N.Y. Times: In China, Projects to Make Great Wall Feel Small (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/business/international/in-china-projects-to-make-great-wall-feel-small-.html)
QuoteDALIAN, China – The plan here seems far-fetched – a $36 billion tunnel that would run twice the length of the one under the English Channel, and bore deep into one of Asia's active earthquake zones. When completed, it would be the world's longest underwater tunnel, creating a rail link between two northern port cities.
QuoteThroughout China, equally ambitious projects with multibillion-dollar price tags are already underway. The world's largest bridge. The biggest airport. The longest gas pipeline. An $80 billion effort to divert water from the south of the country, where it is abundant, to a parched section of the north, along a route that covers more than 1,500 miles.
QuoteSuch 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.
QuoteNow, as doubts emerge about the country's three-decade boom, China's leaders are moving even more aggressively, doubling down on mega-infrastructure. In November, for instance, 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.
QuoteAs a result, bridge-building in China has become something akin to an Olympic event. In 2007, after China completed the longest sea-crossing bridge, in Hangzhou, the nation has regularly broken records. China now claims the longest bridge of any kind, the highest bridge and, in 2011, a new successor to the longest sea-crossing bridge, 26.4 miles long, in the eastern city of Qingdao.
Quote"For China, a lot of this is about building a national identity. Mega-projects are suited for that," said Bent Flyvbjerg, an authority on mega-projects who teaches at Oxford University. "It's a lighthouse for all to see what the Chinese nation can do."
QuoteIt is the type of engineering expertise the government wants its state-owned enterprises to export – and that is already happening. Boston is buying subway cars from China. Argentina, Pakistan and Russia have asked China to upgrade their infrastructure. Last month, Chinese construction teams began work on an ambitious $50 billion canal across Nicaragua that could some day rival the Panama Canal.
Better to build more infrastructure than more military force.
Rick
Quote from: nexus73 on January 13, 2015, 03:58:33 PM
Better to build more infrastructure than more military force.
Rick
A similar argument is made in Norman Pollack's opinion piece (which directly references the
New York Times article in the OP),
China Ascends, America Declines Infrastructure Trumps Militarized Capitalism (http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/14/infrastructure-trumps-militarized-capitalism/):
Quote
Downward historical-structural trajectories reveal themselves by a nation's absence of will for anything but war, intervention, the disproportionate emphasis on and allocation for military spending, invariably at the expense of its people's needs and the social good ....
With the Sino-American comparison in mind, particularly the latter's crumbling infrastructure, on which we can all agree, I will note current developments in China as a sign of confidence in the future ....
We turn, then, to China, and the excellent article by New York Times reporter David Barboza, "Projects to Make Great Wall Feel Small," (Jan. 13), which details the wave of infrastructure-concentration today in modern China. This speaks not only to planning but also national priorities, and above all to looking forward to a world freed from single-power unilateral supervision of the global system. Every mile of track laid for high-speed trains is a nail in the coffin of US categorical domination of that system. The US knows it, China knows it, the exciting race is on: can development best militarism? Let's look closer at what is happening ....
Will we learn from China? Obviously not. Obama's military "pivot" —his Pacific-first strategy, his shifting "assets" to the Pacific, and of course the Trans-Pacific Partnership, all have the purpose of confronting, containing, and isolating China. War is always easier than internal self-examination. Sorry, boys, it won't work. I'll take infrastructure any time.