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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday January 14 2015, @12:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the look-upon-my-works-ye-mighty dept.

David Barboza has an interesting article in the NYT about China's engineering megaprojects like the world’s longest underwater tunnel that 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.”

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by moondrake on Wednesday January 14 2015, @05:33PM

    by moondrake (2658) on Wednesday January 14 2015, @05:33PM (#134799)

    Its silly to generalize these things. Both as a positive and a negative thing. SOME Chinese things are impressive, some are not. Same for things in the West. On the whole, I would say the West still wins out (and I have lived in China for more than 5 years).

    To comment on what you seem to find impressive about China:
    - the amount of people dwarfs us: This is impressive why exactly? If anything, more people equals more problems. Especially if most of those people have a living standard and education that is below standards.
    - China in N. America: Yes. The president of Turkey [bbc.com] claimed that as well. Both claims are not very well supported by evidence. Nations (especially ruled by authoritarian governments, but also others) like to claim they are the best. The Chinese were decent sailors in a certain periods, but so where other peoples in the world, and some of those actually left evidence [wikipedia.org]. See also the mentioned Polynesians by a sibling post.
    - Leonardo da Vinci: there is no evidence to support this. And common sailors rarely dream about helicopters anyway. Some guys in ancient China thought of fancy things (hot air balloons and such), and so did people in Europe.
    - The King of England was sleeping in Wool because it is frigging cold and rainy on the Isles. You'd die in silk. And silk worms do not like it there either. Romans, thousand years earlier had sea-silk [wikipedia.org] (which I could argue is more extravagant than just plain boring Chinese silk) and imported Chinese silk (until they managed to steal the worms). Anyway, silk itself is nothing to be impressed of. It is useful in some climates, especially if you tend to have a lot of silkworms and mulberry trees.
    - Toilets: I recommend you to live in China for a while (especially in a non-expat environment). You'd be surprised how many people seem to lack a "toilet-room" or other behavior that most people here would find uncivilized. This is a cultural thing. The Romans had toilets, but some later cultures may have become a little bit to obsessed with other things (silly clothes) at the expense of hygiene. Hygiene in present day China is *far* below Western standards. Some of that is silly (we like to smell "washed"), but some of that is also problematic.

    This does not mean we should not be impressed by some of their current engineering projects. But also be unsurprised when some of the biggest buildings they build come crashing down, their fancy superfast trains crash, or big dams cause irreparable environmental damage. Sloppy engineering and disregard for safety or the environment. That to, is the Chinese Way.

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