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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.
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.
More trade, which then possibly leads to more stability. History has shown that economic interdependence helps to foster peaceful, albeit sometimes tense, negotiations. It's the only reasonable hope we humans have to world peace. It's not the lovey-dovey ideal peace, but it's something.
The only thing we need to worry about in this equation is religious nutbags that won't listen to reason.
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Don't forget that most of the countries they have to go through are a bit more lax with environmental regulations and building codes than Western Europe (or the US, for that matter). I'm not saying this to suggest that China's going to go cheap on this; it's far too strategically important for them to cut corners. However, when you're not having to spend a decade on environmental impact studies and archaeological surveys before you lay a single track-equivalent, you can get quite a bit done rather quickly.
It's the same reason FDR could use the WPA to build bridges immediately, while Obama can't.
More trade, which then possibly leads to more stability. History has shown that economic interdependence helps to foster peaceful, albeit sometimes tense, negotiations. It's the only reasonable hope we humans have to world peace.
I keep seeing this argument, and it's absolutely ludicrous. Guess who France's number one trading partner was before 1941? You may have heard of that country's leader. He's invoked here a lot on Slashdot.
This is just another variant of the "prosperity = peace" argument. While the two often go together, one does not ensure the other. Most of the prosperous nations in the history of man have been so while invading their neighbors, or even across the other side of the world. We had this same prediction 20 years ago... the increased trade with China would make it a free country and bring political liberalism. How'd that work out?
I'm all for expanded trade and opening more markets. But that just brings wealth, not freedom, and certainly not utopia.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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