China Infrastructure Compared To U.S. Infrastructure

Sorry that communism works so well, might as well pack it in over here and learn Mandarin

 

Why would the left have a problem with communism ?

 

When I think of China I see lipstick on a pig.

Looks a little better but still a pig.

 

If we’re still talking infrastructure comparisons, we’re the pig without lipstick.

 

Good thing we now have a president who can get an infrastructure bill passed.

 

That’s probably not enough to build a mile of subway in NYC with all the palms that have to be greased.

 

Yeah sure - Great infrastructure and care for it's citizens (LMAO).

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MI2LNfv35iE

I think you should move there so you may be happy!

 

East Palestine residents ask, “They have mushroom cloud explosions in China too ???”

 

Guess which country has the world's BEST freight rail system? Then tell me if that correlates with having the world's largest economy.

China and Europe have better people rail systems, but how about highways? Germany's highways are built to last longer than the ones in the U.S., but I would argue that our highways are just as useful as Germany's, if not more so. Germany keeps large trucks off the roads on the weekends, which hinders their economy. China's highways are dreadful. In some areas in the south, it is not unusual to drive for more than an hour on a highway without an exit. When they get into a major traffic jam, especially around Chinese New Year, the traffic jam could last as long as NINE DAYS. When is the last 9-day traffic jam that the U.S. has had?

China has another problem that no one likes to talk about. Their high speed rail system, which they are so proud of, will not last as long as it was designed to. They used sub-standard fly ash to make the concrete in the system. Their entire country produces less than 20% of the amount of high-quality fly ash that was required when they were building HSR, and they didn't import any. What does low quality fly ash do to concrete over time? It destroys it--sulfur oxides and other chemicals in the fly ash form acids that eat away at the concrete over time. How did so much low quality fly ash get mixed into the concrete? The truck driver would provide the (good) sample for testing (that had nothing to do with what was in the truck) upon arrival at the site, and the Chinese on site were too lazy to sample the truck load themselves. Just like their 70-year apartment buildings that are abandoned after 50 years, their high speed rail system will need to be replaced in a few decades. What happens when there is a major accident in a HSR train, like a train falling off an overpass from a high elevation? China's first reaction is to bury the train full of dead people and pretend nothing happened. Is that the clean infrastructure that you want?

As far as technology goes, China's best technology is usually stolen from the west. There is not a good system for getting a country to respect I.P. rules and not steal technology, except to stop doing business with that country. Even then, China might continue to sell into your country through a third country, like Mexico. China's HSR trains? Cheap knockoffs of German Siemens trains.

And be careful what you wish for. China has air pollution in their cities that make American cities look (and smell) squeaky clean in comparison. I have worked in several cities in China, and most of them were horrible for air quality. You could almost cut the pollution with a knife. That does not show up in cartoon drawings about China, but it's true.

Don't believe all the propaganda that you read.

 

Or we could learn from them.

N’ah, let’s just find a way to demean them.

 

China finally has a plan to fix its property crisis. Some cities are buying up unsold housing and converting them into affordable housing. WTF? Unless you are taking a large apartment and turning it into two small ones, how is this plan going to rescue the economy? China could force real estate companies to sell housing at a fraction of the price, but someone still has to absorb the huge loss. And who are they going to put into the houses? A lot of the housing is in cities like Chongqing where no one wants to live (the "ghost cities"). People in China have plenty of houses--a big part of the problem was that people were investing in second houses (because they value real estate that much). I don't see this as solving their problem.

This is how the centralized economy of China thinks: "If something is good, then ten times as much should be ten times better." It doesn't always work that way. At some point, you're just wasting money. This moves smacks of desperation. And converting higher quality housing into "affordable housing" sounds by its very nature to be destructive.

China has teased how it might fix its property crisis. Markets are loving it

 

The rail car accident in East Palestine will never happen in China. China has essentially zero freight rail lines. All of their hazardous cargo either travels by water or by highway, which is actually much more dangerous than by rail.

 

Only because the U.S. stupidly stopped aid to Ukraine. They had fought to a stalemate and were starting to make some gains before republican dimwits pulled the rug out from under them. Sending military aid to Ukraine is one of the smartest things we can possibly spend money on. By spending billions on weapons and ammo for Ukraine, we will save trillions over the next decade (in money that we will not need to spend on defense). That is exactly what happened when Afghanistan (with our help) defeated Russia and Russia's economy collapsed. Russia couldn't support their own military, which shrank to a fraction of its former size, so we reduced defense spending in the 1990's by a total of $2.55 trillion.

Did Afghanistan need direct U.S. involvement to defeat Russia? Russia is well-known for losing war after war after war throughout history. Why should this war be any different?

If Ukraine is fighting Russia, then yes, they are a strategic ally. And yes, Ukraine does provide a HUGE benefit to the U.S. They are known as the world's breadbasket. If they aren't feeding the world, the poorer parts of the world get angry and turn to radical religions, and then they start killing people. Ever hear about 9-11? Ever hear about the Syrian War? Both were at least partially caused by starvation and extreme poverty.

 

Nobody wants to live in Chongqing? Doesn't it literally have like 30 something million population?



The issue with a lot of Westerners' analysis of China is that they're outdated. China grows fast, it's a different country every few years. What may be true 10 years ago may be completely different by now.

Our freight rail system was built many, many years ago, as is our highway system. They're exactly the examples people refer to when they ask "why can't we do something like that anymore?"

So what if China has to replace a lot of the HST system some years down the line? The whole 28000 miles of it cost them like $800 billion. The less than 500 miles of the 1st stage California HSR will cost over $100 billion, and it'll only connect the gleaming metropolises of Modesto and Bakersfield. They can build their system 5 times over and still have money left over compared to our cost.

 

The city does have plenty of people. The problem is that it does not have the people and the industry that Beijing wants it to have. Beijing spent huge amounts of money to build the Three Gorges Dam, and this supply of water was supposed to support a ton of manufacturing companies, as well as shipping from these companies to the coastal areas. Beijing wants people (and businesses) to move from the coastal areas into Chongqing, and they refuse to go. Chongqing is viewed as backwards and somewhat desolate, in spite of the large population. The culture is also very much different than the coastal areas.

California is a bad place to build HSR. Earthquake-prone region, with only two mega-cities 340 miles apart, and a very expensive labor pool. New York to D.C. is the best place to build HSR in the U.S. Plenty of large cities, all in a line that only stretches 237 miles: New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. The line would lend itself to future construction to include Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago, with a side track to Detroit. It would just be difficult to run elevated track through the cities without knocking down a bunch of buildings. And the necessity is much greater in the D.C. - N.Y. corridor: it's the busiest air corridor in the world.

China's GDP should be dropping in the future, as their population ages, and western countries refuse to buy their products as they militarize and threaten their neighbors under their dictator Xi.

 

Desperate and futile attempts to thwart China via angry keyboarding.

 

Notice the facile transition from “China collapse a threat to world economy” to “China surplus industrial capacity a threat to world economy.”

 

Unless you are a neighbor of China (or a company getting technology stolen by China), there is no need to thwart China. China is doing an excellent job of thwarting itself. One child policy, maintained up until a few short years ago? Huge mistake (population is already shrinking and aging). Central planning throwing money at housing in ghost cities? Major mistake (no one wants to buy the housing). Over-investing in national defense and planning an invasion of Taiwan? Enormous mistake (wealthiest customers of China are turned off and turning elsewhere for products). Building a tech hub city in the middle of a swamp outside of Beijing? Another big, arrogant mistake.