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China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

nytimes.com

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Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#111

Post by malandrew »

marcell wrote: post #77

I'm struck by China's ability to attempt large, ambitious projects like this, compared to America's inability to do, well, anything really. The largest infrastructure project I'm aware of in the USA is California's High Speed Rail (~$60B+), was approved a decade ago and is barely making any progress. The federal government is in complete gridlock. The most ambitious legislation passed in the last decade, the ACA, cau…

Blame the fragmenting US population identity-wise, which has been accelerated by rhetoric on the left. Fewer and fewer people identify as an "American" with each passing year meaning that it is harder and harder to push policies that benefit "Americans".

I lived in China for 1.5 years in 2005 to 2006 and culturally, once you pull back the facade of language and food, it wasn't terribly different than how America felt in the 80s (earliest decade I can remember and the last decade where there was still a semblance of cultural uniformity and support for pro-America policies)

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#112

Post by prodmerc »

zht wrote: post #65
kcanini wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has shown that they are very adept at copying American high-tech innovation. * Facebook: WeChat/Weibo * Google: Baidu * Apple: already being made in China, clones everywhere * Amazon: Alibaba

re: Facebook On the contrary, WeChat is leaps and bounds ahead of Facebook Messenger (which is a more direct comparison). If you've watched Facebook Messenger over time, it's actually Facebook Messenger that's aspiring to be the WeChat of the west.

I was intrigued by Tencent's offer of 1TB of storage, installed the app and it immediately started uploading all of my phone's content to their cloud. Haha, great fucking service, just amazing.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#113

Post by prodmerc »

gaius wrote: post #36
nostromo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American technology companies don't rely on IP restrictions as much as they used to. You couldn't copy Facebook, Google, Apple, or Amazon's products and services effectively on a global scale even if they had no IP restrictions. And China is the second largest market for American movies, which absolutely require IP law to function. So I think this concern is overstated.

Sure. But I predict in 10 years we will all buy Huawei networking kit and everyone will have forgotten there ever was a company called Cisco (for example).

Huawei will shamelessly give away all your data to the Chinese government.

At the very least it looks like Cisco doesn't willingly do that with the NSA.

That should count for something.

Else we'll have to learn to trade like the Chinese, and it's almost inconceivable - they'll fuck you the first chance they get, like some third world shithole, they have no principles in my experience.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#114

Post by flamedoge »

propman wrote: post #48
thablackbull wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those two aren't mutually exclusive. America is an incredibly protectionist country as well if you aren't aware. http://www.eulerhermes.com/economic-research/publications/Pa... In the past 3 years, America has introduced far more protectionist measures than other countries.

LOL nothing compared to China. China partners with startups, steals their IP and then escapes back to the homeland and no course of legal action. They get all the access to the West's markets and then give almost no access to their own. Their companies are all backed by the government and it's rigged in their favor. They cheat constantly, check out the EU scandal where they smuggle goods into London don't pay equal t…

ok sure. we suspect China does all these things under the cover. But what are we going to do about it? Are we just going to shut ourselves in border and let China take these developing markets?

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#115

Post by pmyteh »

Animats wrote: post #90
rory096 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to thablackbull's link, gauge changes take place in Khorgos between China and Kazakhstan and at the Belarus-Poland border. Much of the journey is through the former Soviet Union.

Sorry, I should have realized the route went through gauge changes, even though both ends are the same gauge. That's a pain. It's a routine operation, but a big one. Not sure what they do about loading gauge. The UK has many limited loading gauge lines, due to old tunnels and bridges. No way will a double stack container train fit in the UK. Here's a brief world loading gauge summary.[1] The leftmost outline is the g…

The train goes to a yard off High Speed One (built to the standard European UIC GC gauge) rather than anywhere on the domestic network. It won't be double-stacked anyway, as the structure gauge through Europe is too small for that to be possible. It'll be single-stacked 9'6" boxes on standard wagons.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#116

Post by Animats »

vorg wrote: post #72
thablackbull wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to that, the SCMP newspaper just released a visual a couple days ago explaining various projects. The five main projects of the Belt and Road Initiative http://multimedia.scmp.com/news/china/article/One-Belt-One-R...

"The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading." Can't see it -- blocked in mainland China.

SCMP is blocked? I thought SCMP had been bought by a pro-mainland owner and was now taking pro-mainland government positions.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#117

Post by tiatia »

Well, they build roads and trains. Something that they know. The Question: Will it be enough? Some people claim that there are no more reasonable investment opportunities left in China.

"The power plants in Pakistan, as well as upgrades to a major highway and a $1 billion port expansion, are a political bulwark. By prompting growth in Pakistan, China wants to blunt the spread of Pakistan’s terrorists across the border into the Xinjiang region, where a restive Muslim population of Uighurs resides."

Well, yes. But there may be other ways to do this. China just wants to have Pakistan as a close ally. If India is an ally of the US, it is a good idea to have an ally that can counter India.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#118

Post by xfs »

propman wrote: post #100
thablackbull wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're witnessing is manufactured consent[1]. There is no need for the crude methods of propaganda here because it's not even necessary. Compare that with China; people there are fully conscious of government propaganda. From the SMH article, they expected the west to be a land of freedom and democratization of ideas, but what they end up finding is that it more or less is the same thing. > [2] "A lot of them ar…

But in the West the media is not state run. The Chinese government decides what to run and clearly that is propaganda. In America the media is controlled by 2 political parties and they are either pro or anti government. The media in the West can run any content they wish and it is up to the free market to determine if they can survive. You can listen to whatever viewpoint or angle. CNN, Fox, Huffpo, Brietbart everyo…

Far superior to state run propaganda as to what?

Far superior for manufacturing consent? Sure. The western system of propaganda is far more competitive, innovative, or you can call it distributed in the way it hides its agenda in a network of proxies of capital instruments, which is exactly what it would evolve into with the free market. But what is dangerous about it is that this mode of propaganda is smarter than the people. In states with state-run propaganda, the people are smarter than the propaganda.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#119

Post by easilyBored »

njarboe wrote: post #27

“Pursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room,” Mr. Xi told business leaders at the World Economic Forum in January. I might agree with Mr. Xi, but the Great Firewall of China is a higher wall of protectionism than anything the West has against the Chinese. Forcing foreign companies to partner with Chinese companies and then transfer all of their closely held technologies and industrial processe…

None of that matters. China is spending hundreds of billions to "support" several countries. In reality to own those countries and to bring business back to China. In corrupt countries about 10-20% of the total is going to the elite (cost of doing business) and they'll never forget that China made it possible. If they do, China will undoubtedly remind them.

Also, whatever the cost, China is not spending that much anyway: the engineers are Chinese, probably the workers are Chinese, the tech and materials where possible are Chinese so a nice chunk of that money if flowing back to China. Brilliant, especially since China has a lot of $$ reserves.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#120

Post by dave_sullivan »

thablackbull wrote: post #34
njarboe wrote: post #27

“Pursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room,” Mr. Xi told business leaders at the World Economic Forum in January. I might agree with Mr. Xi, but the Great Firewall of China is a higher wall of protectionism than anything the West has against the Chinese. Forcing foreign companies to partner with Chinese companies and then transfer all of their closely held technologies and industrial processe…

Those two aren't mutually exclusive. America is an incredibly protectionist country as well if you aren't aware. http://www.eulerhermes.com/economic-research/publications/Pa... In the past 3 years, America has introduced far more protectionist measures than other countries.

China and the US have similar policies re: economic protectionism (as you point out).

We have very different policies re: the openness of information. "Freedom of Speech" vs "The Great Firewall of China/kidnapping booksellers"

The lack of Freedom of Speech in the most populous country in the world is a tragedy, full stop.

Meanwhile, it would be cool to see less protectionist trade policies on both sides.

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