
In France and Germany, as well as the UK, rail travel represents a tiny proportion of passenger miles travelled every year. The reality is that in well over 90% of journeys, the train performs very poorly indeed. Which explains the usage statistics with respect to cars.
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As I tried to say, China could destroy any country with infrastructure (via nukes) or any country without (millions of pairs of boots on the ground).
As for WWII Soviet Union, the Soviets lost 600,000 men in the first weeks of Barbarossa. Also, the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad because of the narrowness of their advance (OK, and the weather). Even the T-34/85's could stand up to a lot of the panzers, and the Soviets augmented this by mass producing a few tank models (loyal to their Marxist leanings, while the Germans had a wide variety of models of which they produced fewer total tanks.
Virtually all local transportation problems, as well as the issues of urban centralization, are a result of government force. The government's central planning (urban planning, zoning, location of government services, etc) is the reason for the extremes of urban density, especially after the invention of the Internet.
Inefficient, improperly incentivized, and inherently corrupt government monopoly is the reason why we don't have underground and elevated private toll highways where you can drive (or be driven) at 200 MPH! Government-subsidized cheap oil (paid for with trillion-dollar oil wars at tax victim expense) and regulation red tape is the reason why we don't have cheap electric power, cheap electric cars, and cheap electric helicopters / heli-buses for the middle class! Etc, etc, etc.
(Signed: Alex Libman's sock-puppet.)
Have to get there *somehow*. The Chinese continue to fight the Thousand Year War while the rest of us cant see beyond this afternoon's TV show. Bow to your Chinese masters!