China's High-Speed Trains Coming Off the Rails

Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that China's expanding network of ultramodern high-speed trains is coming under growing scrutiny over costs and because of concerns that builders ignored safety standards in the quest to build faster trains in record time as new leadership at the Railways Ministry announced that to enhance safety, the top speed of all trains was being decreased from about 218 mph to 186. Without elaborating, the ministry called the safety situation 'severe' and said it was launching safety checks along the entire network of tracks. Meanwhile China's Finance Ministry announced that the Railways Ministry continues to lose money as the ministry's debt stands at $276 billion, almost all borrowed from Chinese banks. 'In China, we will have a debt crisis — a high-speed rail debt crisis,' says Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and longtime critic of high-speed rail who worries that the cost of the project might have created a hidden debt bomb that threatens China's banking system. 'I think it is more serious than your subprime mortgage crisis. You can always leave a house or use it. The rail system is there. It's a burden. You must operate the rail system, and when you operate it, the cost is very high.'"

Comments

Safety Standards?

[msobkow]

Oh really? You mean there are existing safety standards for new technology?

And here I thought it was just the engineer's conservative estimates...

Re:Safety Standards?

[Samantha Wright]

Well, I don't think that "trains not flying off the rails" counts as very surprising, or particularly exclusive to new technology. So you might still be in the clear there.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Laser Dan]

Oh really? You mean there are existing safety standards for new technology?

And here I thought it was just the engineer's conservative estimates...

Well since the train designs are stolen^H^H^H similar to the Japanese and German high speed trains, there must be relevent safety standards.

Re:Safety Standards?

[perpenso]

Oh really? You mean there are existing safety standards for new technology? And here I thought it was just the engineer's conservative estimates...

What new technology? High speed rail is over a hundred years old. The billion passenger mark was hit in the 1970s. I think there is sufficient track record to establish standards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail

Re:Safety Standards?

[Moryath]

The joke is that there are no competent Chinese engineers to fix it. They'll have to hire German, Japanese, or French engineers from the firms that produced the plans they stole to build these lines in the first place and then pay them to fix the mistakes the incompetent Chinese "engineers" made "adapting" them.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Concerned Onlooker]

"I think there is sufficient track record..."

Heh....

Re:Safety Standards?

[Thexare Blademoon]

The track record exists, but competition often derails such petty concerns as safety.

Re:Safety Standards?

[milkmage]

they put fucking melamine in milk and I'm not talking about the incident in 2008 - they did it again.
April 27 2011: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/27/2187359/china-seizes-melamine-tainted.html

ignoring safety standards is one thing..
this smells of old fashioned greed - someone is getting a huge bonus for coming in under budget and ahead of schedule.

i'd hate to be an astronaut in their space program.

Re:Safety Standards?

[lennier1]

Depends on which train we're talking about.

One is a clone of the German Siemens Velaro train models while the other one is a Japanese design developed for their Shinkansen network.
Not sure about French designs but IIRC the Chinese also have some Italian Pendolino trains somewhere.

Re:Safety Standards?

[jd]

Well, that would depend. A maglev train that didn't fly off the rails would be kinda useless.

Re:Safety Standards?

[agw]

The article says the speed was limited from 350km/h to 300km/h. That would fit the description of the Wuhan–Guangzhou High-Speed Railway which are trains based on both the Siemens Velaro and the Japanese E2 Series Shinkansen (according to wikipedia).

Only 300km/h! That slow!

In other news, in Germany Deutsche Bahn ordered 300 new high speed trains (to replace all existing trains) with a maximum speed of 249km/h (to have the trains fall into a lower, i.e. cheaper, regulation class).

Re:Safety Standards?

[Zagnar]

Oh, stop trying to derail the conversation.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

there is
Its building the line straight
and using solid ground

not exactly things chinese products are known for

Re:Safety Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would make a nice garden shed.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since the train designs are stolen^H^H^H similar to the Japanese and German high speed trains, there must be relevent safety standards.

Since the components of the trains have 'Siemens' and 'Hitachi' written on them in big letters, I'm not sure 'stolen' is the right word. In any event, if you want to steal (or license) train wheel designs which work at high speed, you go to the British.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually bought the german tech when no one else wanted to buy it.

Re:Safety Standards?

[TheRaven64]

In any event, if you want to steal (or license) train wheel designs which work at high speed, you go to the British.

And if you want high quality rails, you look at the British rail network. And then do the opposite.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Jack Malmostoso]

but IIRC the Chinese also have some Italian Pendolino trains somewhere

I pity their souls.

Re:Safety Standards?

[newcastlejon]

Hey! It's not our fault we keep getting the wrong kind of snow!

Re:Safety Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't clones. They just are Velaros. And they weren't copied, they were purchased.
Furthermore, there aren't any problems with the trainsets (at least neither the article nor the summary claims there is), but with the tracks.

Re:Safety Standards?

[DarkOx]

there is sufficient track record

I see what you did there.

Re:Safety Standards?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

In other news, in Germany Deutsche Bahn ordered 300 new high speed trains (to replace all existing trains) with a maximum speed of 249km/h (to have the trains fall into a lower, i.e. cheaper, regulation class).

Well, thanks to the "prep up for the IPO" efforts of saving money at every corner, they won't be able to reach even that on most tracks.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Xacid]

They must have good training.

Re:Safety Standards?

[arndawg]

Guys. Let's stay on topic. Don't derail this thread.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

milkmage - keeping track of milk safety for all of humanity
thank you milkmage

Re:Safety Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when are trains new technology? Yes it has a newish propulsion system, but it is still a train. Electric cars (and hybrids) must meet the same safety standards as gasoline-powered cars, riiiiiight?

Re:Safety Standards?

[DesScorp]

Well since the train designs are stolen^H^H^H similar to the Japanese and German high speed trains, there must be relevent safety standards.

The truth is that the Chinese are good at copying things, but haven't shown any real ability to create original things. Their new "indigenous airliner" is almost certainly made with the tooling that McDonnell-Douglas left behind from their ill-fated MD-88 factory they built in China. Which is why, unsurprisingly, their new "indigenous airliner" looks almost exactly like an MD-88.

China is notorious for copyright infringement and stealing designs wholesale. A Chinese company so closely copied the Isuzu Rodeo that the automotive press discovered that many of the parts were interchangeable, including major body pieces. Their new frontline fighter, the J-10, is in many ways a copy of a copy; it's largely considered to be based on the Israeli Lavi, which was in turn based on the F-16. The engine is a straight up copy of a Russian design. Their much vaunted new J-15 naval fighter? A reverse-engineered Su-33 acquired from the Ukraine after the Russians refused a production license.

Re:Safety Standards?

[khallow]

The track record exists, but competition often derails such petty concerns as safety.

I missed the part where there was competition in rail systems. Vehicle manufacturers sure, rail systems no.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Gilmoure]

The engineers obviously don't fully comprehend the political realty.

Re:Safety Standards?

[lennier1]

You're working for Radio Yerevan, right?

Re:Safety Standards?

[rtb61]

The trains don't specifically seem to be the problem. The tracks and earthworks below and the site works around those tracks seem to be the problem.

The trains a built within in specialised facilities and there are limits to 'the cheapest tender' components and inspecting those components prior to fitting, even with corruption (not really that many trains).

When it comes to earthworks and siteworks of course it is a completely different matter with plenty of scope for lowest tender short cuts, inflated works specifications, material supply quality and work quality inspections.

The track is in fact the highest cost of high speed rail and it must pass through many hands, many different regional authorities and many different contractors. It sounds pretty much like the government of China got ripped off big time when it came to the track laying and those loans covering defective works are now under threat. Everyone knows how quickly shoddy contractors go bankrupt, the money has disappeared and there is nothing available to pay for extensive rework required, often more expensive than the cost of the original track.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Thexare Blademoon]

1. I was just setting up a lame pun.

2. Competition not between companies, but rather China (or at least the people in charge of this project) trying to show up the rest of the world by getting it done faster.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly rabbit, maglev trains fly on the track.

Re:Safety Standards?

[rrohbeck]

Remember that Germany had significant safety issues with the ICE, especially the wheels which caused the Eschede crash and need ongoing special TLC like X-raying.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Miamicanes]

It depends how you define "original things". I'd say Chinese companies have an *enormous* advantage over pretty much everyone on earth when it comes to highly-integrated value-engineered electronics. Partly, because they've spent lots of money acquiring the resources to do it, and partly because their domestic home market is so staggeringly huge, it's a lot easier for Chinese companies to spread around up-front tooling costs that would sink comparable projects in the US and Europe for all but the largest, most vertically-integrated companies (Apple, Siemens, etc).

Case in point: you can buy an entire media player on the street in Shenzhen for less than you'd pay for the LCD *alone* from any source in the US. Part of the reason is that some company in China will build a LCD whose on-glass silicon doesn't just contain a generic LCD controller... it contains the entire media player (google "Rockchip" if you need a specific example of such a company). If you needed a LCD for a one-off project, it's actually cheaper to buy one and repurpose it than to buy the bare LCD. The catch (and reason why there's still a market for things like a LCD that costs more than an entire media player) is that you can't assume that 25,000 identical media players are going to be available to buy next month, let alone 2 years from now. If you can't stockpile enough in advance to use for whatever purpose you have in mind and run out, you're SOL. In contrast, the bare LCDs will probably still be available a year or two from now (though the price of that specific LCD module will probably spike and stay high a few months down the road, until either the supply or demand for that specific module collapses and it either runs out or gets liquidated and is gone forever in any real quantity).

Where China shines is mass-produced highly-integrated electronic goodness. Where Japan, the US, and Europe still dominate is coture, smaller-quantity electronics for more adhoc purposes. In theory, China could soak up most of that market by making products a tiny bit less purpose-specific... but then, that media player some company will produce 25 million units of would cost 6 cents more, and nobody in China would buy it because a nearly-identical model would sell for a Yuan less at the store. Eliminate the 25 million Chinese consumers who'd have otherwise subsidized its costs and drive its economy of scale, and you're back to what it would cost to make it at a fab in the US, Taiwan, or Japan.

Interestingly, China has an entire semi-amateur industry that's sprung up around buying mass-produced electronic items and customizing them for aftermarket resale (a practice that would get you sued in the West, because it would be classified as patent infringement. I believe in China, patent licensing is treated as recursive in practice if not statute. In other words, in China, if you buy something whose patents were properly licensed, you can use it as a component to make something else, and all the patent licenses paid by the original manufacturer are still valid. In the US, you could be sued for infringement for buying a patented knife, removing it from its cheap plastic handle, mounting it in a new wood handle, and re-selling it (because in the US, patent licenses don't "pass through").

Re:Safety Standards?

[Hognoxious]

You mean there are existing safety standards for new technology?

Why not? Standards lay down criteria that the design must meet, they aren't the design itself.

Do you think they rewrite the building code every time an architect picks up a pencil?

Re:Safety Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they're similar because they're all made by Alstom, a European based company that got some pretty sweet deals with the Chinease for all of their high speed trains.

Re:Safety Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

i think the question is applied

Good Dept ? Bad Dept

[Anonymous Coward]

Depts resulting from building infrastructure to be utilised by all ? or Depts resulting from invading countries searching for WMD ?

Re:Good Dept ? Bad Dept

[_merlin]

I'd be more worried about having a population who doesn't know the difference between departments and debts.

Re:Good Dept ? Bad Dept

[by (1706743)]

Was going to make a joke about calculating the eigenvalues of the department's debt matrix -- det(dept. debt). It sounded funny in my head.

Re:Good Dept ? Bad Dept

[fireylord]

would that be the department(ministry) of Plenty, and the department(ministry) of Peace respectively perchance?

You get what you incentivize/reward ...

[perpenso]

It does not matter so much what you say you want, nor does it really matter what everyone knows is necessary or correct, you tend to get what you incentivize or reward. If you reward speed (wrt project/task completion) but only talk about quality then you only get speed.

Re:You get what you incentivize/reward ...

[jd]

Yeeeees, but you've got to be careful with that. You will get EXACTLY what you actually ask for, no more and no less, which is almost never what you really meant or want.

If you reward students for high grades in exams, you'll get just that. High grades. Not understanding of the subject, just high grades. If you reward bankers for making profits, you'll get just that. High profits. Not financial stability, just high profits.

The problem with incentives is that exceedingly few people are capable of setting them correctly. And not a single one of them will use "incentivize" as a word.

Re:You get what you incentivize/reward ...

[6Yankee]

Yeeeees, but you've got to be careful with that. You will get EXACTLY what you actually ask for, no more and no less, which is almost never what you really meant or want.

[...] The problem with incentives is that exceedingly few people are capable of setting them correctly.

Like when I worked in McJail and got put in Drive-Thru for a shift. The shift manager promised us 20GBP of record store vouchers if we got our service times under 90 seconds. We negotiated that up to 30GBP.

90 seconds was the service standard. It never happened, but it was the service standard. In other words, it was our job. It was also an average.

We were queued out the car park, the whole thing was a royal fustercluck, and the service times were well north of 250 seconds. But we figured out that if we rang up a couple of "Free fries" between each car and served the orders off immediately, the average would drop like a rock and the till would still be right. Transaction count would be sky high, but that would explain the massive honking queue.

87 seconds at the end of the shift. We took them to the cleaners a few more times before the store manager killed the vouchers altogether, but they never figured out what we were doing...

Re:You get what you incentivize/reward ...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, good one! :) Reminds me of working as a supermarket cashier back in high school. One of the measurements was "Items per minute" either scanned or entered in the system. The clock kept running while the register was idle and unlocked, but would pause when the register was locked. So the keener folks would lock their registers immediately after completing a transaction, even if the next customer was ready to go, since it would increase their "Items per minute" counter.

Me, I really couldn't have cared less about it, since it was just a job after school, not some career goal. You at least managed to score some extra spending money!

Re:You get what you incentivize/reward ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with incentives is that exceedingly few people are capable of setting them correctly. And not a single one of them will use "incentivize" as a word.

Because while it is a word, it's jargon peculiar to MBA types, who are not the "few people" you were referring to?

Re:You get what you incentivize/reward ...

[jd]

MBA people are probably the people I would trust least to optimize a system. And any kind of incentive system is just that - an attempt to optimize by mucking about with priorities. It's a branch of queue theory (which computer scientists are also extremely aware of) and business analysts never get it right. That business analysts can't tell the difference between a noun and an adjective doesn't inspire me with confidence either. Jargon is great, we all use it, but optimization problems rely on good classification skills and a jargon that reveals an inability to classify will raise huge red flags.

"must operate"

[SuperKendall]

No, you actually do not HAVE to operate the expensive rail system you built, if you cannot afford to.

The world is full of rusting hulks of things people once thought they had to have, like wind turbines in Hawaii and California... monuments to people who once thought they had to have something, that it turned out they could do without after all.

Would dropping some of the train lines hurt China economically? Without doubt, but then so does spending far more than you take in.

Re:"must operate"

[Jartan]

I think the point was more along the lines that the system doesn't have any value at all unless you run it. Yet when you run it the cost is high.

Houses on the other hand you can simply stop building so many and the ones you have go up in value eventually.

Re:"must operate"

[Purpleslog]

The phrase you are looking for is the "Sunk Cost Fallacy".

Re:"must operate"

[syousef]

I think the point was more along the lines that the system doesn't have any value at all unless you run it. Yet when you run it the cost is high.

Houses on the other hand you can simply stop building so many and the ones you have go up in value eventually.

That's a myth. Houses only go up in value while there's demand. That demand goes to 0 as the price goes up because people can no longer afford them. If they are unaffordable yet you stop building anyway, you end up with a slum with people cramming into less buildings so that they can afford them, squatting or being homeless. Those few who can afford nice houses move away or move into gated communities. You're talking about replacing one bubble with another, only this bubble leaves people poor and destitute.

The fact that Zhao Jian doesn't appear to understand this makes me question all of his economic conclusions.

Re:"must operate"

[Polo]

Ironic how history repeats itself. The early railways in the United States were built "fast and loose" almost 150 years ago...

"The original track had often been laid as fast as possible with only secondary attention to maintenance and longevity. "

From wikipedia entry on the first transcontinental railroad:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad#Railroad_developments

Re:"must operate"

[martijnd]

Houses on the other hand you can simply stop building so many and the ones you have go up in value eventually.

Seems the Chinese also build about 64 million houses they didn't need... whole cities in fact.

Amazing Satellite Images Of The Ghost Cities Of China

Re:"must operate"

[CODiNE]

You're right that the fallacy plays a large part of it, but there's more to it when politics is involved.

The one who makes the decision to shut down the unprofitable venture is the guy who gets all the blame for it. Why take the risk at ruining your own political carrer when you can ignore the problems and hope it keeps running til the next guy has to deal with it? At long as you can keep things running mostly the same people see it as success, but the moment you admit the facts you become a huge failure.

Re:"must operate"

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . like wind turbines in Hawaii . . .

Not to nitpick, but the wind turbines in Hawaii have made a strong comeback in the last couple of years.

Re:"must operate"

[Chris Mattern]

Sunk cost fallacy. Better no value than negative value, and that's what you have you have to keep shovelling money at it to keep it running.

Re:"must operate"

[rufty_tufty]

I'm not sure what you outline is a universal truth. Infact gated communities are IME a very American phenomenon. As a rule lack of supply does tend to drive up prices, but you're right that if you get it wrong and people start cramming into ever smaller houses and there is not enough maintenance by the landlords then the path to a slum is very easy to take.
It's just as likely that you will always have some trendy areas of cities that people want to live in at any cost they can afford.
I know what you mean by demand going to 0 but as long as mortgages are given based upon the perceived future value of the property then there is nothing to stop them going sky high. An expensive house attracts a rich clientelle who will look after it/demand it is refurbished. This increases its worth and if anything drives demand and prices higher which the estate agents look at and see it as a sound investment so increase the asking price which feeds back to the banks who are willing to lend more and...
I really see no limit given the right social factors.

Re:"must operate"

[SuperKendall]

Really? The fields on the southmost point of the Big Island? They looked like they were pretty dead when I was there, though it was about five years ago...

Re:"must operate"

[jafac]

Yeah right.

The inhabitants of Easter Island also thought they could do without trees.

Renewable resources.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always leave a house or use it. The rail system is there. It's a burden. You must operate the rail system, and when you operate it, the cost is very high.

Well for both a home and a railroad one can reclaim the land. Re-purpose it for other uses.

Re:Renewable resources.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just that a narrow strip of land going between two places that are already well connected by road isn't good for much: nobody wants a bamboo garden that long.

Re:Renewable resources.

[Anonymous Coward]

It could end up the worlds most expensive bicycle trail. Other places with defunct rail lines have often found plenty of use with a rails to trails conversion.

Re:Renewable resources.

[EMI Lab]

Yes, In the Cincinnati Ohio region, several defunct rails were converted to bike trails. You can ride from Cincinnati to Dayton and nearly to Columbus. There have been discussions of completing the trail to Cleveland. As an avid rider it's easy to do a 150 mile ride in a day. The conversion from a rail bed to a paved trail is expensive, but if there ever is a need to re-establish the rail line, the right-a-way it there - just lay new rails and upgrade the bridges and away you go.

Whoopee???

[Black Parrot]

Are we supposed to be cheering at the knowledge that we're not the only ones that f**ked up our money management?

Re:Whoopee???

[cosm]

Are we supposed to be cheering at the knowledge that we're not the only ones that f**ked up our money management?

No, I would say sighing at the fact the up and coming world governments haven't learned from the fallen, and the fact that we as well have chosen not to learn from failed predecessors either. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I feel the greed-driven will speed the entire global-economy off the rails in the coming years. When the big financial meltdown comes, I hope you're all ready. Inflationary capitalistic expansion will have its cost, and it will most likely end in human lives of those getting the trickle down from the top.

All those marketers, all those hedge-fund managers, all those financial instruments, the money printing, the interest rate hikes, the depletion of old-guard natural energy resources, the cost-cutting, the parasitic leeches of banks and speculative investment..they will kill the host before they kill themselves.

Re:Whoopee???

[ArcherB]

Are we supposed to be cheering at the knowledge that we're not the only ones that f**ked up our money management?

No. We need to be cheering because now we will stop hearing people sing the monorail song while saying "we have to get high-speed rail. The Chinese are doing it!"

I can't tell you how many times in the past few months I've heard high speed rail advocates point out that the Chinese are building one. Now maybe they'll STFU and stop asking for my tax dollars!

Re:Whoopee???

[mustPushCart]

Could you elaborate or point to articles about this please? I am not challenging your stand but would simply like to read more. Thanks.

Re:Whoopee???

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell you how many times in the past few months I've heard high speed rail advocates point out that the Chinese are building one. Now maybe they'll STFU and stop asking for my tax dollars!

Nah, won't make a difference. To many, high-speed rail is a quasi-religion: "High-speed rail is the future. The Chinese cut corners; we just need to prevent that from happening here."

Re:Whoopee???

[Kokuyo]

With the public already this annoyed with our 'elite', I don't think the host will have to worry much as the body will turn against the parasites soon enough.

I think I will live to see the day when managers dangle from trees, strung up with their own neckties.

Disclaimer: I am NOT advocating the killing of people. I am just saying I expect it to happen.

Re:Whoopee???

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, this happened again, and again, and again, and again... throughout history. What did the people who hanged the 'elite' do? They either took their place, or became complacent that the new 'elite' will be better than the old 'elite', and they stopped giving a damn about what's going on. Until next time.

Re:Whoopee???

[definate]

More so, you should be sighing at the fact that if China goes through a significant recession, they will likely bring every other country down with them, with differing levels of effect. Though, countries like Australia, will be hit extremely hard.

The funniest thing about this post...

'I think it is more serious than your subprime mortgage crisis. You can always leave a house or use it. The rail system is there. It's a burden. You must operate the rail system, and when you operate it, the cost is very high.'

It may be more serious than the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, but what about China's own housing crisis, which is like the U.S. but way more extreme as it's pushed through by their Government.

Also, your rant is the least insightful post I've seen. "Inflationary capitalistic expansion", done by a communist country? An obscure reference to Reganomics in a country where it doesn't apply in the slightest?

The up and coming haven't learnt? I think they have, if China hadn't made in roads towards providing their citizens with freer markets, China would have gone the way of Russia, quite some time ago.

All those marketers, all those hedge-fund managers, all those financial instruments, the money printing, the interest rate hikes, the depletion of old-guard natural energy resources, the cost-cutting, the parasitic leeches of banks and speculative investment..they will kill the host before they kill themselves.

Okay, now you're just listing random things which people infer bad things about. More so, you're listing contradictory "bad ideas".
"the money printing" is the OPPOSITE of "the interest rate hikes" which is counteracted by "all those financial instruments" but increases "speculative investment" .

"All those marketers, all those hedge-fund managers" okay, you need to say something more than this?
I don't even know what the fuck "the parasitic leeches of banks" is referring to.

I immediately thought you were an arts student, because this is the most retarded, least well thought out shit I've read in a long time. But then I notice that your writing is exceptionally bad, and it's hard to understand what you're actually trying to say. So, I'm guessing you're NOT an arts student then.

Save us some time, and please stick to... whatever you specialize in.

Sincerely,

Society

Re:Whoopee???

[ArcherB]

Are we supposed to be cheering at the knowledge that we're not the only ones that f**ked up our money management?

No. We need to be cheering because now we will stop hearing people sing the monorail song while saying "we have to get high-speed rail. The Chinese are doing it!"

I can't tell you how many times in the past few months I've heard high speed rail advocates point out that the Chinese are building one. Now maybe they'll STFU and stop asking for my tax dollars!

Parent post moderated by a monorail supporter.

Re:Whoopee???

[Anonymous Coward]

Imma gonna guess he specializes in being fair and balanced. (At least they are fair in admitting they do balancing acts)

Re:Whoopee???

[Anonymous Coward]

I immediately thought you were an arts student, because this is the most retarded, least well thought out shit I've read in a long time. But then I notice that your writing is exceptionally bad, and it's hard to understand what you're actually trying to say. So, I'm guessing you're NOT an arts student then.

Save us some time, and please stick to... whatever you specialize in.

err... MBA ?

Re:Whoopee???

[definate]

LOL!

Re:Whoopee???

[LordLimecat]

"Inflationary capitalistic expansion", done by a communist country? An obscure reference to Reganomics in a country where it doesn't apply in the slightest?

You telling me theres no private business ownership in China? You might want to rethink calling it communist; it may be so in name, but its not in policy. I think this quote from wikipedia sums it up nicely:

The CPC's current policies are fiercely rejected as capitalist by most communists, especially anti-revisionists, and by adherents of the Chinese New Left from within the PRC.

(second to last "history" paragraph; but the entire section might be helpful to read.)

Also,

Save us some time, and please stick to... whatever you specialize in.

It is possible to make your point to GP (which you did) without descending to flamebait.

Sincerely,

Slashdotters

Re:Whoopee???

[definate]

LOL Yeah, I did get flame-baity at the end. I tend to get worked up over this stuff...
Hi, my name is definate, and I'm a nerd.

Mainly because I see so many people who don't understand economics, but they feel they do, so they comment on it. Not an excuse though.

Now, as for China. While it isn't an extremely communistic country, it is still very much a communist country. The company I work for does a lot of business there. There are heavy restrictions on what can and can't be imported. The country regularly nationalizes businesses that they see of strategic importance (and this isn't just your GM tax payer funded Fox News branded nationalization, it's proper nationalization). The government has a huge say in which internal businesses get loans. The media is completely state owned, and extremely communist oriented. There is a lot of regulation and beaurocracy when dealing there. Lastly, while it has increased its citizens freedom in recent times, every now and then it takes them back, jailing reporters, arresting industries contra to the sexual revolution, and similar. It is one of the countries in the world, where you definitely do not have free speech.

So, I understand that many communists would reject it, however many communists would reject Stalin's Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and similar. However these countries defined themselves as communist, and followed the ideas of communism to some extent. This is similar to the United States saying it has free markets, when it has somewhat free markets, but they are still a far cry from completely free markets. It's a problem inherent in any significantly complex definition, where you attempt to compare things. The best book that I've read which deals with this topic is Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, it's an awesome read, reasonably priced, and I highly recommend it.

Don't think I will take a trains herein the USA

[rolfwind]

either. When I go to Europe, I see them continuously replacing the ties with new ones, I guess the rails themselves along with it. Concrete ties are not uncommon.

Last year, in my area, the traffic signal for a train came down and I had to wait 10 minutes for this slow movng freight train. When it finally was within sight, the rail jumped up 24 inches, along with these half-rotten ties (they must have been ancient), completely out of the ground! It was nuts. Then as the train was going over it, any time there was a space in the wheels, it kept flopping up and down, until the train left and there was quite a bit of distance from it.

It looked so freaking dangerous, I was concerned enough to call with the local train authorities, and they were like "Yeah, that's normal. Why you think we make the freight trains move so slow in the first place" and basically hung up on me without wanting to even know exactly where.

Re:Don't think I will take a trains herein the USA

[SheeEttin]

And here I though Pan Am Railways (formerly Guilford) was bad...

Re:Don't think I will take a trains herein the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not get a video of it and send it to a local news station?

Re:Don't think I will take a trains herein the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I totally understand! There is no way I'm going to take a motor vehicle trip here in these United States either. In every country I've ever been in they're _ALWAYS_ doing road work. High-tech permeable and stable aggregate bases with smooth asphalt pavement is not uncommon.

The other day I was in these back woods and saw a 4x4 working on getting up this washed out dirt forest road. This road must have been ancient because the ruts were huge. The Jeeps suspension must have been flexing about 97 inches, and it had to try at this huge ravine about four times before it got up. It was going sooo slow and I had to wait about 10 minutes before I was able to hike pass, but it was raining recently so the mud was slippery.

It scared me so bad I pooed my pants. Scared me so much I went and talked to the spotter, and he was like "Dude what the fuck are you talking about? This is off-roading on an totally unmaintained logging road. What do you expect?" Then he just walked away like it was nothing.

But seriously I hope you were being sarcastic in your post. Unfortunately I see way too many people without the ability to differentiate these real life situations. They also seem to vote. Crappy ass end of the line delivery tracks != mainline freight rails. And they are nothing like high speed passenger rail lines.

Re:Don't think I will take a trains herein the USA

[jd]

Sadly, that doesn't shock me. There are way too many accidents in the US rail system that have no business being possible. Of course, there's been a fair few in other countries - Britain has an unenviable record for avoidable fatal rail accidents. One of the worst disasters of all times, the Eschede train disaster, was perhaps the most extreme example of politics and rulebooks causing fatalities when prudence would have been the wiser choice. I have noticed, however, that prudence is unpopular in any environment where results are what matter. It would be good if caution were rewarded, but it's usually seen as cheaper to sweep up the bodies afterwards.

Re:Don't think I will take a trains herein the USA

[Malc]

To be clear: Eschede was not a British disaster, but a German one.

Re:Don't think I will take a trains herein the USA

[ShakaUVM]

>>It looked so freaking dangerous, I was concerned enough to call with the local train authorities, and they were like "Yeah, that's normal. Why you think we make the freight trains move so slow in the first place" and basically hung up on me without wanting to even know exactly where.

The high speed rail network in California will use different tracks from the freight lines, though they will be in the same right-of-way in a lot of places.

Re:Don't think I will take a trains herein the USA

[Candid88]

Yet compared to other forms of transportation, train travel is by far the safest.

It actually annoys me somewhat that rail (and air) safety is always considered so important, they could have horrific accidents every year and it would still only be a fraction of the death rate we consider "acceptable" for cars, cycling and walking.

It's a perfect example of our human inability to comprehend risk. Just like a girl who sits inside her whole life to avoid a 1 in a million homicide risk, completely ignoring the 1 in 3 general cancer risk her inactivity is rapidly increasing.

Look ahead, or not.

[Bruha]

I believe China is not so stupid to believe that Oil will always be there, otherwise they would not be the world leader in installed renewable energy. On the other hand, communist heads of government in the country really need to deal with the corruption, but the build it faster will always come at reduced quality where humans are the builders. Quality work needs time, but the other problem is that as Oil costs go up so does the costs to build these green transport systems.

Reducing dependence on oil and using it only for advanced purposes would stretch it for a very long time. I think about a third goes into people's gas tanks, while the rest goes into advanced petrol products such as plastics and generic purposes such as fertilizer.

As a race it's annoying that a very vocal minority is derided by a majority that just refuses to believe we will ever run out. Within a hundred years we will be faced with three challenges. Fusion power to power our cities, combating global warming induced by our drive to have what we have today and expand it, and a large decrease in oil to provide the building blocks of advanced materials. Solving the energy equation should be a global priority, Fusion and renewables will provide what we need to fix the other two problems. If we fail in this, we may regress back a few hundred years, after several bloody wars that might just wipe us out anyways because I know damn well that majority will refuse at all costs go give up what they will lose if they fail to fix those 3 problems. And they'll probably take the human race with them.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[HBI]

Straw man argument.

No one really believes we won't run out. Some of us just don't care much. When commodities run out, they subsidize their replacements via outrageous cost. Besides, the momentum is unstoppable, anyway. Usually, we learn not to tilt at windmills.

What you're really calling for is to artificially decrease demand for oil, which isn't going to happen in a sane world. Any attempt to do so will simply create a gray or black market in oil to those who refuse to cooperate with the regimen. Those who produce will be all too willing to sell, and those who consume will be all too willing to continue, while paying lip service to the goal. It likely would even increase demand for oil until it is all gone. Then the solution summarized in the previous paragraph will happen in any event.

About the only way to subvert the whole process before oil runs out would be to create a renewable organic fuel with limited negatives vis a vis fossilized plant matter. Something that burns in current engines with limited modification. Arrange for it to be cheaper than extraction of said fossilized plant matter. That would work, but it's a tall order. However, if one wanted to 'save the earth' to the extent that CO2 is a danger, that seems to be the most promising path.

As for why organic - the economic dislocation of changing every ICE in the world over to something else would eliminate any cost advantage in the fuel in any reasonable time frame. That's why hydrogen always sounded like a nonstarter to me. It depended on too many immature or nonexistent technologies to prosper.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe China is not so stupid to believe that Oil will always be there

...the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[msobkow]

About the only way to subvert the whole process before oil runs out would be to create a renewable organic fuel with limited negatives vis a vis fossilized plant matter.

They already have. It's called bio-diesel. And the hemp version doesn't require all the fertilizers and prime crop land that some bio sources do. But it does require a shift to diesel engines from gasoline engines, something the Europeans are way ahead of North America on doing.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

[[ the economic dislocation of changing every ICE in the world over to something else ]]
ICEs wear out and are replaced all the time anyway. Some last a long time, some don't. (Some of the ones that last a really long time, e.g. tanker engines, aren't even up to emissions standards put in place 40 years ago. So those would be free to keep burning old fuel as long as they want.)

But my point is if you make new engines and put them in new cars, people will buy them when their old cars wear out. This is how they managed to "retrofit" daytime running lights and airbags into so many cars at such a modest cost.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[Ogi_UnixNut]

Or bio-butanol, which will work in any petrol ICE without modification. It also has similar energy density to petrol, so you would not lose much power. Currently there is research into producing it in bulk, but at the moment it's more expensive then petrol, so nobody has brought it to market.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[surveyork]

No one really believes we won't run out.

That may be so, but some politicians, analysts and CEOs are then very good at pretending they do believe oil won't run out in a century and/or alternatives will be found fast. Anyways, the IEA recently acknowledged that peak of conventional (easy, cheap) oil had happened already http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-11/iea-acknowledges-peak-oil . We may find alternatives, but economic growth is heavily dependent on cheap oil, which is becoming scarce fast. I guess nuclear power plants are going to stay with us for a while, even after the Fukushima incident and subsequent panic.

Let's hope for the best.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[ShakaUVM]

That may be so, but some politicians, analysts and CEOs are then very good at pretending they do believe oil won't run out in a century and/or alternatives will be found fast. Anyways, the IEA recently acknowledged that peak of conventional (easy, cheap) oil had happened already http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-11/iea-acknowledges-peak-oil . We may find alternatives, but economic growth is heavily dependent on cheap oil, which is becoming scarce fast. I guess nuclear power plants are going to stay with us for a while, even after the Fukushima incident and subsequent panic.

Let's hope for the best.

Coal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[HBI]

It's not as bad as you are thinking - considering the lifespan of petrol engines, a 10 year nearly full replacement cycle would solve the problem neatly. Nearly everything larger than a SUV in the US is diesel anyway, already. Besides, it offers new markets for engine block heaters for the parts of the US that freeze regularly.

Incidentally, that last one is the main reason you don't see more diesel passenger vehicles in the US, currently. The sight of Mercedes owners searching for power outlets to keep their vehicles reasonably mobile at work in colder climes is a deterrent to purchasing a diesel yourself.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I for one don't believe we'll truly run out of oil. Of course this is a nit-picky semantic detail. But we'll get to the point where most people won't be able to afford to squeeze the oil out of the frozen peat-bog of Antarctica or some other hard-to-reach source. So there will always be oil, just no more cheap oil. I also believe the slide to that state will be pretty smooth with alternatives picking up as real oil drops off. Like biofuel, and coal-to-oil. Of course, those processes are expensive so alternative transportation power sources will pick up, like electric, hydrogen, or crazy shit like compressed air.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[phaggood]

create an organic renewable fuel

Jay Keasling attempts to rewrite DNA on eColi to make them eat switchgrass and piss biofuel

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[cavreader]

There are already plenty of alternatives. Price will be the ultimate motivation to change over. Right now it's still cheaper to import oil. But things are changing. It will not be a fast process but innovative electric cars are now being designed and built, battery and power cell technology is advancing, new power distribution services are being designed and tested. Solar, wind, bio, synthetic fuels, and natural gas are all available. There are a lot of companies investing in future energy technologies becuase that is where the next fortunes will be made.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're neglecting the fact that this is a gradual transition. We're not going to go into people's garages and overhaul their engines, and oil isn't going to be plentiful one day and gone the next. Those ICE's are going to break down. Cars are going to be replaced, and gas-powered ones are already starting to be replaced in a very limited way by their electric counter-parts.

As for the inability to influence the demand for oil, that's clearly not true. OPEC blatantly fixes the price of oil each and every day. Oil is only collected in substantial quantities in a handful of places, it can be refined into useful products at only a handful of refineries, and it relies on huge economies of scale in shipping to be as affordable as it is.

Decreasing the demand is trivial, as demand for oil is definitely still in the elastic region, and so price increases are fully capable of decreasing the demand for it. Indeed, "most" economists (I haven't seen the polling data) agree that the price of gasoline at least should be higher in order to offset the substantial negative externalities it generates/promotes. Increasing the price is trivial to enforce, as oil isn't something one can smuggle in a couple liters at a time.

Certainly organics and the artificial photosynthetic route are interesting, but scaling them up to mass production seems far more difficult than going the electric route. The problem we have currently is that burning fossil fuels is still the cheapest widely available energy. Once you change that, once solar et al. can consistently beat oil et al. for kWh/$, then that's what will really open up the possibility of syngas et al. However, it remains to be seen whether purely chemical, or electrochemical means of energy storage are the way of the future. We have seen larger paradigm shifts in the last 50 years than we would by having every car in the country be all-electric.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[surveyork]

You speak the truth, indeed. My main worry is: Will the transition happen fast enough? I really hope, so. Really. My other worry is over a potential fight for control over rare-earths and other resources.

Re:Look ahead, or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Straw man argument.

No one really believes we won't run out. Some of us just don't care much. When commodities run out, they subsidize their replacements via outrageous cost. Besides, the momentum is unstoppable, anyway. Usually, we learn not to tilt at windmills.

What you're really calling for is to artificially decrease demand for oil, which isn't going to happen in a sane world. Any attempt to do so will simply create a gray or black market in oil to those who refuse to cooperate with the regimen. Those who produce will be all too willing to sell, and those who consume will be all too willing to continue, while paying lip service to the goal. It likely would even increase demand for oil until it is all gone. Then the solution summarized in the previous paragraph will happen in any event.

About the only way to subvert the whole process before oil runs out would be to create a renewable organic fuel with limited negatives vis a vis fossilized plant matter. Something that burns in current engines with limited modification. Arrange for it to be cheaper than extraction of said fossilized plant matter. That would work, but it's a tall order. However, if one wanted to 'save the earth' to the extent that CO2 is a danger, that seems to be the most promising path.

As for why organic - the economic dislocation of changing every ICE in the world over to something else would eliminate any cost advantage in the fuel in any reasonable time frame. That's why hydrogen always sounded like a nonstarter to me. It depended on too many immature or nonexistent technologies to prosper.

I love the optimism of economists: Since the rising prices of oil makes alternatives attractive, alternatives will pop up just at the right price point, just like you can give yourself a CPR in case of a cardiac arrest! If the oil prices rise rapidly enough, we may be unable to deploy any alternative technology, and even if we can we may not be able to deploy it in time. Construction of new transportation infrastructure itself requires a huge amount of oil, both as a raw material and as a fuel source. It also needs time, probably in the tune of a decade. If there is a significant unmet demand for oil, it won't be possible to produce crops and transport food, keep on industrial production and make big investments in new energy infrastructure all at the same time. It will be the greatest economic depression ever, with famines and all. We have to deploy alternatives *now*. They might not make immediate economic sense but they will act as an emergency shelter in case of a steep oil price rise.

Wishfull thinking for USA

[SteveOHT]

Where are the stories of wrecks? They don't standout in my memory anyway. Plus, the second link says they have twice the assets as they have debt. Nothing like the 40 dollars of assets to 39 dollars debt plus in the USA sub prime. Are these stories simply "sour grapes" or what?

Re:Wishfull thinking for USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Melamine in baby formula and animal feed to spike low protein counts (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1856168,00.html)
Coal mine accidents in disproportionate amounts when you compare China's coal production to that of other countries (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-11/13/content_391242.htm)
Melted down anything remotely resembling metal in the late 50s (The Great Leap Forward) to try to match the United Kingdom in steel production - an arbitrary goal set by Mao Zedong - naturally, the product was useless (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace)

China has come a long way since the end of Republican Era but has also consistently cut corners whenever possible. This isn't an issue of sour grapes, simply one of history.

Re:Wishfull thinking for USA

[hedwards]

I'm curious about this, in the US we've been doing that recently, is the difference really as simple as at what point the corners began to be cut? Or is there something more going on here to suggest where we're likely to end up.

Re:Wishfull thinking for USA

[phantomfive]

No, it's not that good. The guy you are quoting is the ex-Minister of the Railroad, Sheng Guangzu, who is currently faces serious corruption charges. The assets aren't worth much if no one will buy them (and right now, it doesn't look like a good cost).

The reason a lot of us are interested in this story is because we thought it was really cool when China started building high speed railroads. We wanted some here, too. But it's really depressing how it turned out.

Re:Wishfull thinking for USA

[definate]

First of all, don't trust numbers that come out of China. They go through a significant editing before being released, such that many economists dealing with the region, discard China's numbers, and instead attempt to estimate the true values.

Second of all, that $40 of assets and $39 of debt, doesn't mean shit. Depending on how that's recorded/valued, that value can change extremely and make it $1 of assets and $100 of debt. If you're interested in how valuable those assets are, Google "China's Ghost Cities".

Re:Wishfull thinking for USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are the stories of wrecks? They don't standout in my memory anyway.

The Chinese government would never hide such news item to save face. [/sarcasm]

Re:Wishfull thinking for USA

[khallow]

I don't know how well China really is doing (though I see no evidence that they have anything close to a positive return on investment for their high speed rail project). But I will use this story as yet another reason to oppose federally funded high speed rail development in the US. It may well be some moral foible, but it's not "sour grapes", if I oppose trying for the grapes in the first place.

Not true

[SuperKendall]

Houses on the other hand you can simply stop building so many and the ones you have go up in value eventually.

There are lots of examples of houses being built and after being abandoned, never being bought and eventually fall into ruin. Detroit has a ton of examples of properties where this is true. Anything you let lie fallow falls apart eventually.. a rail system seems much the same to me, if you stop running it you can either maintain the rails hoping they will have future value, or just totally abandon the system and let it fall into ruin.

I agree though it's a worse position they are in.

Re:Not true

[phantomfive]

lol in other words you spent all that time arguing about the accuracy of a metaphor (which by nature are not precise anyway), only to conclude that you actually agree? This place is insane.

Re:Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

lol in other words you spent all that time arguing about the accuracy of a metaphor (which by nature are not precise anyway), only to conclude that you actually agree? This place is insane.

This is a website, a sequence of bytes transmited to you by a server at OSDL, it's a common misconception, but a website is not a place or a location. You might find it confusing because people use poor terminology, like "go to ...", but what you are actually doing is tranmitting a request, which by voluntary contract results in an html data stream being transmitted back to your terminal, but if you are mindful, you will realise that you haven't actually gone anywhere, and are still sitting in front of your computer, the same as before you clicked the link on the screen.

I wish people would understand this, it would reduce the confusion, and we wouldn't have so many stupid, meaningless ideas like cyberwarfare, internet terrorism, breaking in to sites, crimes commited in a jurisdiction you've never been to, etc.

Re:Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

Case in point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E&feature=player_embedded

Re:Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

or just totally abandon the system and let it fall into ruin.

I agree though it's a worse position they are in.

If authorities looked the other way and let freelance scavengers do the hard work of clawing back all those resources, the system would be gone within a few years.

Re:Not true

[SuperKendall]

lol in other words you spent all that time arguing about the accuracy of a metaphor (which by nature are not precise anyway)

Although Metaphors are indeed like a gun with fourteen sights, the entirety of Slashdot is built upon them like a wavering house of soggy cards and so it is vital that we keep metaphors are close to the target as possible even if we can never be exact - like a drunk man driving down the highway, we may switch between lanes but it's all good as long as we are between the shoulders.

I hope you appreciate that last one used a car.

Re:Not true

[Bucky24]

lol in other words you spent all that time arguing about the accuracy of a metaphor (which by nature are not precise anyway), only to conclude that you actually agree? This place is insane.

Welcome to slashdot :)

NO PROBLEM !! COLLECT FROM USA PEOPLE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

It owes CN an hell of a lot of moola !! Problem then is, who would buy the inferioir yet cheap CN product ?? I can think of no other cheap-ass society than them, so then CN has no place to unload its crap !! And so it continues. Then again, CN can always just scrap it and let the peasants take a bus.

This ties in with China's false economy...

[blanchae]

It looks like China is heading for an enormous debt crisis. Add the creation of ghost cities as covered earlier this month and it looks pretty scary! It'll make US's debt crunch look like a drop in a bucket.

Re:This ties in with China's false economy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Errhh... what?

You say China is heading to enormous dept crisis because _Railways Ministry_ has only $276 _billion_ dept?

That is a sum what is nothing when compared to US dept... If it would be $276 _trillion_ then it would be enormous! As US dept is over 14 trillion currently and rising in speed where the $276 billion is developed in _few days_.

And about ghost cities, yes, there is huge ghost metropoly in China, where they could actually move people but they dont.
But how about U.S cities what are "ghosting" all the times? Detroit is not the only one or "last one" or even only big one.

The difference between U.S Ghost towns and China Ghost metropoly is that later is build and new one in good fit. While first ones are in terrible shape because capitalism.

1] Check out http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Re:This ties in with China's false economy...

[definate]

You've really got no idea.

First of all, you're quoting one government departments debt, where as the GP is refering to the entire countries, which is estimated at around $7 trillion by some.

Second of all, you're relying on numbers produced by the Chinese government, which are often largely fiction. Many estimate that there is up to $1.5 trillion of debt hidden in local investment vehicles.

Lastly, you're forgetting that the amount of debt doesn't matter, it's your ability to service that debt, that matters. If you have income of $75,000 per year, which situation is worse, having debt of $ $72,954, or having debt of $78,500? The former is the same ratio as the US, the latter is the same ratio as China.

Have you seen these Ghost Cities? They aren't "in good fit". They are falling into disrepair. Nobody moves there because the commute to ANYWHERE you can work, is relatively extreme, and most of the country can't afford to live there for the prices they're charging. Now, when these prices come down, people will move in, however their value will drop extremely, resulting in their debt burden growing even larger, while their assets are even smaller.

In comparison with Detroit, which had its use and is falling into obsolescence, primarily due to the mess the US auto industry is in, combined with the regulatory hell imposed on it. Detroit is a much more complex situation, but it's nothing like these Chinese problem. Has the US forcibly built many giant new cities which are completely unoccupied?

Re:This ties in with China's false economy...

[khallow]

You say China is heading to enormous dept crisis because _Railways Ministry_ has only $276 _billion_ dept?

A corresponding sum for the US would be about triple that, say $850 billion, which is half the US's current deficit and 5% of GDP. And that's assuming that we're given the right figures. China has reason to understate the debt they owe.

And about ghost cities, yes, there is huge ghost metropoly in China, where they could actually move people but they dont. But how about U.S cities what are "ghosting" all the times? Detroit is not the only one or "last one" or even only big one.

Well, what about the US "ghost cities"? Here's the difference, nobody outside the city limits has to care. The US didn't spend hundreds of billions to develop them. It doesn't matter to me in the least, if Detroit vanishes from the face of Earth. In the meantime, it serves as a valuable object lesson to other places, that if they pursue the same urban policies that destroyed Detroit, they will end up as Detroit.

I personally don't understand the compulsive need to compare every Chinese screwup or oppression to imagined US ones.

Re:This ties in with China's false economy...

[nido]

It'll make US's debt crunch look like a drop in a bucket.

China has state-owned banks. That means it owes the debt to itself.

The U.S. has privately-owned banks. That means we owe our debt to our financiers, who create money in the fractional-reserve monetary system by making loans.

Big difference.

Libya has a publicly owned bank, which may be why the imperial faction has targeted it for regime change: Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking?

Bubbles in China

[cold fjord]

'In China, we will have a debt crisis — a high-speed rail debt crisis,' says Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and longtime critic of high-speed rail who worries that the cost of the project might have created a hidden debt bomb that threatens China's banking system. 'I think it is more serious than your subprime mortgage crisis. You can always leave a house or use it. The rail system is there. It's a burden. You must operate the rail system, and when you operate it, the cost is very high.'"

Unfortunately, that apparently isn't the only bubble in China:

How Big Is the Chinese Property Bubble?

In times of crisis alternative economic models become more appealing. Since the USA, the beacon of capitalism was the epicentre for the current crisis and the Chinese economy escaped relatively unharmed, there is a certain logic in asserting that the central planners in China have the right economic prescription.

But as James Chanos and others have pointed out, centrally planned economies lead to malinvestment and nowhere is that malinvestment more manifest than in China’s Property market. Consider John Mauldin’s November 24th, Outside the box interview with Vitaliy Katsenelson. Katsenelson compares Japan’s property bubble of the late 1980s to modern day China and the results aren’t pretty.....

China's credit bubble on borrowed time as inflation bites

The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to take out protection against the risk of a sovereign default by China as one of its top trade trades for 2011. This is a new twist.

It warns that the Communist Party will have to puncture the credit bubble before inflation reaches levels that threaten social stability. This in turn may open a can of worms.

"Many see China’s monetary tightening as a pre-emptive tap on the brakes, a warning shot across the proverbial economic bows. We see it as a potentially more malevolent reactive day of reckoning," said Tim Ash, the bank’s emerging markets chief.

Officially, inflation was 4.4pc in October, and may reach 5pc in November, but it is to hard find anybody in China who believes it is that low. Vegetables have risen 20pc in a month.

China: the coming costs of a superbubble

China may seem to have defied the recession and the laws of economics. It hasn't. When China's bubble bursts, the global impact will be severe, spiking US interest rates.

The world looks at China with envy. China’s economy grew 8.7 percent last year, while the world economy contracted by 2.2 percent. It seems that Chinese “Confucian capitalism” – a market economy powered by 1.3 billion people and guided by an authoritarian regime that can pull levers at will – is superior to our touchy-feely democracy and capitalism. But the grass on China’s side of the fence is not as green as it appears.

In fact, China’s defiance of the global recession is not a miracle – it’s a superbubble. When it deflates, it will spell big trouble for all of us.

It seems likely that the world has a few more financial tremors coming.

Re:Bubbles in China

[mosb1000]

That's not good, because we're counting on them to buy our bonds to continue funding our government's operation over at least the next decade or so.

Re:Bubbles in China

[WindBourne]

If we will start new companies and bring back the manufacturing, then that is a none issue.

Re:Bubbles in China

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo. They're holding more than a trillion of our debt, so it's not just that they'll cease buying more of our debt when their economy implodes, but that they'll sell the reserves they hold. The US Treasury will have to offer higher rates to attract financing, and this will rapidly balloon the deficit. Any vestigial hope that US public financing is feasible will vanish.

US Treasuries have an expiration date. $15+ trillion dollars will go to money heaven, hand in hand with the `full faith and credit' of the United States.

Re:Bubbles in China

[bye]

Bingo. They're holding more than a trillion of our debt, so it's not just that they'll cease buying more of our debt when their economy implodes, but that they'll sell the reserves they hold. The US Treasury will have to offer higher rates to attract financing, and this will rapidly balloon the deficit. Any vestigial hope that US public financing is feasible will vanish.

US Treasuries have an expiration date. $15+ trillion dollars will go to money heaven, hand in hand with the `full faith and credit' of the United States.

It's hardly a problem - the US is a 15 trillion economy per year , it is also very rich in natural resources and it also prints its own currency so it cannot ever run into our-money-is-printed-elsewhere problems like Ireland or Greece. How do you fancy could the US possibly default on its debt - the ink running out of printers? All in one, internationally the US is considered a very good creditor and that is part of the reason why treasuries are trading at very low yields right now.

The problem is too low US treasury yields right now (it is keeping growth and investment depressed) - so increased inflation would actually be good for the US economy.

Re:Bubbles in China

[khallow]

It seems likely that the world has a few more financial tremors coming.

I think by now, we're all aware that there are always global financial tremors coming. The Chinese "superbubble" is a rather large one (and likely to grow considerably larger before it collapses), but it won't be anywhere near the last or the largest.

Re:Bubbles in China

[Anonymous Coward]

Also almost all production in China is for export. Bubbles are much less important in China than in the western "consumer economy". In a consumer economy, like the US, manufacturing and exports are a small percentage of the entire economy. Large part of the economy is the useless exchange of money for services like hairdressing and restaurants.

A consumer economy is basically a house of cards. A large enough bubble pops and it can blow your house of cards away. This is why the Fed is so adamant about getting money to the consumers. The largest threat to the US economy is if consumers stop spending. This rate of consumption is also a threat to China as China relies on exports for its growth.

In China, OTOH, consumer economy is a fraction of the real economy. A popped housing bubble is irrelevant to the general economy. People may not be happy for a while, but the economy will churn as long as there is demand for China's output.

Finally, the Chinese professor quoted in TFA doesn't have a clue understanding the debt levels in the US and comparing them to the rail debt. A total debt of $400 billion is nothing when matching to the US subprime problems. It's like comparing a pimple to a massive tumor. $400 billion debt only costs $8-$16 billion a year in interest rates. Considering this is part of vital infrastructure for China, the bill is insignificant.

Building China's train system up today allows it to grow economically in spite of oil that is running out. It's a reason why rail is the future mover of people, not regional planes. Unless of course we invent some radical, free energy source but don't hold your breath! The days of cheap flights are over.

Dumb headline

[mr100percent]

You made it sound as if there was already an accident.

Yes, safety standards.

[siddesu]

There exist not only standards, but also products you can compare your solution against. For example, the Shinkansen has a safety record that is hard to believe -- no dead, only a few hurt, and only one derailment during a rather strong earthquake. There is a reason it has taken all countries with successful high-speed train networks years and huge investment to get where there are. Engineering isn't simple, and problems aren't readily solved by party directives.

I, for one, have made the point about safety biting the Chinese fast train in the ass just after they start the service many times. I think it is a very good thing that they are reacting the good way -- by slowing the rail, and looking into the trouble, instead of, you know, just running the trains at full speed and collecting the bodies.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[MillerHighLife21]

Makes me happy to hear that somebody knows how to do it properly. I'd love to see high speed trains come to the US if it could be done well.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[CaptainZapp]

Actually France' TGV also has an exceptional track record regarding safety :

TGV Accidents

Germany's ICE, however, had a bad accident with 101 fatalities (details here ), which was caused by a series of issues, but most notably by a faulty wheel design.

Nevertheless, high speed rail on a global scale has an exceptional safety record.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[siddesu]

Interesting -- and it has to be mentioned that (if I am not mistaken) the speed trains in Europe are operated both on high and low speed tracks -- which is probably making both engineering and management issues harder. Probably one consequence of that operation is a more complex wheel design.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[c0lo]

Makes me happy to hear that somebody knows how to do it properly. I'd love to see high speed trains come to the US if it could be done well.

Oh, yeah... After Wall Mart, the railway system can benefit from Chinese exports as well.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[Hognoxious]

the speed trains in Europe are operated both on high and low speed tracks -- which is probably making both engineering and management issues harder.

Why? They aren't different sizes, you just can't go as fast on the slow rated tracks. After all, it's possible to go at zero velocity on a high speed track - it tends to make it easier for passengers to get on and off.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[stef0x77]

Yes, the Eschede ICE accident happened on normal tracks.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[realityimpaired]

The Eschede accident did happen on normal tracks, but the faulty wheel design would have affected a train only travelling on high speed tracks as well... they replaced the wheels with a design that had a rubber buffer between the "tread" and the hub. The idea was that it would be quieter and more comfortable. It was quieter, but what they didn't count on was that the rubber would deform as it got hot, and it created a sort of wobble on the wheel tread. After enough kilometers, that wobble created enough fatigue in the wheel that it failed catastrophically, causing the derailment and accident.

The mistake was in using a wheel type that was originally designed for the Paris subway, and was never designed for the kinds of speeds that a high speed train, or even a normal above-ground train travels. Since then, they've gone back to solid wheels, and focused on improving the suspension in the cars in order to improve ride comfort. It's telling that Eschede was the only major accident in the world with the high speed train network, though, and that nothing like it has happened since. :) (well, yet, thanks to China....)

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[Anonymous Coward]

was caused by a series of issues, but most notably by a faulty wheel design.

Wait a minute - are you saying that they needed to redesign the wheel?+

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[Dog-Cow]

Wall Mart? Is that where you go for building supplies? Most people shop at Walmart.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[ajlitt]

Wall Mart? Is that where you go for building supplies? Most people shop at Walmart.

That's where you go for Perl and Perl accessories.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[russotto]

Makes me happy to hear that somebody knows how to do it properly. I'd love to see high speed trains come to the US if it could be done well.

Airplanes make a lot more sense in the US. Security is the only thing making this not obvious, and if high speed rail were to become popular, we'd be one bomb away from TSA ball fondling there as well

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[Mindcontrolled]

As usual, it is more complicated than that. The accident was a chain of events - the buffer deforms, the tread gets stressed, the tread breaks, the broken tread gets caught in a switch, causing the wagon with the broken tread to break out sideways, and, to make matters worse, the switch is immediately before a bridge, so the wagon with the broken tread and all after it slam into the bridge. Had it happened in a place far from a switch, the train would simply have derailed and been braked down by the gravel bed - you notice that the wagons before the one with the broken tread partially derailed too and got to a save stop. They changed the track designs as a consequence - no more switches right before bridges over the track.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[Miamicanes]

It depends how far you want to travel. High-speed rail's niche of awesomeness is trips that are ~200-400 miles for suburbanites, maybe as few as ~70-100 miles for urban residents. It's the distance we all hate -- farther than anybody sane wants to drive, but not far enough to be worth the misery of air travel.

Trains have a few huge advantages over planes for regional travel. For a plane, landing at an airport to drop off and pick up passengers is a huge, time-consuming ceremony that might be 15 minutes under the most ideal circumstances imaginable (small-town airport where plane can land, taxi directly to terminal, spend 2 minutes getting passengers on and off, and be heading back to the runway), and easily kills 2 hours at any major airport. So, a city pair with insane amounts of travel (like New York-Miami) might average a flight or two per hour, but a lesser pair (say, Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale) might have to make do with 3 or 4 flights per day, max. In contrast, a train only needs a minute or two for a stop at a secondary station, and the whole act of stopping at a station somewhere like Fort Lauderdale or West Palm Beach might add 3-4 minutes total to the travel time (if you count time lost accelerating and decelerating). As a result, you can have a train depart northbound from Miami every 20 minutes, stop in Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Port St. Lucie/Fort Pierce, Melbourne, then hit Orlando Airport, International Drive, Disney, Lakeland, and Tampa.

The time to get from Miami to Tampa would be about 2 hours more than flying, but (at least during peak times of the day), you could have a train departing every 20 minutes, and at least hourly the remainder of the day. Instead of having to plan your day around a half-dozen flights between Miami and Tampa, you could just show up at the station "whenever" (if you were willing to buy a more expensive ticket that wasn't tied to a specific time, with surcharge if you missed it) and get on the next train. With a departure every 30 minutes, that means there would statistically be a train leaving about 15 minutes after you arrived at the station -- whenever that happened to be. In the grand scheme of things, you'd probably get from Miami to Tampa in the same overall time, but without the stress and delay of having to arrive early and actively wait the entire trip (vs "just show up, get some food, and kick back with your laptop for 2-3 hours"). THAT is why high-speed rail has pretty much destroyed the market for regional air travel in every country where it exists. It doesn't necessarily save time or money over flying or driving, but it eliminates a huge amount of stress and uncertainty from travel.

Also, a lot of people don't realize that putting a high-speed rail station within ~25 miles of 80% of America's population doesn't mean running tracks to 80% of the land area. Build a mainline from Seattle to San Diego, then extend the Northeast Corridor south through Virginia and the Carolinas to Florida (through Jacksonville, ending up in Miami). Add spurs to Tampa through Orlando, to Birmingham through Atlanta, and to the NEC from Buffalo & Syracuse. Connect Dallas, Austin, and Houston. Guess what... you've just put a station within 25 miles of roughly 60% of America's population. Extend southward from Chicago to St. Louis, Birmingham, and New Orleans, continue west to Texas, and you're up to roughly 75%. Throw down a new 110mph single track with grade crossings dedicated to passenger trains connecting the Chicago line to California through Colorado, and you're up to 80%. I've simplified a bit, but that's pretty much the gist of it. The overwhelming majority of Americans actually live in a few well-defined bands that are only ~20-50 miles wide. Even cities like Los Angeles and Dallas-Ft. Worth are a lot more linear when you look ONLY at population distribution than most people realize. Check out nighttime pics of big cities taken from the ISS, and even cities like Los Angeles start to look shockingly linear (LA looks kind of like a lowercase 'y', f

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[khallow]

As usual, it is more complicated than that.

Not really. Where else is the tread going to break than at a switch where it gets stressed a bit more than regular track? The earlier poster is correct. The other factors don't change that an accident happens, they just modify to some degree how many people die and how much damage occurs.

I don't know why you have the need to mythologize engineering failure as a long chain of events. But I've grown aware of it since your posts on the Fukushima nuclear plant accident.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[Mindcontrolled]

The tread broke way before the switch. The switch caused the derailing. But it's you, so, well, I didn't expect any contribution by you that went farther than showing that you are an idiot.

Re:Yes, safety standards.

[khallow]

The tread broke way before the switch. The switch caused the derailing.

And your point is? That is the accident in a nutshell. The rest is situation not a "chain of events". Some factors in the situation could have killed more or less people. It's luck of the draw.

Government-created debt crises

[meburke]

Yeah, China is about due. Japan and the USA (along with Greece, Ireland, Spain, and others) ignored basic economic principles and are paying the price. (I'm NOT talking about the Tsunami tragedy in Japan, but the stagnation of the economy.) "Stimulus" money has to come from the places where it's produced, and is a by-product of productivity. If you loan money to people or projects, those recipients need to have the means to pay it back. Governments do not produce anything, so they must get their money from those who are productive. To "stimulate" the economy, they are taking it from productive projects (Exports), skimming expenses off the top and then sending it back as "stimulus" funds. The other alternative is to create money out of thin air, which causes inflation. Either way, the so-called "stimulus" loses its effectiveness the more often it is used. Japan's last big stimulus attempts created almost no movement in their economy; not even short-term.

China's rail problem is not the cause of the bank problems: The cause is that banks were forced to loan money to unsound projects at unrealistic rates. China has huge amounts of "Sovereign Wealth" due to their absolute and competitive advantages over their Western customers, but they have no place to put it, internal to China. Distributing it to unsound projects wastes resources and unbalances the internal economy. Some infrastructure development could bolster the economy (like toll roads in the USA). However, the implication derived from the banker's statements is that the "tolls" from operating the railway are not sufficient to service the debts. Banks don't get their money back and the government gets to subsidize a losing project. (Sound familiar?)

Re:Government-created debt crises

[Asic Eng]

Governments do not produce anything

That's a matter of definition, if services like water, road networks, mail delivery, scientific research and defense are not products, then companies like Google don't produce anything either.

Also there are plenty of state-owned companies all over the place - whether governments produce specific things or not is a choice.

Re:Government-created debt crises

[Vaphell]

problem is that the governments around the world are getting fatter and many many people employed on taxpayer's expense don't do anything of value. They pass shitloads of meaningless regulations so they get to do anything like rubberstamping piles of paper to justify their existence. USA fared well when all levels of administration were worth 5% of gdp, now the govt is involved in 40+% if i am not mistaken.
In Poland there was like 150k bureaucrats in 1989 - we are talking about a socialist state that laughed at economic soundness. Guess what - that number approaches 600k today in a free democratic country.
Such a ridiculous growth puts huge burden on economy and to make things worse, salaries are much better than those in the private sector, which has to pay for all that with ever increasing taxes.

Re:Government-created debt crises

[khallow]

Governments do not produce anything

This is, of course, wrong just from the example of the story. The Chinese government produced a high rail system. Instead, the angle is that government involvement introduces vast opportunity costs. Sometimes it still can generate a profit. More often, it's just another monument to incompetence and hubris. Whatever the case, it is still production. Please think about that.

Another reason to understand this point is that someone with a sufficiently screwed up belief system may well value the passengers far more than the money. Or maybe they just think (yes, I'm being generous here) that China "bought civilization." Either way, that's yet another problem with the claim that "government doesn't produce anything."

The opportunity cost is the true weakness of the strategy. China could either have done nothing or provide modest incentives for private industry to try to build competing high speed rail systems. Either outcome would have been far better for China, financially.

Re:Government-created debt crises

[FriendlyPrimate]

If you loan money to people or projects, those recipients need to have the means to pay it back. Governments do not produce anything, so they must get their money from those who are productive. To "stimulate" the economy, they are taking it from productive projects (Exports), skimming expenses off the top and then sending it back as "stimulus" funds.

That's an ultra-libertarian view of government, and it's not entirely accurate. Don't get me wrong....capitalism is great at steering money and resources towards where it's useful. However, capitalism also has some very significant shortcomings too. For example, many corporations today are not investing for long-term sustainability, but rather short-term profits. The almighty buck is all that's important. The environment, product safety, employees, etc... are all hindrances to the bottom line. And unbridled capitalism naturally leads to monopolies, where all the original benefits of capitalism cease to exist. And without regulation, you end up with extreme pollution, slave-like wages and working conditions, extreme polarization between the "haves" and "have-nots", etc...

You need government taxation and spending to pay for stuff that requires long-term investment, like roads, and scientific research that may not pay off for many years. You also need government to create a somewhat "fair" system (i.e. graduated taxation rates) to create a stable society that isn't going to revolt and overthrow the government every 10 years. And you need government to regulate industry to prevent monopolies from forming, and from allowing things like the financial crisis from occurring (which lets be honest was a product of decades of deregulation of the financial sector).

Capitalism is a lot like a Ferrari, and government is the 'brakes". Sure the brakes slow down the car. But you still need brakes. Without it, you end up with spectacular crashes (e.g. the financial system crisis).

Re:Government-created debt crises

[Anonymous Coward]

Governments do not produce anything, so they must get their money from those who are productive.

The Internet

Re:Government-created debt crises

[meburke]

Granted, the limited scope of a discussion like this does not allow for detailed logical analysis. Nevertheless, "You need government taxation and spending to pay for stuff that requires long-term investment." is wrong! I object to your use of the word "need". Just consider that there are many other ways for government to finance infrastructure other than taxes. And much long-term government investment has only mis-allocated wealth. (The current recession seems to have stemmed from government mis-allocating money to the housing market, and then trying to "soften" the consequences by mis-allocating funds to other industries.) The earlier respondent making the point about increased opportunity costs actually made the argument better than I did.

Dismissing the article as "ultra-libertarian" fails to address the premise at all. (This is an egregious rhetorical fallacy...shame on you!) Like any science or technology, political viewpoint should not get in the way of describing what works. What works, works; what doesn't work, doesn't work; and you can do what doesn't work over and over again and it still won't work. Research in Economics over the last 40 years has clearly shown that a free market allocates wealth most efficiently, and according to an article in the Economic Review in 1992, over 95% of economists agree with this view. Almost all inefficiencies arise as a result of political interference. I like to think that good Economics is politically atheistic.

Politics does have its place; I have relatives in Sweden who admit that, while Sweden is a great place to live, they pay a lot and lose a lot to support their government-run welfare system. They seem to think it is worth the cost, but they have had to cut back drastically in the last 25 years because they overdid it and the costs were ruining their country.

You have changed the scope of the discussion from "What is the relationship of the high-speed rail under-performance to the anticipated upcoming China monetary crises?" to "What is the role of government?" If you think you have the answer, John Stossel (who professes to be a Libertarian) will pay you $1000 for each task you can prove that government can do better than private industry. (As far as I know, no one has earned any money yet.)

Dang...

[Anonymous Coward]

If China gets into a debt crisis, who's going to loan us money to cover our debt crisis?

Re:Dang...

[Bucky24]

Despite being modded funny, this is actually a very good point, and something I for one am rather concerned about.

Re:Dang...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats why we need to keep funding SETI and the space programs, so we can start finding alien civilizations and borrow money from them.

Myth of China

[jmorris42]

So will certain New York Times blowhards now stop holding up China as the model to emulate as we learn almost daily they have as many problems as we do? Nah. They get off on the idea of an all powerful State that 'gets things done.' And if a hundred million people in mass graves didn't clue em in that Communism sucks then nothing will.

Likewise for the cadre of Young Communists here on /. of course.

Re:Myth of China

[icebraining]

Mao's Great Leap Forward did cause millions of deaths, but that was when China was communist. It hasn't been for at least 20 years, starting with Xiaoping.

Re:Myth of China

[PeterM from Berkeley]

China isn't a communist state. When they started introducing market reforms to make their economy more efficient the veil was torn away.

Instead, China is an authoriarian state, the rulers of which will do anything to extend/maintain their power, and impose the cost on their population without giving their population a say.

There may still be a pretense that the ruling ideology is communism, but that's all it is. In fact, the ruling ideology is the continued and growing power of the elite.

--PM

Re:Myth of China

[jgtg32a]

Yeah now it is more or less fascist

Re:Myth of China

[icebraining]

Fascists didn't like capitalism. China is very capitalist.

I think it's something different from any of the ideologies that ruled Europe.

Is it more or less profitable than their roads?

[mozumder]

How much profit is the Chinese road system making for the government?

Also, how much of a profit does other government services, like defense and police, make for the chinese government?

Subsidies, hidden or just unacknowledged?

[martinX]

Here in my home state, the state government subsidises train travel so the commuters only pay about 25% of the actual value of a rail ticket, a subsidy that's rarely spoken of. And still the commuters whinge about the "high cost of train travel".

Re:Subsidies, hidden or just unacknowledged?

[spectrokid]

Here in my home state, the state government subsidises CAR travel so the commuters only pay less than 25% of the actual value. You see: they get the roads for free. The argument of road vs. rail is ridiculous. Tell your local truckdriver that from now on he has to build his own roads and lets see how long he stays competitive.

Re:Subsidies, hidden or just unacknowledged?

[martinX]

Tell your local truckdriver that from now on he has to build his own roads and lets see how long he stays competitive.

No way am I telling that to the hairy, smelly truckdriver. Or her husband.

Slight difference in the scenarios: we pay collectively for our roads via rego and petrol taxes*, and we pay individually to purchase cars and keep them running. Rail users' fares do not pay for the capital costs of the track and only cover 25% of the running costs.

*(My federal government introduced a special tax years ago to make our fuel as expensive as everyone else's and they promised that the tax collected would fund 100% major road infrastructure. Consolidated revenue? What's that?)

The rail is the debt bomb?

[Mashiki]

Hardly. Their debt bomb is the ghost cities, and hyper inflated housing prices. With the average wage under $3k/usd a year, and hosing prices fast approaching half a million, there's going to be some serious really fast.

Re:The rail is the debt bomb?

[TopSpin]

Their debt bomb is the ghost cities...

China doesn't have a debt bomb. The $276G is about 1/4 of their US Treasury holdings; they could build more than four more rail networks with what they've invested in US debt. At worst, $276G is a nice, healthy Chinese scale boondoggle. Anyone calculating how much `freeway' building they've offset?

On the other hand, $276G is a mere two months of US federal deficit spending; 1/6th of the projected 2011 deficit. Every 60 days we overspend that amount to buy various dependent constituencies, as opposed to something of value like a high-speed rail network.

We are the debt bomb.

Re:The rail is the debt bomb?

[WindBourne]

This is China's SMALL debt. Most ppl outside of China consider this to be a minor issue, equal in size to our housing bubble that W had developed. They have much much more debt elsewhere. Their housing bubble is what is going to destroy them.

Re:The rail is the debt bomb?

[Anonymous Coward]

elsewhere

Where?

Re:The rail is the debt bomb?

[Mashiki]

They do indeed have a debt bomb. It's just not the type you're going to normally expect. Go ahead, believe whatever you will. Another 5-10 years China will be in worse straits than the US.

More proof of a pissing contest

[antifoidulus]

This is just more proof the the Chinese government built this just to win a pissing contest. First of all note that they are saying "fastest", but it's really just the fastest AVERAGE speed. The reason they chose average to compare themselves with the TGV and whatnot is that they can jack up the average speed merely by changing operational parameters. The TGV is forced to, by law, slow down when near cities. This is done out of both noise and safety concerns. If the French government didn't mind shitting all over it's citizens like the CCP does, then it would have the fastest average speed. Chinas government is more than willing to sacrifice its citizens lives and health just to inflate their own egos.

Re:More proof of a pissing contest

[Malc]

This is just more proof the the Chinese government built this just to win a pissing contest

And what's your point? It's a developing nation's version of the US' space programme and trying to get to moon.. but probably has more benefits.

Re:More proof of a pissing contest

[Candid88]

That makes no sense, the average speed is what matters, it's what makes the journey shorter. It's exactly the speed statistic they should concentrate on.

If they had gone for the higher momentary speed record then it would have been them trying "just to win a pissing contest".

Re:More proof of a pissing contest

[antifoidulus]

Um, not if the train doesn't actually stop anywhere people want to go. Not if the train makes cities unsafe and noisy. China was trying to make this whole thing out to be a huge technological achievement, but it's really just them shitting on their populace to try to win a pissing contest. Thats it.

Re:More proof of a pissing contest

[Candid88]

What has the location of the train stations got to do with anything? Making it safe and quiet are part of the engineering challenge, doesn't change the fact that achieving a high average speed rather than absolute speed is clearly the more appropriate design objective. It's the opposite that would be used purely for purposes of prestige.

Re:More proof of a pissing contest

[antifoidulus]

No, it's not, you are totally ignoring what I am saying. There is nothing technologically spectacular about what they are doing, they are just willing to make all sorts of operational changes to achieve a higher average speed. I'm sure I can build a really, really fast train out in the middle of the desert that can achieve amazing average speeds, but it really doesn't prove jack shit other than I'm willing to waste a lot of money building a train solely for the purposes of bragging rights. Average speed is a secondary consideration AFTER operational concerns such as location, safety, and noise are taken into consideration. China just chucked all these just so they could win the pissing contest. Nothing more, nothing less.

Are you sure what the joke is?

[perpenso]

The joke is that there are no competent Chinese engineers to fix it. They'll have to hire German, Japanese, or French engineers from the firms that produced the plans they stole to build these lines in the first place and then pay them to fix the mistakes the incompetent Chinese "engineers" made "adapting" them.

I'm not sure the joke is what you are thinking. Its not that the new guys have to turn to the old guys for help, its that the old guys are willing to train their competitors/replacements.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[c0lo]

The joke is that there are no competent Chinese engineers to fix it. They'll have to hire German, Japanese, or French engineers from the firms that produced the plans they stole to build these lines in the first place and then pay them to fix the mistakes the incompetent Chinese "engineers" made "adapting" them.

I'm not sure the joke is what you are thinking. Its not that the new guys have to turn to the old guys for help, its that the old guys are willing to train their competitors/replacements.

If the price is right, why not? I mean, assume a group of 3-5 persons hired 10 times the rate the original employer would pay them... I think it will still be cheaper for the Chinese to do it and the "consultants" can retire after 2-3 years of teaching/working for the Chinese.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[gutnor]

I guess you perfectly illustrated the GP point.

China screw your whole company - affected every employees. However, that's ok because a few of them will be able to retire. There is no more reason to complain about this than against the Banker destroying the economy or corps buying laws - the price was right for them. (and just in case you wonder, I would go 2-3 years in China train them if that bought me and my family financial security for the rest of my life, life taught me that food on the table is a better sleeping aid than good conscience)

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[metlin]

Thanks for derailing this thread with a perfectly sensible comment. You suck.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[AmiMoJo]

It isn't as simple as China copying and then undercutting Japanese and German companies.

Look at it from say Siemen's point of view. China wants a large high speed rail system. They can take on this massive and lucrative contract or pass on it because they are worried that the Chinese will learn from and then copy their system. Of course this is a concern in every country they do projects, but in the past their experience and history of success has prevented other companies from winning by submitting a lower bid.

Maybe there is more risk in China but it is unlikely we will see Chinese built high speed rail systems appearing in other countries any time soon, especially after this. High speed rail is not easy to do and even South Korea, a very high tech country, decided to buy Japanese trains because of this. The potential for disaster is huge when you have two large objects carrying hundreds of people hurtling past each other at 500kph. Can you imagine a derailment in a populated area?

When you look at the cost and risk involved in high speed rail networks you would be mad to choose the lowest bidder who can't even get their own system working properly.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[c0lo]

I guess you perfectly illustrated the GP point.

China screw your whole company - affected every employees. However, that's ok because a few of them will be able to retire. There is no more reason to complain about this than against the Banker destroying the economy or corps buying laws - the price was right for them.

After some 20 years of US teaching the rest of the world that profit is the only measure of success (screw the ethics and consequences), is it a wonder China learns the lesson and overshadows the teacher?

(and just in case you wonder, I would go 2-3 years in China train them if that bought me and my family financial security for the rest of my life, life taught me that food on the table is a better sleeping aid than good conscience)

I wonder how long for US (and other diligent students) to unlearn it?
For instance, how long 'til the open-source software lessons (share and take advantage of what others share in return) will be understood?

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[Grishnakh]

This assumes that these engineers are actually allowed to work as consultants for the Chinese, and aren't barred from it by non-compete employment contracts or somesuch. Of course, if the Chinese pay enough, the engineers might ignore their contracts and just move to Hawaii or something.

If I were a HSR engineer, I'd do it. It'd probably be easy to buy out the actual engineers rather than pay the rail companies, since 1) the companies probably wouldn't do it anyway, or would insist on onerous terms, and 2) the overhead charged by the companies would be very high, and the amount the individual engineers got would be comparatively tiny (their regular paycheck probably).

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[Grishnakh]

This one's kinda hard to develop conscience problems over.

China wants to modernize and become the next superpower; not just militarily, but in all aspects, especially technologically and economically (in fact, their military funding seems to be quite small compared to, for instance, the USA, and they seem much more interested in doing things like building world-class dams, trains, and other infrastructure projects than in building world-class fighter jets and aircraft carriers, which is the opposite of the USA where they build the most advanced military hardware and let the infrastructure decay).

Part of this strategy in becoming a world leader in tech is learning how to do everything themselves (self-sufficiency), rather than outsourcing everything. Since doing everything by themselves would take a long time, they "partner" with Western firms to learn how to do stuff quickly, paying handsomely for these firms' services, but they very quickly copy everything they can so that in 5 years they don't need the Western firms any more.

From a nationalistic POV, it makes perfect sense. Why would you want your country's infrastructure to be dependent on foreign companies? It's the same reason they adopted Linux and created their own government distro (Red Flag).

The USA has a similar demand for self-sufficiency with its military/defense contracting sector, but that's it (it's stupid to rely on potential enemies for critical military components, for obvious reasons). The USA has been self-sufficient for things like building bridges and roads and airplanes, and simply doesn't bother with high-speed rail (they just talk about it a lot but never do anything), so they don't have a lot of the same problems the Chinese have that way, but if there were more profit in having foreign companies build bridges and dams here, they'd happily do it just like they outsource everything else nowadays.

But for a company doing work in China, it's kinda hard to fault them for it. It's good business--the Chinese pay them well--and a lot of these companies probably aren't getting that much business at home (how many HSR lines are being installed in the USA or Europe)? Plus, if company A doesn't do it, then their competitor company B will, so company A might as well make some money while they can, which 1) keeps employees employed, and 2) brings money back to their own country from China rather than the other way around, even if it's short-term.

The thing to realize is that the Chinese motivations are totally different from Western companies'. In China, everything is about working for the good of the nation, not yourself or your company. Large companies there are state-controlled, so they have the same viewpoint; they'll pick a course of action that's better in the long term for the nation than something that's good in the short-term for their CEO and largest stockholders. In the West, it's the opposite; companies exist purely to make money for themselves and shareholders (and most of all, executives), and that's it. The national good doesn't come into the equation at all. I don't think it's hard to imagine which approach is going to do better in the next 50-100 years.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[Grishnakh]

After some 20 years of US teaching the rest of the world that profit is the only measure of success (screw the ethics and consequences), is it a wonder China learns the lesson and overshadows the teacher?

China hasn't learned that "lesson" at all. As I pointed out in my post just above, China does everything with a view towards the long-term good of the country, not the short-term good of shareholders and corporate executives. Buying off some foreign engineers to show them how to do stuff is part of that; they'll happily pay a premium for someone to teach them how to do things, so that they can be self-sufficient in 5-15 years and do it all themselves then. That's not the strategy of someone who wants to outsource stuff and make the most profit.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[i_ate_god]

I guess you perfectly illustrated the GP point.

China screw your whole company - affected every employees. However, that's ok because a few of them will be able to retire. There is no more reason to complain about this than against the Banker destroying the economy or corps buying laws - the price was right for them.

After some 20 years of US teaching the rest of the world that profit is the only measure of success (screw the ethics and consequences), is it a wonder China learns the lesson and overshadows the teacher?

Really? First off, how is the US the only country "teaching" the rest world about greed? And secondly, since when has greed only been a problem for just a mere 20 years?

China wants power, and just happens to be smarter about it than the average power hungry developing nation. But pretty much everyone wants power, and this isn't because the US told them power is good. Nations and empires have been fighting based on greed since there have been nations and empires.

That said, while the economic collapse may have been spurred by US banks and bad US laws, if the US had tighter bank regulations it wouldn't have made a difference. The economic collapse didn't cause the problems in Europe, it EXPOSED them. Countries like Greece and Ireland that borrowed their way into prosperity. Ireland and Greece aren't victims of American policy. The collapse could have been caused by Europe instead of the US, but the collapse was inevitable.

You will never unlearn greed. The only thing you can do is try to legislate it in order to minimise its impacts, but it isn't going anywhere and will continue to be a driving force for all things you enjoy in your day to day life.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[amusenet]

Yes but I think South Korea's high speed trains are French rather than Japanese, probably chosen because of the rivalry between them and Japan as much as for technological reasons.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[wildstoo]

they seem much more interested in doing things like building world-class dams, trains, and other infrastructure projects than in building world-class fighter jets and aircraft carriers, which is the opposite of the USA where they build the most advanced military hardware and let the infrastructure decay).

China invests in prestige projects that look good to the wealthy members of the populace and the outside world, meanwhile they ignore long-standing environmental and infrastructure problems, not to mention human-rights issues.

Don't get me wrong, there are some very clever and forward-thinking people in Chinese government and industry, but there are also a lot of people who will do anything to look good or make a quick buck.

Just like everywhere else, I guess...

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[poity]

The thing to realize is that the Chinese motivations are totally different from Western companies'. In China, everything is about working for the good of the nation, not yourself or your company.

Chinese American here, that's some highly romanticized weaboo-esque delusions there.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[X0563511]

A Chinese American who either doesn't realize "weaboo" refers to Japanese culture obsession, or that the Japanese culture is vastly different than the Chinese. Hrmm...

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[cavreader]

I agree with pretty much everything you said until I ran into this statement." In China, everything is about working for the good of the nation, not yourself or your company." If you think there is not an elite class of Chinese profiting handsomely and looking out for their own interests just like every other elite class on th planet you are mistaken. The ruling hierarchy in the Chinese government have the same motivations and failings as the leaders in other countries. The lables of "Socialism" or "Communism" strictly apply to the worker class. The elites always maintain their status no matter what the popular ideology is at the time. Look at countries like Cuba and Venezuela who like to proclaim that everyone is equal under their system and then take look at the financial status of the government leaders. How many meals did the Castro brothers miss and did they make the same sacrifices the average citizen had to make after their glorious revolution? Chavez was in the military prior to entering politics but after his glorious revolution he and his family are some of the most wealthy and largest landowners in the country. Look at every shithole country on the planet and no matter how destitute or poor the average people are the government leaders are always wealthy in the extreme.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[tnk1]

It doesn't matter. His terminology may not be used in the way you think of it, but his central premise is correct.

China doesn't have people "working for the good of the nation", it has a market economy with significant input from the State. The people on the market side of it are just as corrupt and without regard for long-term consequences as the people in the US. The difference is that this is China's "Gilded Age" or close to it. Infrastructure needs to be built and they are building it. The downside of it is that you have the sweatshops, the corruption, and the political patronage you had in the US and elsewhere.

The State does own large enterprises, but it is fairly hands off with them, at least from the political side. What it does provide is a walled off environment with lax enough enforcement of things like patents and copyright so that their people can get a leg up by either buying, borrowing or stealing tech from other countries.

I'm not passing judgment on China here, the US had a lax IP regime before it became a top-level economic power as well. China is basically trying to be the US of 100 years ago today, and with their growth, demand for fuel and raw materials, and pollution levels, I would say they are succeeding.

The best way of looking at China today is much like a fascist state of the past, insofar as the State is taking a "coordinating" and "partner" role with a bunch of loosely controlled private businesses, and there is a significant nationalistic stance. That label is not an exact fit, of course, but the parallels are there.

The major difference is that China is not as aggressively expansionist, although again, it is not clear if this is simply a result of their current military backwardness.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how long for US (and other diligent students) to unlearn it?
For instance, how long 'til the open-source software lessons (share and take advantage of what others share in return) will be understood?

Some product manufacturers have already learned the lesson. For example, some very high end carbon fiber bicycle frames are not made in China anymore. All the proprietary technology was being copied and given to other companies. This business has returned to N America. China isn't a bargain if your product includes trade secrets.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[marcello_dl]

> China hasn't learned that "lesson" at all... China does everything with a view towards the long-term good of the country...

Strange, because China had an edge for surviving the upcoming energy/materials crisis by simply adopting greener technology at a slow pace. Their elite is all about acquiring control as our elite is, therefore they do the same things in the same way, getting the same good results (considering the amount of control over people's life, not the health of the planet or other metrics).

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[gknoy]

I don't understand - how do people become wealthy in a communist system?

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[cavreader]

I look at China's liberal policy on ignoing IP and copying technology designed by others as a smart move on their part. From a government point of view why sink billions of dollars into R&D when you can just take advantage of someone else's work? They end up keeping current on technology with very little costs.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[Microlith]

That's why he said weaboo-esque. I think you're needing to work on your English skills.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing to realize is that the Chinese motivations are totally different from Western companies'. In China, everything is about working for the good of the nation, not yourself or your company.

That is not even remotely true. In my experience, the average Chinese person is far more motivated and driven to succeed himself. It would be fair to say that they're generally more family-oriented, but as far as the nation and the government goes...forget it. I mean, a government position in China is a huge opportunity to accumulate wealth for yourself. Really massive wealth, in lots of cases. Housing prices in Vancouver are a testament to that.

You have a point re: government ownership of large companies; that may allow a more coherent national vision. Then again, it also creates new opportunities for corruption.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[khallow]

First, read this reply to your post above. Poster i_ate_god answers your questions. Since you indicate you are interested in learning, read that.

For instance, how long 'til the open-source software lessons (share and take advantage of what others share in return) will be understood?

Let's consider that. Suppose I want to plunder open-source software, which is a way to act "greedy" in the sense of this culture, and is completely contrary to the intent and behavior of the community. What can I do? I could copy every scrap of open source out there and make my own software products. But then I run into two problems. First, there's the copyright problem. Every time I do it, I open myself to lawsuits from current copyright holders. Since that's the core of my business is to steal software, then all my assets of my business (and myself personally) are up for grabs. Second, even if there was no copyright issues, I'm trying to sell for money what frequently is being given away for free as in beer-free.

Or I could join the thousands of moochers who use open source software without compensating the license holders. Most such open source software wasn't built to make money per user, but to service a need of the coders. That need still gets serviced. Greed is still obnoxious, but it lacks the sting that accompanies the worst manifestations of greed. Finally, the mooching itself can directly benefit a developer by demonstrating competence and spreading his fame.

So no matter how you look at it, greed simply can't even manifest in a seriously harmful way in open source software. Developers can be rewarded even if their contributions are exploited.

As I see it, there are two approaches to handling greed. One is to punish it where ever it appears. While I doubt you'll agree, this approach has yet to work because it doesn't punish greed present in those who make the rules or greed which cloaks itself in the right language or moral code (eg, Robin Hood's "steal from the rich and give to the poor" shtick).

The second is to provide incentives to greedy people so that they do stuff that benefits societies (such as becoming a wealthy doctor) rather than stuff that harms societies (such as a lucrative black market human organ theft racket). It's far more effective for a behavior to be legal and beneficial than illegal and harmful. Greed is one of those behaviors that can be made legal and beneficial.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[c0lo]

The second is to provide incentives to greedy people so that they do stuff that benefits societies (such as becoming a wealthy doctor) rather than stuff that harms societies (such as a lucrative black market human organ theft racket). It's far more effective for a behavior to be legal and beneficial than illegal and harmful. Greed is one of those behaviors that can be made legal and beneficial.

Except the wording in to provide, I agree with the above as a (at least, theoretical) solution.

Now, in regards with providing: if you see the situation as in "the incentives descending from the Holy Sky" (or worse, imposed by a government), somehow I don't think is going to work.

"Education" - as a way to create the ability to judge the consequences of greedy action - seems more reasonable: except it won't be easy to learn this in a society in which being "full of her/himself" is a social norm for "signs of the potential to be successful". Also, slim chances to happen in a society oriented mainly on "what and how" than on "why".
Mind you, in the above context, "education != school"... I do believe that common-sense can be learnt even outside of the school.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[khallow]

"Education" - as a way to create the ability to judge the consequences of greedy action - seems more reasonable:

And what happens when that educated person realizes that "Hey, I can make vast amounts of money at the expense of people I don't care about!" Maybe they'll choose not to do it. But it's foolish to think that a bunch of rational, educated people are going to leave that lying around. Morality or ethics is not attached to education.

except it won't be easy to learn this in a society in which being "full of her/himself" is a social norm for "signs of the potential to be successful". Also, slim chances to happen in a society oriented mainly on "what and how" than on "why". Mind you, in the above context, "education != school"... I do believe that common-sense can be learnt even outside of the school.

Education != doing the right thing. There are a lot of people who understand the consequences of their actions and screw over other people anyway. I think it vastly unwise to try to "educate" a person who is unable mentally to screw over someone else. They'll just be ripe fruit for the con men of the world. The capability to screw someone over comes with the ability to defend against that behavior.

Second, in reality, "what" and "how" are hard questions with valuable answers. They say something about what reality itself is and how things work. "Why" is just an opportunity to rationalize. The con men and oppressive governments of the world have never had problems answering "why."

Finally, I think the idea of connecting morality and ethics to education has lead to some bizarrely hypocritical and rather obnoxious university cultures. People that advocate equality of men by discriminating against and advocating non-equal treatment of particular beliefs and ethnic groups.

Cultures that decry corporate greed and theft from the under trodden while themselves being remarkably sticky fingered with property of others such as laptops, bicycles, electronics, CDs in cars, etc. Schools that fight sexual discrimination and oppose the oppression of women while suppressing data about rapes among their students. People, who have never held a real job in their lives, claim to know what the common worker wants better than the workers themselves.

I just don't see any evidence that morality/ethics can be a learned behavior like toilet training or appreciation of fine art. Instead, I think it's the matter of carrot and stick.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[c0lo]

"Education" - as a way to create the ability to judge the consequences of greedy action - seems more reasonable:

And what happens when that educated person realizes that "Hey, I can make vast amounts of money at the expense of people I don't care about!" Maybe they'll choose not to do it. But it's foolish to think that a bunch of rational, educated people are going to leave that lying around. Morality or ethics is not attached to education.

I must conclude that we attach different meanings to the word "education".

To answer to your question: depending the circumstances, an educated person may sometimes do it. But he/she will do it in a far more limited times than the current (almost generalized) psychopathic elite.(You know? Something on the line of: "you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time"... pertains to common-sense, don't you think?)

except it won't be easy to learn this in a society in which being "full of her/himself" is a social norm for "signs of the potential to be successful". Also, slim chances to happen in a society oriented mainly on "what and how" than on "why". Mind you, in the above context, "education != school"... I do believe that common-sense can be learnt even outside of the school.

Education != doing the right thing. There are a lot of people who understand the consequences of their actions and screw over other people anyway. I think it vastly unwise to try to "educate" a person who is unable mentally to screw over someone else. They'll just be ripe fruit for the con men of the world. The capability to screw someone over comes with the ability to defend against that behavior.

The capability to defend against being screwed doesn't necessary require to learn how to screw the others. I found that a modest capability of critical thinking is just enough for the former.
That is to say: I can't agree with you in your assertion that "teaching greed is necessary, too bad is not wise to do it".

Second, in reality, "what" and "how" are hard questions with valuable answers. They say something about what reality itself is and how things work. "Why" is just an opportunity to rationalize. The con men and oppressive governments of the world have never had problems answering "why."

We can agree to disagree, then. Far from me to deny the value of "what" and "how", but for me "why" is a matter not for a post-factum rationalization of the act, but a preliminary step in choosing the appropriate "what and how" - "why" becomes clearly important when picking certain "what"-s and "how"-s, based on the chances to reach the target vs the risk/costs to achieve it (it is very rarely a problem has a single solution)

Finally, I think the idea of connecting morality and ethics to education has lead to some bizarrely hypocritical and rather obnoxious university cultures. People that advocate equality of men by discriminating against and advocating non-equal treatment of particular beliefs and ethnic groups. Cultures that decry corporate greed and theft from the under trodden while themselves being remarkably sticky fingered with property of others such as laptops, bicycles, electronics, CDs in cars, etc. Schools that fight sexual discrimination and oppose the oppression of women while suppressing data about rapes among their students. People, who have never held a real job in their lives, claim to know what the common worker wants better than the workers themselves.

As above, we might actually be in agreement if not picking different meaning for the rather loose term of "education". If you pick the restricted meaning of "formal education", then you are right. If adopting a more generalized meaning of "building the mental/rational capacity to evaluate consequences of actions

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[khallow]

The capability to defend against being screwed doesn't necessary require to learn how to screw the others.

I can't imagine why you think that is possible. This knowledge is a weapon that can readily be turned against others, just as it can be used to defend oneself.

Heh... I think you are confusing "learning" (developing the capacity to think) with "taming/training" (building a set of predefined behaviors/reflexes).

I did so deliberately. It doesn't matter what sort of learning you have in mind. Be it "training" or your definition of "learning". I think of it purely from game theory point of view. If the winning strategy is to defect and harm other players, then that's the strategy you will see prevail. Change the game not the players.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[c0lo]

The capability to defend against being screwed doesn't necessary require to learn how to screw the others.

I can't imagine why you think that is possible.

Because critical thinking is just enough.

This knowledge is a weapon that can readily be turned against others, just as it can be used to defend oneself.

So is knowledge on explosives or assassination... sure you don't expect me to learn them as well.

Just because something can be used, it doesn't mean is should be used. Thus, it doesn't mean is should be learned either.
Do you see my reason for which I prefer to subordinate "what and how" to "why"? In this instance, why should I learn the way of the greedy and immoral, if critical thinking is enough (and helps me in other things as well)?

Heh... I think you are confusing "learning" (developing the capacity to think) with "taming/training" (building a set of predefined behaviors/reflexes).

I did so deliberately. It doesn't matter what sort of learning you have in mind. Be it "training" or your definition of "learning". I think of it purely from game theory point of view. If the winning strategy is to defect and harm other players, then that's the strategy you will see prevail. Change the game not the players.

Huh! I can also refuse to play the game at all, can't I? Sure I can, I've done it already.

Re:Are you sure what the joke is?

[khallow]

Because critical thinking is just enough.

Not really. Critical thinking (which includes more than just a form of thinking) applies when there isn't deliberate attempts at deception or fraud. There has to be sincere communication, honest attempts at self-introspection, etc. Further, critical thinking isn't used or is useful for the vast majority of mundane human activity.

As I see it, you have to understand when there are opportunities for deception, what the costs and rewards of deception are, and other possible motivations for deception. Critical thinking doesn't help you. Experience or close observation gives you the necessary knowledge to understand and avoid cons.

For example, here's a video of a simple variation of the shell game. It is a con masquerading as a betting game. There are perhaps half a dozen people involved in running the con and handling the take.

But to an innocent tourist, it's a guy shuffling matchboxes around to hide where the white ball is. What tells them that they're in the middle of a organized team of several people all trying to get the tourist's money? Critical thinking won't. Experience either earned directly or by analyzing such things does. Or maybe they have a chance to observe the game for a bit and notice some people loitering about in an odd way.

A number of pyramid schemes appear rational at the onset. A person has a business which gets a round of financing. It announces good profits and plans to expand the business, which requires more money. The process is repeated a few times until the grand expansion is proposed, where the business, which has now a several year history of expanding profit for its investors. Once the money is raised for this round of investments, the CEO, CFO, and a few other officers suddenly disappear along with a considerable sum of money. The business collapses and it turns out that there is nothing of value left in the company. All those profits were paid for by cash from the next generation of investors. The crooked auditor who had been vetting this business all along is left with a bunch of pie on their face while they attempt to explain to law enforcement officers why they lied about the details of the business's dealings. Some of the early investors are suspected to have been involved since they profited handsomely despite the outcome of the con. But no one can prove anything. So how does critical thinking help you spot these crooked businesses relative to the honest ones?

The two cons demonstrate two separate ways that deception gets around things like thinking. In the first case, you generally are hustled along and not given much time to think about the scam. Even if critical thinking were a defense, you still need the time to deliberate. In the second example, your viewpoint was partially controlled so that the con could be disguised to appear like a more honest business. Critical thinking will fail, if you are working from false premises.

Huh! I can also refuse to play the game at all, can't I? Sure I can, I've done it already.

You have to first realize that you are in a game which rewards deception. Sometimes the mark never realizes they were conned.

Simpsons did it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Simpsons did it!

Re:Simpsons did it!

[lennier1]

Wrong place.
The monorail (German Transrapid maglev train) is supposed to be built in Shanghai.

Re:Simpsons did it!

[Asic Eng]

"supposed to be built" - the Shanghai maglev has been operating since 2004.

The lever you have pulled brakes is out of service

[Joe The Dragon]

The lever you have pulled brakes is out of service please make a note of it.

Can't wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait until California gets a high speed rail system! Obama and the voting lemmings^Wmasses have convinced me that this is going to be huge for our state economy and modernize transportation. Just look at all the successes the Chinese have had! Their people can now not get from one point, to another, at blazing speeds of over 200mph! Wait... what's that you say? Huge burden on their economy? Lack of ridership? Safety issues requiring them to slow down the trains? But... but... what about my eco-friendly, idealistic, blind to facts utopia? WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!?!

Re:Can't wait!

[junk]

I didn't intend to post that anonymously. Feel free to attack me directly.

We all know what's REALLY going on here:

[Anonymous Coward]

They're being driven by Asians!

The name's Lan-Lei. Lao Lan-Lei.

[Riktov]

I've built high-speed trains to Zhengzhou, Wuhou, and North Shenyang, and by gum it put them on the map!

Re:The name's Lan-Lei. Lao Lan-Lei.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a chance the track could bend?

Huh....

[Ferretman]

Guess the amazing rail system Obama was so enamored of isn't working out all that great after all.....

Re:Huh....

[Anonymous Coward]

It does, and has been for decades now in Europe...

Re:Huh....

[donscarletti]

I think it is pretty good. Fast, comfortable, much cheaper and more convenient than a plane ticket. The stewardesses are generally prettier and more friendly than the ones who work for Air China also. There are a lot of highspeed trains zipping all over the place and it is not exactly turning into a bloodbath.

decrease to 186

[Anonymous Coward]

> decreased from about 218 mph to 186

Which still leaves it about 110 mph faster than the average speed of the US "high speed" trains. Maybe it's an OK speed still.

Why mph and not km/h in Slashdot?

[dovgr]

I thought we just had a discussion a couple of days ago describing the insanity of using anything but SI units!

Re:Why mph and not km/h in Slashdot?

[Eunuchswear]

km/h is not an SI unit.

You'd be looking for ms-1 (Sorry about the lack of superscript).

Re:Why mph and not km/h in Slashdot?

[dovgr]

You are absolutely right. I made the mistake of mixing up metric centric cultural conventions and SI. Obviously they are not the same thing. ms^-1 would make more sense everywhere.

Re:Why mph and not km/h in Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we should use it on signposts everywhere - then nobody would be confused. Fucktard.

Re:Why mph and not km/h in Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry about the lack of superscript

Are you too stupid to write m/s, ms**-1 or ms^-1? Hand it in on the way out.

Re:Why mph and not km/h in Slashdot?

[fbjon]

Km/h is a combination of SI and SI-accepted units, so it is an SI unit.

Re:Why mph and not km/h in Slashdot?

[Eunuchswear]

A SI accepted unit, Shirley?

$276 billion is...

[Tailhook]

17.6% of the annual deficit of the united states. About 1550 hours worth of new debt.

"Change" is coming. One way or the other...

Not yet the worst of it...

[VendettaMF]

The story I'm hearing here in China is that the majority of the "Specially trained, highly skilled, highly experienced and professional" construction workers used their extra salaries to hire regular labor off the farms and streets to sign in and do their work for them, paid them the normal construction rates, and then stayed home on the other 80% of the salary.

Re:Not yet the worst of it...

[Noodlenoggin]

So the guys that were initially hired to do the job were actually really smart people then. :)

Re:Not yet the worst of it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant!!!

Re:Not yet the worst of it...

[martinX]

Couldn't the boss tell them apart?

Re:Not yet the worst of it...

[Anonymous Coward]

The story I'm hearing here in China is that the majority of the "Specially trained, highly skilled, highly experienced and professional" construction workers used their extra salaries to hire regular labor off the farms and streets to sign in and do their work for them, paid them the normal construction rates, and then stayed home on the other 80% of the salary.

Hey, we should be happy - they're behaving just like real capitalists now!

Re:Not yet the worst of it...

[marcosdumay]

That can be easily fixed if you are wiling to live with 75% of your salary, instead of 80%...

Re:Not yet the worst of it...

[VendettaMF]

Ok, so the actual hires might have had to make do on 75% of their salaries...

Re:Not yet the worst of it...

[Anonymous Coward]

The story I'm hearing here in China is that the majority of the "Specially trained, highly skilled, highly experienced and professional" construction workers used their extra salaries to hire regular labor off the farms and streets to sign in and do their work for them, paid them the normal construction rates, and then stayed home on the other 80% of the salary.

Remove the word "construction" and you have the basic outline of Capitalism.

This is why USA should NOT do the standard approac

[WindBourne]

The old 2 tracks was fine for slow and cargo trains. It is poorly designed for highspeed rail. Instead, the USA should be developing monorail with seraphim motor. It is easier to automate the operation as well as installation. That is important.

But.. They are not 'coming off the rails'

[1s44c]

The trains are not 'coming off the rails' to state that is an outright lie.

Re:But.. They are not 'coming off the rails'

[Anonymous Coward]

In April 2008, train T195 from Beijing to Qingdao came off the tracks near the city of Zibo, killing more than 70 and injuring at least 420. The crash was blamed on speeding.

This is but ONE of China's bubbles

[WindBourne]

China has so many bubbles. This is just part of the infrastructure bubble. The west should be working hard to get new companies with automation started here. China's cold war is going to explode in its face. We do not want to be there, or one of its victims.

Re:This is but ONE of China's bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

“

Exactly

[WindBourne]

China is heading towards a MASSIVE blow-up.

Safer than the alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

The railways don't actually have to be safe, just safer than the highways. I understand that light rail is often less green and economic than one might think because we hold trains to much higher safety standards than automobiles. No idea how a comparison would play out.

No comment on the debt issues.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[mcrbids]

How do you get severe cost overruns on *rail*?

Trains can carry an entire ton of cargo 500 miles while expending a single gallon of diesel fuel. Because of the extremely steady load, train engines routinely pull a million miles or more (with an overhaul every few hundred thou) before needing replacement.

Further, train tracks cost much less to maintain per mile than roads.

Now, I do realize that I'm referring partially to cargo rail common in the USA, rather than the higher speed passenger trains, but even so, the costs per passenger mile for any train should be dramatically less than car, bus, or plane.

Sounds like corruption at work, if you ask me. (Same as the USA loan crisis)

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[FishTankX]

It's very simple. This is what did in the JR before they were privatized.

Option #1, is what tends to happen is that bribery and such result in the building of lines that will not eventually be profitable. Bribery can result in train services to areas without sufficient population density to maintain the trains and tracks that run it.

Option #2, is that they're building faster than they're acquiring revenue from the areas that they service, resulting in a giant debt bubble who's interest can actually end up surpassing fares on the lines that they build before they can get the ridership they need. People don't all just come flocking to a line all at once, changes to lifestyles and knowledge of the convenience of the line need to happen before the line becomes saturated.

These two, independently or combined, can result in ugly situations.

If Japan, which has a higher population density than China in a lot of areas, can have a rail company fail, then China can definatley suffer the same fate.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Canada, rail travel (yes I'm aware Bill gates owns 10% of CN Rail) is stupidly expensive.
Via Rail: Vancouver to Toronto Round Trip 1,050.56$
Amtrak: Vancouver to Seattle to Chicago to Toronto Round Trip 409$ (Don't ask how I got this price, probably wrong because it tends to spaz if one end point isn't in the US)
    Seattle to Toronto Round trip: 612$
(Aside from the fact it will take like 3 days either way)

Compare Air travel
Air Canada or WestJet : 540$ +/- 6$ and 5.5hours + 2 hours of line ups at each end.
AA, Delta or United Airlines: 620$ Seattle to Toronto

Consider that a one way ticket, bus or train to Seattle is 50$, Airtravel is competitive with Amtrak in price. Via Rail is not competitive with Amtrak or air travel at all.

But the thing is, this is just conventional rail. Not "High Speed Rail" at all. If we had the Japanese Shinkansen speeds, suddenly a 2-day trip accross the country starts to become time competitive with air travel. The Maglev record so far is 581kph/361mph
Seattle to Chicago (google maps) 1day, 9 hours by car. Your average road speed is 110kph/65mph, and you travel 2064mi. So 5 times as fast as a car, plus rail has it's own right-of-ways so there's no car/wildlife interaction or other accidents. So a little under 6 hours assuming there are no stops. That is competitive with air travel.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[rufty_tufty]

I can only speak for the UK here, but.
When the rail system was privatised it was fragmented into functional units, one company owned the tracks several companies run the services, and several companies bought the trains and leased them to the operational companies. The whole thing was sold off cheap to encourage investment and given that it was losing money that's about all they could get for it.
So far so good, lots of competition, should drive prices low.
Except that the companies that run the services were each given a local monopoly not allowed to compete on each others grounds. Good luck connecting up your services from different rail companies.
Onto the companies who own the trains. let's say a train carriage costs £1million. They were by regulation given a price they could hire them out for, they were allowed to charge approx 1/10th the cost to allow them to have a 10 year payback on investment. i.e. they would charge £100,000 per year for a train that would cost £1million if you bought it today (except you bought it 15 years ago and sold it off for a fraction of that cost but i digress).The idea was this would encourage new investment. However the companies that ran the services were not allowed to buy their own trains, they HAD to hire from one of the hire companies. It was in the train hire companies interest to not invest because the fee they got was related to the cost of the train, no account made for depreciation. One or two got wise and bought new trains for even more money but again it was in their interest to buy the most expensive train they could.
So we're in a situation where we (The british tax payer) already had paid for the rail network, but we're having to pay for it again because we have to repay the loans bankers they took out to buy the network. We have poor investment in sub-optimal solutions designed to maximise personal profit. We have multiple small monopolies with all the costs of bureaucracy and lack of competition combined with the inability to reduce costs through application of economies of scale. We have an ever aging network that investment is held up in by planning problems and the fact it takes longer to install a new system than it does for the next system to come along.
I could go on, but hopefully you get an idea of how easy it is to lose a LOT of money on a rail network.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[AmiMoJo]

High speed rail is significantly more expensive than ordinary rail. While slightly warped track or loose overhead lines are not problem at 130kph when you get up to 300kph+ they are. That means building to a higher spec in the first place, then spending more on checking and maintenance. Some countries allow crossings on high speed lines but Japan does not, meaning that the track has to be grade separated (raised) where it passes roads. Since the tracks can't have tight turns they can't avoid buying up expensive land or building tunnels through hills. Japanese tracks in the north also have water sprinklers to prevent the build-up of snow on the lines.

For some reason we seem to accept accidents and death more easily with low speed transport. Conventional trains, buses and cars all have more fatal accidents than high speed rail or air travel. I suppose it is mainly for historical reasons of starting out very dangerous and improving, where as newer high speed vehicles were relatively safe from the start.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[trout007]

Rail in a free society will be more expensive than planes for a simple reason. Airplanes fly in the air. It doesn't cost anything to build or maintain air. You don't have to buy property rights to lay down your air tracks. But each foot of track requires 50-100 lbs of steel depending on the profile. A 10 mile track requires 2.5-5 million pounds of steel. All an airplane needs is an airport to take off from and land at.

Also look at the system like a network. If you want to build a new train station you have to buy (unless you are communist) a continuous strip of land from the nearest line to your station and design and build all of the crossings without affecting other traffic. Then you also have to make sure the line you are connecting to has the capacity to handle the traffic you are adding . An airport just requires a large enough plot of land. You are instantly connected to every other airport within range of the aircraft that your airport can service.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[datapharmer]

You have to figure the cost has something to do with buying a whole crap ton of tech (often the same thing, car, wheel, controls, etc from multiple vendors), support contracts to find out how it all works, plus local labor to learn how it all functions, engineers to reverse engineer it, new manufacturing facilities to create it, testing.... anyhow, my point is it is costing them more to buy and then reinvent the train than to just buy it from someone else, but they will be able to compete against the companies that supplied them originally when all is said and done. Sure, they might have unusual part failures and strange control glitches due to poor programming, but at least the will be cheap! Everyone uses the lowest bidder, often even when they know it isn't a good idea deep down. And that is how China is beating us at our own game.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Anonymous Coward]

High speed rail is passenger rail, not freight rail. You don't want (indeed, can't) mix the two for HSR. This makes the economics very different, even if you discount the economic changes caused by the speed difference (it takes more power to keep the thing moving that much faster, not to mention the smaller tolerances in track placement)

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

How do you get severe cost overruns on *rail*?

Errm, in this case mostly by still building the tracks. For some weird reason that only costs money without generating any revenue. Supposedly costs go down when the tracks are laid, and revenue up when you got paying passengers.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Sponge Bath]

"We have poor investment in sub-optimal solutions designed to maximise personal profit."

Sounds like the US health care system.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[N Monkey]

Rail in a free society will be more expensive than planes for a simple reason. Airplanes fly in the air. It doesn't cost anything to build or maintain air. You don't have to buy property rights to lay down your air tracks. But each foot of track requires 50-100 lbs of steel depending on the profile. A 10 mile track requires 2.5-5 million pounds of steel. All an airplane needs is an airport to take off from and land at.

Also look at the system like a network. If you want to build a new train station you have to buy (unless you are communist) a continuous strip of land from the nearest line to your station and design and build all of the crossings without affecting other traffic. Then you also have to make sure the line you are connecting to has the capacity to handle the traffic you are adding . An airport just requires a large enough plot of land. You are instantly connected to every other airport within range of the aircraft that your airport can service.

And of course, planes don't need any fuel, can carry hundreds more passengers per journey than trains, and there is infinite runway and passenger bandwidth at a busy airport so you can land whenever you want.... err....

There is more to the equation than you have given here.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[marcosdumay]

"Rail in a free society will be more expensive than planes for a simple reason."

That simple reason only states that planes are more economical when you have less trafic, and rails are more economical when you have more trafic. Except for some nuts* that think that planes must be more expensive no matter what, it shouldn't be news for anybody. And, by the way, roads fit quite well in the middle.

* Sorry GP, you may have sensible opinions about other things, but that line of thinking is just crazy simplist.

And, by the way, high speed trains don't fit anywhere in there. They may get a highter price because they are faster and more confortable than planes, but it is realy rare for them to be cheaper than any other kind of transportation.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been shown time and time again that high speed rails will leak money slowly but continuously in all but a few areas, while low speed and freight rails will make so much money it can't be embezzled fast enough.

High speed rails, and the trains running on them are much more costly to maintain, and there simply isn't as much of a demand for them.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Dog-Cow]

I would venture to say that the primary reason that low-speed transport has more accidents is that there is an order, or more, of magnitude more of it. Additionally, high-speed transport causes far more damage/fatalities per incident, as most high-speed transport is also high passenger/vehicle transport.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Urban Garlic]

> Trains can carry an entire ton of cargo 500 miles while expending a single gallon of diesel fuel.

While it's true that trains are efficient users of energy, I find this particular assertion especially maddening. I know the CSX publicity people like it, but it's not really true. What is true is that, once they are up to speed on level ground, a train can carry N tons of cargo 500 miles while expending G gallons of diesel fuel, and that N and G are approximately equal when N is around a few thousand

IMHO, this is not a trivial point about ratios, because the fact that the ratio of G to N is scale-dependent and only approaches one at large scales is very, very important when thinking about what rail does well versus what it does poorly.

Unit trains made up of hundreds of fully-loaded coal cars wending their way across America at 50 mph from mines in Wyoming to power plants in Texas, this is an excellent use of rail, and is very, very efficient. Likewise, moving grain from the Canaidan prairie to the seaports for export, and in general, moving mind-boggling quantities of buik commodities around at moderate speeds between a small number of widely-separated points is an excellent use of rail.

But if you have a lot of little customers all over the place, then it's not so good -- each customer needs a rail line, but it won't get much use, because each customer is small. Imagine trying to do FedEx or UPS with trains, and you'll get an idea of how rail's infrastructure requirements work against you, and how much of an energy advantage you'd need to make it worthwhile.

It is for this reason that, even as fuel prices increase, North American railways are abandoning their low-traffic spur lines and concentrating on the backbone part of their network, and investing in intermodal terminals so that they can containerized cargo on to trucks for the proverbial last mile.

It's also mostly for this reason that passenger rail tends to require subsidies. All that starting and stopping, and the time-critical nature of the "cargo", erode rail's energy advantage.

High speed rail is a whole other animal, it's purpose-built, with special locomotives and cars, and often a right-of-way that's not part of the cargo rail network at all. You gain a lot, but you lose the energy advantage pretty quickly.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Anonymous Coward]

You really, really have no idea how air travel works. Air might not cost anything to maintain, but airports cost an awful lot to build and maintain. Oh, and you can think of air travel with your network model as well. Have you missed all the recent reports about their being too many new flights for the current air traffic control system? It's really not a simple matter of a plane being able to land, or even fly, wherever. Planes do actually fly specific routes and they do so for a reason.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[0123456]

And of course, planes don't need any fuel, can carry hundreds more passengers per journey than trains, and there is infinite runway and passenger bandwidth at a busy airport so you can land whenever you want.... err....

There is more to the equation than you have given here.

Airports are cheaper than building and maintaining hundreds of miles of high-speed rail, and a high-speed train uses about as much fuel per passenger mile as an aircraft, if they're equally loaded. About the only benefit the train has is that you can use a power source other than fossil fuels, which may be cheaper. Of course electrifying the rails adds more cost over just having plain rails and diesel trains. And a few airports have vastly higher 'bandwidth' than a few train stations serviced by the same railway line, since planes don't have to follow the same routes to those destinations.

Needless to say, when I looked at traveling from London to Scotland recently a plane was both faster and cheaper than the train, though having to go through the insane security theater to get on the plane might have meant the overall travel time would be about the same.

Trains simply suck for anything other than long distance, low-speed cargo shipment.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to hazard a guess that the MOW costs (Maintenance Of Way) for high-speed rail are much higher (due to much lower tolerances on rail gauge variance, wear and tear on rails, ballast stability, etc) than even high-speed mainline freight rail in the US.

And it sounds like China built their high-speed passenger rail lines on the cheap, and like just about everything done this way, are going to have to pay for it now on the backside. Ooops.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[trout007]

All of the problems you mentioned about air traffic control are easily solved by technology. They are just information problems.

The cost of an airport isn't that great compared with the cost of other structures that service that many people.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Anonymous Coward]

Now add in the cost of jet fuel. Holy crap rail is cheap.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[rrohbeck]

Rail in a free society will be more expensive than planes for a simple reason. Airplanes fly in the air.

That is under the assumption of dirt cheap fuel which is less and less the case.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Anonymous Coward]

You've missed the mark by quite a distance. The tacks are the cheapest part of commuter rial systems. Most of the land for rails systems has already been established and additional conduits are a fixed cost. Once laid, tracks last a very long time, and their component materials --steal, rock and concrete are very cheap. While planes do not require track, the money they eat up in fuel quickly overshadows the cost of rail lines. One jetliner uses over 50,000 gallons of jet fuel in approx. one full day of operation. Planes are also much more expensive to build than trains. Airports are also much more expensive that train stations.

People are always talking about rail loosing money b/c it's public tax dollars that help pay for rail systems (and I stress "help" b/c rail tickets offset most of the costs), but the Airlines are loosing much more money. No one mentions government dollars that must be spent to bail them out over and over, but we don't talk about that b/c it's "private industry" --more TBTF bullshit. The 5 top airlines in the U.S. just announced they lost over $1 billion last quarter alone (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110426/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_airlines_3). And airlines lost $5.3 billion world-wide in a year (http://www.wired.com/autopia/2008/09/airline-haters/).

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Miamicanes]

The problem in China is partly one of overzealous (cough) "value-engineering", but it's also one of safety margins. For the most part, the trains and tracks run at 300+mph in China are identical to trains and tracks run at 186-220mph. The difference is, the trains in China have almost no margin for error. If something goes even slightly wrong, Very Very Bad Things Will Happen. The same thing happening in Europe (with slower trains) would barely be noticed, because it would be well within the safety margins. Trackside debris that would be knocked away or unceremoniously crushed at 180-220mph could tear a gash through the underside of a 300mph train, or even derail it. One reason why Japan has so few accidents is because JR is absolutely neurotic about inspecting, and re-inspecting its tracks throughout the day, all day, every day. If you want 300mph trains, you should probably have robot scouts running a couple of miles ahead of every train scanning the tracks for debris and damage (actually, I'm surprised such things DON'T exist; it seems like a fairly straightforward engineering exercise to build a robot that runs on the same tracks, and is basically a big scanner that compares what's there now with what used to be there, and gets humans to visually make a judgment call when necessary).

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that simple.

"Just" the land necessary for an airport is expensive. It's got to be big, it's got to control for all sorts of environmental considerations ranging from wind to animals, and it's got to be maintained. What do you think that the land that La Guardia is built on is worth? Fuel per passenger for an airplane is far more expensive than rail. The number of employees per passenger mile is far higher for air than rail. Finally, the air may be free but there can be congestion in the air given our safety standards, which means that not only do you "run out of air" but you can't get more.

I'm not sure which conditions result in air or rail being more expensive to build, operate, and maintain. I'd love to read more about it though.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but you're missing the key point that airplanes need tons of fuel to stay aloft while trains don't.

Re:Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[dotgpb]

If only they had just used Reardon Metal...

An old American proverb...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want it completed quickly, correctly or cheaply? Pick two any two.

Here's hoping no one gets hurt and they're able to correct the problem. Good luck.

High speed steam trains

[Anonymous Coward]

High speed steam trains regularly ran at over 100 miles per hour:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4

Pricing Check

[General_Fei]

Weird, it was only a few months ago that the incredible real estate bubbles started to pop here. Come to China and be absolutely astonished at the ads for apartments and new complexes. I bet at least 70% of the little plastic advertising frames in Chinese elevators contain ads for a new, swank high-rise complex.

On the high-speed train: when I was first here, in 2008, the only high-speed train of consequences was the one that ran Beijing Tianjin (did it in 45 minutes flat). There have been a truckload of new ones since then, in particular the famous "Harmony" line (hexie hao or wohaai hou) from Wuhan to Guangzhou that has turned the old 12-hour stab-your-eyes-out-in-hard-coach-sleeper trip into a 3.5-hour whoosh. Here's the kicker - look at the pricing scheme for the Harmony: the old 12-hour trip is 120-ish (US $19) for a hard sleeper, while the new one is 490 (~$75 US) for a standard seat. Is a price quadrupling really enough to pay for the jump in technology, which was probably an order of magnitude more advanced/expensive than the previous system?

You have to invest in the infrastructure

[fantomas]

As other posters have noted, you have to keep investing in the infrastructure. If you don't it falls apart through use and lack of maintenance. Same for roads, houses, bridges. Railways are no different. That's why we're working on our railways all the time in Europe, keeping them up to date and replacing older worn out parts. Any house owner will tell you there's always a little job to be done on maintaining their house as well, got to check all is good after each winter, etc.

It's always surprised me how little attention the USA pays to its rail infrastructure, but then I think it's a country that operates under different philosophical frameworks from Europe (e.g. more extreme pressure by car makers to run down the rail network, perception that rail is not good for moving people, etc). Only in New York have I seen the attitude that rail travel is useful to have (the metro - I am not sure NYC would vote on closing it down).

Luckily for us here in Europe rail travel is seen as more desirable so gets better funding (sometimes...). My favourite way to travel. Given the choice between sitting behind the wheel of a car and concentrating on grey tarmac for 6 hours or stretching out in a chair, reading, playing on laptop, snoozing, taking a stroll up and down the cabin, having lunch while the world goes by, I prefer the latter (my bias ;-) )

Re:You have to invest in the infrastructure

[penguinchris]

Most Americans who lives in or near, or has simply visited, certain major US cities - particularly NYC but also Chicago, and a few others with decent systems - loves light rail (like subways) too. There are surely pressures from car companies and so on, but public perception is definitely not anti-rail.

Even in NYC, though, you run into problems depending on where you want to go, and for many people a car is still a very frequent necessity. That's besides the fact that if you want to go anywhere *else* in the country, including just NYC's neighboring suburbs, you need a car. The subway in NYC is great, but it pales in comparison to the great European systems (including London and Paris, the only two I'm personally familiar with, but also undeniably some of the best in the world).

Even in cities with lackluster light rail it's often desirable to try to use it over renting a car or taking taxis - but not always. I used it in Los Angeles before I moved there, and that once was enough - it sucks there. But in Bangkok, while a very tiny, overcrowded system compared to the immense size of the city, it's unbelievably useful (or else it wouldn't be absolutely packed through most of the day) and getting anywhere via taxi or walking is incredibly difficult. However, since I've brought up Bangkok, I have to mention my favorite public transit system that I've used - the canal and river boats in Bangkok :)

Going off the beaten path...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be most astonished if one of their trains is named Ruby.

You won't take them in the US since they are slow

[Sycraft-fu]

The US is almost entirely a heavy rail system, made for freight. It is an extremely efficient way of moving lots of cargo, costs 0.5-1% of what it does by truck energy wise. It is also heavily used. It isn't like only a little stuff goes by rail, tons does. In Flagstaff, AZ which is bisected by a major east-west rail line you have a large train go through about once every 15-20 minutes, 24 hours a day.

You'll notice that there are not catastrophes involving trains all the time. Accidents happen, but they are not that common. The rules for what works with a train weighing thousands of tons and traveling at 20-70mph depending on the area are different than one weighing on a couple hundred and traveling at 100+mph.

The US system is not designed for high speed passenger transit, but it works great for moving freight.

Quote W B Yeats

[Kupfernigk]

Hurrah for revolution, and more cannon-shot
A beggar on horseback lashes a beggar on foot
Hurrah for revolution, and cannon come again
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

Re:Quote W B Yeats

[Sponge Bath]

That's some awesome rap, but I don't remember seeing "W B" on MTV. Yeah boy!

It's impossible to make high-speed trains pay

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look at the economic devastation caused by France's TGV network.

Oh ... er ..... nevermind.

I hope somebody in the US is paying attention

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope somebody in the US is paying attention to this. After the Chinese failed to learn lessons from us on industrialization and environmental impact though, I'm not hopefull.

The thing about HSR is that if it makes sense you're probably already moving in that direction. For example, the Metroliner was upgraded to Acela. Plainly the eastern US is a place where HSR makes sense. They've got a LSR and they're already using it. They upgraded the line. It would make sense to *really* upgrade the Acela to TGV speeds. Having ridden the line on regular Amtrak and Metroliner, I know I'd ride it again if I were still living there. It was worth it.

California, OTOH, has an Amtrak line that's more typical of Amtrak service. Almost nobody takes it from SF to LA. There was nobody complaining about the service, or seeking to upgrade it before the HSR boondogle came along. It doesn't make sense. If it did, we'd have already been working on upgrades and/or expressing desire for a faster Coast Starlight Express. Nobody was doing that.

SF has the density and local PT to support rail, but LA doesn't. You probably need density on both ends. The DC-NY run has extensive local rail adjacent to the station on both ends.

Really? Steam nut exaggeration

[Kupfernigk]

It's true that the A4 class recorded 126MPH once. You might want to know that at the time my grandfather was an engineer on the line. After the A4, with only three recording coaches, reached 126mph, it took 3 weeks to repair the line. My grandfather was the most enthusiastic convert to Diesels and electric traction you can imagine.

Does not surprise me at all

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese do not innovate; they buy and steal others' technology and then 'adapt' it incompetently for their own use.

They are lazy and deceitful and their business practices are both shoddy and immoral, and they think everything can be done for free/cheap whilst they pocket the remainder of the budgets.

Posting AC because I'm a senior manager at a Chinese company and I've seen all of their shit first-hand. And no, I'm not staying.

US propaganda.

[Alex Belits]

So in China, a minister complained about his (government) institution having too much debt (handled by the government) to local banks (almost completely controlled by the government) in local currency (completely manipulated by the same government), and Americans are trying to present it as a failure of a wildly successful infrastructure development project, and making headlines that suggest some actual disasters happening?

Someone here still argues that American journalism is anything other than propaganda, wishful thinking and wankery.

Since we are talking about China

[Ecuador]

Forget about Detroit, the Chinese built entire cities that nobody uses:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339536/Ghost-towns-China-Satellite-images-cities-lying-completely-deserted.html

Should have stolen French trains...

[Eunuchswear]

... rather than German ones.

Always better to be in a TGV rather than an ICE when it comes off the rails.

Re:Should have stolen French trains...

[ingdiclemente]

... rather than German ones.

Always better to be in a TGV rather than an ICE when it comes off the rails.

hi, for the performance of trains in Europe, I suggest you read the book "High Performance Locomotive" http://www.lafeltrinelli.it/catalogo/aut/1077561.html. One of the most important indices for the mass axis is not greater than 22 tonnes per axle the art Stao

Re:Should have stolen French trains...

[ingdiclemente]

hi, for the performance of trains in Europe, I suggest you read the book "High Performance Locomotive" http://www.lafeltrinelli.it/catalogo/aut/1077561.html. One of the most important indices for the mass axis is not greater than 22 tonnes per axle the art Stao

The cause of the safety worries

[Anonymous Coward]

It is surprising that the technical reason for the slowdown has not been reported.

The concrete in the sleepers for high speed rail depends on fly ash from power stations, the network expanded faster than the rate of supply, and contractors took shortcuts, inspectors took bribes. The result. Substandard concrete.

http://topics.scmp.com/news/china-news-watch/article/Judgment-day-fears-for-high-speed-rail-tracks

The head of chinas rail, Li Zhijuin, recently was sacked, a highly unusual move, this must explain it.

http://topics.scmp.com/news/china-news-watch/article/Rail-ministry-rallies-to-Hu-after-chief-sacked

This alone will not cause a property crash. What will though, and is already in full swing, is the enormous housing bubble which began to pop spectacularly in March. I have just finished a pamphlet on the likley global consequences of this. Some facts.

-In march property prices ell by 27% in Bejing alone
-Many state owned enterprises and local government investment vehicles are up to their necks in property related debt
-The chines government has ordered stress tests on all Chinese banks assuming a 50% rate of non-performing loans
-Ratings company fitch has just downgraded Chinese sovereign debt, predicting a 60% likelihood of a bank crisis
-The bad debts could create a 'balance sheet recession' like that which occurred in Japan a decade ago, firms will attempt to deleverage together, when all firms do so it drives asset prices down creating a debt-deflation cycle.
-The scope for the government to bale out the banks like that have done twice in the last decade is now much reduced as each time it has squeezed household savings and consumption, also the west is now a major stockholder in Chinese Banks
-With a Chinese recession the demand for primary products used in manufacturing will fall, leading to contagion spreading from Asia to Australia, Africa and South America. Also Europe and the US will not get the chinese export market they need.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/chinese-real-estate-bubble-pops-beijing-real-estate-prices-plunge-27-one-month
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/04/23/china.bank.stress.test.ft/index.html?hpt=T2
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/8332562/China-house-prices-rise-despite-curbs-to-deflate-bubble.html
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/01/the-real-cost-of-chinese-npls.html#ixzz1KWaRVRQw
www.oef.com/free/pdfs/ChinaReport%20FINAL(30Nov%2010).pdf
  http://chinesepolitics.blogspot.com/2010/02/looming-problem-of-local-debt-in-china.html

Does Eschede sound like an English name to you?

[ctid]

Europe is made up of several different countries. England is one country. Germany is another. France is still another. Sort of like your states but probably more autonomous.

Having said that, the UK has had rail accidents and you can find what seems to be a comprehensive list on Wikipedia. Potters Bar is a recent example. I'm not sure whether it fits your thesis, however.

Re:Does Eschede sound like an English name to you?

[jd]

I could have sworn I'd typed in that the Eschede disaster was in Germany, though that's obviously not what was typed. I'll plead insanity.

Yeah, Potter's Bar and many other disasters in Britain were also entirely preventable. Everything needed to be known was known, it merely had to be given attention. Everything needed to avoid tragedy was already in place, it merely had to be used.

There was a rail disaster caused by someone trying to kill themselves by parking their car on a train track. Killed the suicider, yes, but derailed the train and killed many others besides. That's an example of something where it might have been preventable if a whole bunch of things had been different. Those are not in the same category, because they can't be prevented with what is in place right now, though certainly if that continues to be possible 50 years from now, people would have much more reason to complain.

The problems where known defective track or a known defective train causes a crash when the defective part fails - those are preventable. In rolfwind's post, on serious track defects, a disaster is pretty much guaranteed to happen yet we are subject to officials who will do NOTHING until after the disaster.

The subcategory I'm most concerned with, though, are the problems where the defect doesn't instantly fail but gives several minutes of warning immediately prior to total failure, where those warnings are simply ignored. In other words, these are cases where you've gone from the hypothetical situation (however inevitable in the long-term) to the immediate here and now. You can no longer say "well, it might not happen in my watch, so I might not get the blame". Nor can you say "well, I'm not there, so I won't be someone who suffers". The choice made will have immediate consequences, including the choice of doing nothing, and those consequences most certainly determine what happens to you, right there, right then.

A manager in the US who will never ride the train and probably only has a dim recollection of what a train looks like should not be permitted to be so detatched from the dangers that they brush it off. That they can is a serious - and inevitably dangerous - path to be on. However, their distance from reality will mean that they think only in terms of how many disasters they can afford to have and how to make sure that those disasters don't affect their pay. A cultural issue, in other words. When all the cards are down and you can see exactly what you're faced with but yet deny it to your last breath --- those, to me, are the scariest situations of all.

Re:Does Eschede sound like an English name to you?

[ctid]

I've just re-read my message and I'm appalled at how patronising it sounds. My apologies.

The Washington Post?

[sesshomaru]

Seriously, Slashdot is linking to the Washington Post? As if it were a reputable news source?

Let me put it this way, does Bat Boy have any comment on China's High Speed trains?

Re:You won't take them in the US since they are sl

[Hognoxious]

The rules for what works with a train weighing thousands of tons and traveling at 20-70mph depending on the area are different than one weighing on a couple hundred and traveling at 100+mph.

As I understand it, for freight it's the weight bearing capacity (including a factor for the underlying ground) that matters, whereas for fast passenger trains it's the smoothness/evenness that matters.

I did some work for the UK railways many years ago and IIRC each segment had a letter/number combination, where one signifies the weight and the other the max speed.

Economics isn't the Washington Post's strong point

[Candid88]

Still far cheaper in the long run than a domestic airline and automobile network like we have here in the USA.

In fifty years time, the debts will be almost all gone and they will have a cheap, safe and highly efficient transportation network. Here in the USA on the other hand, we will still be spending hundreds of billions every year on ever increasing oil and domestic flight costs (in addition to billions also spent building infrastructure).

Then there's the pesky nagging problem of the oil becoming extremely expensive as it inevitably will do. China's trains will be running on cheap coal and nuclear power plants so they'll be fine, our planes not so and will face oil costs making even today's prices look insanely cheap.

Re:You won't take them in the US since they are sl

[Sycraft-fu]

I don't know the technical details, I'm not a rail engineer, but there are significant differences in how you design light rail vs heavy rail. The weight differences are just immense. Heavy rail really is well named. The trains weight so much that they use multiple locomotives to pull them and the engines have weight added to give them the mass needed. We are talking at least 100 tons, and 200+ isn't uncommon. You can easy have 1000 tons just in engines moving the thing, never mind all the cargo they are hauling.

No surprise the engineering for that is real different than a single engine train that just carries passengers, but is designed to move quickly. A fully loaded TGV train might be in the realm of 400 tons.

SO? They're still 100 MPH faster than USA.

[Anonymous Coward]

SO? They're still 100 MPH faster than in the USA.

Re:SO? They're still 100 MPH faster than USA.

[jgtg32a]

Rails in the US are for freight not people

My propaganda is better than your propaganda

[Candid88]

Just think, every person born in a communist country before 1850 is now dead, shows what their true intention are!

Re:My propaganda is better than your propaganda

[CrackedButter]

I think every person born before 1850 is now dead. Just a guess.

Re:My propaganda is better than your propaganda

[wildstoo]

*whoosh*

Re:My propaganda is better than your propaganda

[CrackedButter]

Explain it to me then.

Those who steal rarely do it right

[Shivetya]

Look at Chinese cars. Very much clones of Honda and other Japanese brands yet youtube is replete with them failing European crash tests, some spectacularly. Very much a product of a society where all the appearances are there but the substance is not. Why? Most likely because for the most part there is little chance the blame will land on those who are mostly responsible.

Poor steel quality, copying only to the point of necessity, and an uninspired workforce, will all catch up to China soon.

Like North Korea, the real money and quality is only ensured when it comes to the military.

Re:Those who steal rarely do it right

[HungryHobo]

authoritarian government, it isn't too concerned about consumer safety.

Re:Those who steal rarely do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

If they built a Honda-clone to Honda's standards, then it would cost as much to build as it costs Honda to build the thing in the first place so what's the point?

And their military has issues with ensuring quality suppliers, too! What made you think otherwise?

Re:Those who steal rarely do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Very much a product of a society where all the appearances are there but the substance is not. Why?

Because the product was made in China.

Re:Those who steal rarely do it right

[steelfood]

The general mentality's more like: There's 1.3 billion people. What's the big deal if you lose a hundred million here or there.

Re:Those who steal rarely do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

All governments are authoritarian by definition.

Re:Those who steal rarely do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

They once said that about Japan, then Korea.

I guess the memo didn't make it to everyone...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Railways Ministry announced that to enhance safety, the top speed of all trains was being decreased from about 218 mph to 186.

Just rode the CRH today from Shanghai to Jianshan Nan and back - cracked 340 kph each way, and spent at least half the trip above 310 kph. Both of those are above the new "top speed" limit...

Then change the requirements

[Shivetya]

If they cannot support their original high speed intentions, most likely from the costs of keeping all that track up to specification as well as keeping the trains well maintained then its best to use them in the most efficient means possible.

China can abandon the tracks, China can and does abandon its own people. Property is no different to them if its living or not. This project was more national pride BS that China was using to position themselves in the world as something equal to the Western world. While in many cases they are they certainly leave behind hundreds of millions of people to do it. Those hundreds are only valuable to China when they need to reduce something bad they are doing in "by populace numbers" - say pollution.

So lower speed rail transportation makes sense if national pride can take a hike. Freight usage would go a long way to paying it off.

No, rail uses a third less energy than truck

[Anonymous Coward]

No, rail uses a third less energy than truck. Gross weight for trains can be over 800 ton miles per gallon, and over 200 ton miles per gallon for truck.

Yes, the US freight rail system is world class. Shame the politicians focus on high speed rail.

Re:No, rail uses a third less energy than truck

[evil_aaronm]

Wait - why can't we have high-speed rail as well as freight? Use the right tool for the job, right? Freight trains work well, reportedly, so leave them alone. But, while it's nice to leave Buffalo at midnight and get into Chicago at 9:00 am, if I can go faster, why not?

Central Planning Fails. Film at 11

[trout007]

Wow you mean a centrally planned economy isn't working? No kidding. Who would have thought. When China collapses it will be just as shocking to the talking heads as when the Soviet Union collapsed or when we do. Central Planning cannot work. It is an impossibility.

Re:Central Planning Fails. Film at 11

[Dcnjoe60]

Wow you mean a centrally planned economy isn't working? No kidding. Who would have thought. When China collapses it will be just as shocking to the talking heads as when the Soviet Union collapsed or when we do. Central Planning cannot work. It is an impossibility.

If you mean to imply that central planning will fail because of cost overruns and cutting corners, then when will the US fail and what will the talking heads say then? Asian countries have been known to take the "best" technology that the West develops and to do it develop it quicker than the US. Now, it sounds like, they've also picked up some of the "worst" habits, too.

Re:Central Planning Fails. Film at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

...When China collapses....

Well, firstly, we'll likely see other nation's economies collapse before China's does. Think of the nations that are utterly dependent on China floating their economy, and ask yourself, if China is coming into economic difficulty, will those countries be able to ask for more debt from China? Secondly, when push comes to shove, China will simply revert back to hard line communism, and take whatever steps are necessary to remain solvent. Unlike, say, a failing democracy, where appropriation of property to meet creditors demands can become messy, communists "just do it".
    Personally, this article reads more like a buttload of propaganda to me. It is likely slightly fictitious, and blown out of proportion, and will be the excuse China uses when, say, America, again comes to them with their hat in their hand - China will loan just enough to keep the borrowing country subservient, but not enough to provoke an irrational response "because China has economic issues of its own to deal with.".

Re:Central Planning Fails. Film at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wow you mean a centrally planned economy isn't working? No kidding. Who would have thought."

You forgot that the not centrally planned economies of the US and Europe already are in financial crisis.

Re:Central Planning Fails. Film at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

and the diff between central planning and central banking is....?

Re:Central Planning Fails. Film at 11

[trout007]

Transparency?

Re:This is why USA should NOT do the standard appr

[Anonymous Coward]

Did that man just say Monorail? Monorail. Monorail! Monorail!!!

Hate to break it to you...

[Moraelin]

Hate to break it to you, but mechanical engineering is hardly the big unknown where you only have to learn post-facto that your design doesn't work. It's not magic, it's physics and maths, you know?

For a start calculating the centrifugal (ok, centripetal) force is hardly the cutting edge of science an more, you know? They teach that shit in high schools by now. Ditto for calculating the sum of two vectors and seeing if that plus weight falls outside the tracks. Vector calculus was cutting edge at the end of the 19'th century, but in the 21'st century it's basic stuff. Anyone who only discovers afterwards that it fell so far outside the wheels that the train flew off the tracks, should just hand in their engineering degree and do something else. There must be some village in China needing an idiot.

And for the strains on the tracks, chassis, wheels, axles, etc, or the tolerances before things go to heck, there are good programs to calculate that kinda shit by now. Finite element simulation for example is a very mature domain by now.

Plus, you know, engineering is just the applied branch of science. And you know what science is big on? Experimentally validating or falsifying the predicted results. There's a reason why, for example, car manufacturers have those wind tunnels, and test tracks, and machinery to simulate repetitive stress, etc. And I can't imagine that it's very different for train manufacturers.

seraphim motor?

[circletimessquare]

it burns angels to provide power?

how many years until we reach peak angel?

Is China now part of the West?

[Dcnjoe60]

"The Washington Post reports that China's expanding network of ultramodern high-speed trains is coming under growing scrutiny over costs and because of concerns that builders ignored safety standards in the quest to build faster trains in record time

China is sounding more and more like the US everyday (well other than at least China has high speed rail).

Yes, coal, but

[surveyork]

Coal will eventually peak, too. And if coal consumption increases due to coal for liquefaction, the peak will be reached sooner. And coal prices will soar. I just hope for the best, really. Where is cold fusion when you need it? Damn Laws of thermodynamics!

Re:Yes, coal, but

[ShakaUVM]

>>Coal will eventually peak, too. And if coal consumption increases due to coal for liquefaction, the peak will be reached sooner

Under the Shaka Energy Plan, we'll use coal for gas (and we have plenty of reserves), and nuclear (with solar/wind if they become cost-efficient) for energy - freeing up all those glorious petrochemicals for gasoline. =)

Gasoline imports drop to zero, coal consumption stays about the same, nuclear consumption goes up. We're given 100 more years to figure out cold fusion.

Oh drat!

[Anonymous Coward]

If only they'd used the Rearden Metal! ;)

In Soviet Russia....

[torgis]

...train rails you!

Soft bolts and screws

[Anonymous Coward]

I love buying cheap chinese stuff (tools and parts) because it usually works and is dirt cheap. However, I have seen a good amount of screws and bolts that are made out of 'metal-like' substances that 'pop off' under any load. Where things are specified by hardness, ie. 8.8 bolts or whatever they seem to be OK (so it isn't outright fraud). However, anywhere where there are no specifications the fasteners will never be up to even a 5 (or even a 1 sometimes) much less the higher quality hardnesses required for safety.

is the above deliberate insanity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the above deliberate insanitty to push some view or merely accidental insanity? When you compare sunk costs to lower ongoing expenses there is a point where they cross over. Planes are a very expensive way to move things around.

Re:You won't take them in the US since they are sl

[AnalogDiehard]

The US system is not designed for high speed passenger transit, but it works great for moving freight.

The impetus behind the rail builders of the 1800s was freight transit, not passenger transit.

Moving passengers by rail was only profitable because a) horse and carriage was the only other transportation b) labor costs were low c) property taxes on RR station real estate was low d) cost of maintaining large stations was low e) the US postal service contract with the railroads buffeted passenger transit costs and f) there was no decent interstate roadway system. First the automobile became the preferred mode of transportation. Then unions drove up labor costs. Then property taxes and maintainance costs went up. Then the US postal service cancelled the RR contract in favor of trucks on interstates built with federal subsidies.

Passenger transit became a huge drain on railroad revenue thanks to the (now defunct) federal regulatory body ICC that mandated operation of oft-empty passenger trains. The railroads finally dropped passenger services en masses and Congress created AmTrak to operate the remaining passenger trains. Amtrak has had a shaky history of profitability and operations as they operate on private freight tracks and have to submit to freight train schedules.

gotcha

[drunkenkatori]

That top down central planning will get you every time.

In fairness though

[fireylord]

It seems that approximately half of the accidents listed therein were down to operator error, mainly down to what would be referred to in the UK nowadays as SPAD (signals passed at danger- aka a red light). The article is about serious flaws in the equipment, not user error.

Quality and cost

[mknewman]

Nobody ever seems to realize the long term costs of cutting corners and quality. This is what ruined the US Auto industry, when the Japanese were learning Quality from Joesph Juran after WWII and improving their cars, we were trying to cheapen ours to make the stockholders more money. China is making this same long term mistake.

Bubble? No, industrial revolution at warp speed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I laugh that people here are saying China's got a debt bubble.
They're talking about debt to equity ratios of 1/2.
Yes, there is an enormous price disconnect, and their ghost cities, but as a nation, they don't owe anyone externally anything.
Even when the prices normalise, and 'pop' the nation will still have every single asset that was built and the debt is owed internally.
Unlike the rest of the world, where we all owe China.
Bubble or not, China's very much like the USA a hundred or so years ago. Lots of over optimistic investments that send a few developers broke, but ultimately provide very real benefits after they're liquidated.

It's amusing the parallels actually.
It's like they're condensing every single western period of economic growth of the last 200 years into a couple of decades - often with different sectors running in different era's.
Before you know it, they'll hit the 1800's, form labour unions and get an 8 hour work day, just in time for their first stock market bubble caused by high frequency trading bots running amok.
It's actually kinda awesome.

fantasy money

[Anonymous Coward]

so joe wants to build a train-system.
he borrows money from bank "lend-alot", so he can buy
tracks and cars and what else is needed.
he gives money to the companies that provide these things.
these companies inturn pay people their wages.
4)profit: these working people either buy train tickets -OR- put the money
into a bank called "lend-alot".
5)errr....?

off the rails

[Anonymous Coward]

no, maglev flies ON teh rails

Re:This is why USA should NOT do the standard appr

[Anonymous Coward]

"Well, sir, there's nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail! What'd I say?"
"Monorail!"
"What's it called?"
"Monorail!"
"That's right! Monorail!"
"I hear those things are awfully loud..."
"It glides as softly as a cloud."
"Is there a chance the track could bend?"
"Not on your life, my Hindu friend!"
"What about us brain-dead slobs?"
"You'll be given cushy jobs!"
"Were you sent here by the Devil?"
"No good sir, I'm on the level!"
"The ring came off my pudding can."
"Take my pen-knife, my good man!"
"I swear it's Springfield's only choice, throw up your hands and raise your voice"
"Monorail!"
"What's it called?"
"Monorail!"
"Once again..."
"Monorail!
"But Main Street's still all cracked and broken..."
"Sorry Mom, the mob has spoken!"
"Monorail, Monorail, MONORAILLLL!"

but but but

[Anonymous Coward]

China will lead mankind into space and get us off this ball of mud! BAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!!!!! Where are the deluded, childish and mentally ill Space Nutters now?

no lack of sinophobes in the /. community

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the Chinese are too worried about $300b in debt, which sounds like a 'good' debt of infrastructural investment.
Probably not worried much more than the $14 trillion American debt.

And please spare everyone of your hypocritical whimpering about Chinese quality.
Everybody knows you have a house full of Chinese goods that you so despise (at least there does not seem to be a lack of customers for Chinese goods last time I checked).
Which I guess makes you a self hating hypocrite.
Today the Chinese produce goods (or can anyways; no country produce 100% high quality) that are as good as anybody (just an objective fact from a non hypocrite; as much as that fact tortures your shriveled being, I think you need to know the truth).

Math doesn't work

[Prien715]

It depends on what you mean by "cost". Setting up an airport in some remote area will surely be cheaper for the precise reasons you mentioned. But let's take DC to NYC as an example. This is a hugely traveled route. The more frequently a route is run, the more the costs go up but trains scale much better with it than air travel. It's also extremely inefficient as a means of cargo transport (all early rail had both passenger and cargo trains -- no reason you couldn't do a 1-day fedex route over high speed rail today). Airplane fuel is extremely expensive relative to train fuel, so it's just a matter of number of runs before the price of jet fuel (costs ~$27.50 per mile according to Google) vs the negligible ($2.50 per gallon of fuel which gives you fifty miles so $0.05 a mile) become more expensive than the infrastructure investment difference.

Plus, the cost of planes is more expensive and maintenance is higher, since safety margins are necessarily higher for air travel (train engine failing vs airplane engine failing -- which is worse?) There's also the professional pat-down squad, air traffic controllers, pilots (who must be higher skilled than a train operator thus cost more), the list goes on.

So while you're reasoning is correct for up-front cost, once you have sufficient passengers that the cost can be amortized across, rail becomes a much cheaper option...which is why the communist known as "Warren Buffet" who made his fortune on the Soviet Blat market bought Union Pacific: as fuel prices go up as supply steadily dwindles, the "tipping point" for train profitability gets higher and higher.

misery loves company?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about crisis or other catch phrases the chicken littles of this world like to spew out.

Fact of the matter is China is one of the few (only one?) major economy with sustained fiscal/trade surplus ($276 billion debt or not).
They're not doing anything that they cannot pay off (unlike much of the west).

The chicken littles better pray that the Chinese economy don't tank like much of the west have already done.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[transami]

Meant to post this as me...

You've missed the mark by quite a distance. The tacks are the cheapest part of commuter rial systems. Most of the land for rails systems has already been established and additional conduits are a fixed cost. Once laid, tracks last a very long time, and their component materials --steal, rock and concrete are very cheap. While planes do not require track, the money they eat up in fuel quickly overshadows the cost of rail lines. One jetliner uses over 50,000 gallons of jet fuel in approx. one full day of operation. Planes are also much more expensive to build than trains. Airports are also much more expensive that train stations.

People are always talking about rail loosing money b/c it's public tax dollars that help pay for rail systems (and I stress "help" b/c rail tickets offset most of the costs), but the Airlines are loosing much more money. No one mentions government dollars that must be spent to bail them out over and over, but we don't talk about that b/c it's "private industry" --more TBTF bullshit. The 5 top airlines in the U.S. just announced they lost over $1 billion last quarter alone (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110426/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_airlines_3). And airlines lost $5.3 billion world-wide in a year (http://www.wired.com/autopia/2008/09/airline-haters/).

Title seems false

[Anonymous Coward]

The title of this article is deceiving. And thus I wish I never clicked on it.
I do not find "coming of the rails" to be a clever pun.

Your typical article without a sense of reality...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your typical nonsensical article taken out of the blue and based on nothing but some "experts" opinion. It's hard to comment on this because it's pretty much all nonsense based on old prejudices, stereotypes and wrongflu insights. The problem is that such authors are out of touch with what is happening in China at the moment. I suggest them to at least pay a visit to some Chinese cities and just do some walking tour with camera. Maybe this will help.

China - the high price of low quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Something cheap, low quality & dangerous coming out of China??? Say it isn't so!!!

I've worked on almost a dozen legal cases involving IP infringement / theft with China (gov't or companies, most of the time the line is blurry anyway) as the defendant.

The pattern is similar. Infiltrate a Western high-tech company with Chinese spies, often naturalized in the host country. Sit there for years & suck information out like a Hoover vacuum. Then bolt & collect a suitcase full of cash when you deliver the IP.

Leave It

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the Chinese government can take or leave a house, but me, personally, I find the rail system to be more take-it-or-leave-it,.