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China's Engineering Mega-Projects Dwarf the Great Wall
HughPickens.com writes:
David Barboza has an interesting article in the NYT about China's engineering megaprojects. For example, there's the world's longest underwater tunnel, which will run twice the length of the one under the English Channel, and bore deep into one of Asia's active earthquake zones, creating a rail link between two northern port cities, Dalian and Yantai. Throughout China, equally ambitious projects with multibillion-dollar price tags are already underway. The world's largest bridge. The biggest airport. The longest gas pipeline. Such enormous infrastructure projects are a Chinese tradition. From the Great Wall to the Grand Canal and the Three Gorges Dam, this nation for centuries has used colossal public-works projects to showcase its engineering prowess and project its economic might.
In November, for example, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission approved plans to spend nearly $115 billion on 21 supersize infrastructure projects, including new airports and high-speed rail lines. "Clearly, China's cost advantages are going to shrink somewhat over the longer-term and prices for projects are only going to rise," says Victor Chuan Chen. "I think the government has done an admirable job in getting many of these projects off the ground while the economics were still very favorable." China is pushing the boundaries of infrastructure-building, with ever bolder proposals. The Dalian tunnel looks small compared with the latest idea to build an "international railway" that would link China to the United States by burrowing under the Bering Strait and creating a tunnel between Russia and Alaska.
But whether China really needs this much big infrastructure — or can even afford it — is a contentious issue. Some economists worry that China might eventually be mired in enormous debt (PDF) and many experts say such projects also exact a heavy toll on local communities and the environment, as builders displace people, clear forests, reroute rivers and erect dams. "It makes sense to accelerate infrastructure spending during a downturn, when capital and labor are underemployed," says David Dollar. But "if the growth rate is propped up through building unnecessary infrastructure, eventually there could be a sharp slowdown that reveals that the infrastructure was really not needed at all."
In November, for example, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission approved plans to spend nearly $115 billion on 21 supersize infrastructure projects, including new airports and high-speed rail lines. "Clearly, China's cost advantages are going to shrink somewhat over the longer-term and prices for projects are only going to rise," says Victor Chuan Chen. "I think the government has done an admirable job in getting many of these projects off the ground while the economics were still very favorable." China is pushing the boundaries of infrastructure-building, with ever bolder proposals. The Dalian tunnel looks small compared with the latest idea to build an "international railway" that would link China to the United States by burrowing under the Bering Strait and creating a tunnel between Russia and Alaska.
But whether China really needs this much big infrastructure — or can even afford it — is a contentious issue. Some economists worry that China might eventually be mired in enormous debt (PDF) and many experts say such projects also exact a heavy toll on local communities and the environment, as builders displace people, clear forests, reroute rivers and erect dams. "It makes sense to accelerate infrastructure spending during a downturn, when capital and labor are underemployed," says David Dollar. But "if the growth rate is propped up through building unnecessary infrastructure, eventually there could be a sharp slowdown that reveals that the infrastructure was really not needed at all."
You said it as a joke, but China's debt isn't small. They buy US treasury bonds, but issue their own bonds to pay for them. So yes, in fact, the Chinese government is borrowing from the Chinese people.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's easy for us in the US to decry China building massive projects
We shouldn't decry them. We should envy them. I wish America was still capable of doing stuff like this. Here in California, it will take 30 years to complete our high speed rail at a cost of $500,000 per seat. The Chinese built the longer Shangai-to-Beijing line in three years, for less than a tenth of the cost.
(See any communist country in all of history for confirmation.).
There has never been one. Even the soviet union was merely socialist (and they never claimed to be communist).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
High speed trains are awesome, and they're great for prestige and getting customers to buy that technology. Yet they're out of price range for the majority of customers.
Maybe not? This from a recent World Bank report:
"As of October 1, 2014, over 2.9 billion passengers are estimated to have taken a trip in a China Rail - High Speed train (called CRH services), with traffic growing from 128 million in 2008 to 672 million in 2013, or about 39 percent growth per annum since 2008. In 2013, 530 million of those CRH trips took place on passenger dedicated HSR lines. In 2013, China HSR lines carried slightly more HSR passenger-km (214 billion) than the rest of the world combined. This represented about 2.5 times the HSR passenger-km of Japan, the second largest country in terms of HSR traffic. These are substantial numbers for a system that is still in its early days."
Also, a personal informed opinion here
by definition communism does not have a government.
By definition:
a way of organizing a society in which the government owns the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) and there is no privately owned property
So no.
What you are describing is some caricature of socialism.
One of the primary concerns of Marx was that while in the past the workers owned tools of their trade (such as the drill you mention), industrialization changed that dynamic (why would your neighbour buy a table from you when he could buy one from factory for half the prize... and the profits go to the person who owns the factory while pre-unionization workers toil without ever earning enought to buy one of those increasingly expensive factory machines). Marx thus called for a system where society (Note: I do not use the word "government" for a reason) owns the means of (mass) production.
So your "In pure communism you wouldn't be allowed to own a drill" example is quite silly when Marx effectively said "The problem with capitalism is that we are going towards a society where you can no longer provide yourself with the tools you own" (something that you call "a private business" which supposedly "wouldn't be allowed").
I'm not defending communism, I've moved quite a bit right from my leftist youth, but I really think that you have a very poor understanding of the main concepts you are talking about.