Thursday, June 16, 2005
long de chuan ren
I just touched down and the first thing I thought of was to read the class blog (really!) Well, other than check my mail and do all the other things a web-deprived person (adsl in china sucks) does. Because I don't know what to do next until time for lunch arrives.
Of course I love the disorientation I get when I read so many things and go wow so much has been written (must read!).
China is bleeding scary. What do they do with a 100 billion trade surplus, and one of the largest holdings of American debt and foreign reserves. They build and they consume. I thought Singapore was mad for rebuilding every overhead bridge twice every year... but I get the impression they're constructing 8000+ hotel floors for the Olympics, expandable skyscrapers so they'll always have the tallest one in the world, and lots and lost of residences for their ever growing urban population, and digging subways such that the ground starts to resemble Swiss cheese.
Fear this: partly because of this has the price of steel tripled (from its previous low which admittedly was also caused by low cost Chinese steel producers, but guess what, there's a shortage even now), nto to mention copper and other commodities. Oil is at 40+/50 dollars a barrel thanks to.... yes... so they can create enough electricity to shine endless spotlights into the Shanghai night sky and light up every damn people's monument from Hongkong to Harbin.
That's until they complete Three Gorges, flooding 6000 sq km and generating 1 third of their electricity capacity. I think that's about 70 nuclear power plants.
There's a lot to say about Chinese culture and stuff... films and stuff (maybe because the Shanghai film festival happened to be one when I was there), but my lasting impression of urban China is their insane ambition when it comes to commerce and economics... and the sights of millions of students mugging for their uni entrance exams causes me to tremble.
Of course it probably conceals the beauty of rural China that I often see on film, and the lives of 800 million people in rural China who miss out on this sort of growth (maybe not that bad, maybe those unlucky enough to be born in Gansu or Xinjiang). Still, before I lament/applaud the intense drive of the Chinese to succeed financially and economically, let's not forget I bought a nice 30's Shanghai-inspired tumbler from... Starbucks.
Make trade wars not bloody war. Peace.
Of course I love the disorientation I get when I read so many things and go wow so much has been written (must read!).
China is bleeding scary. What do they do with a 100 billion trade surplus, and one of the largest holdings of American debt and foreign reserves. They build and they consume. I thought Singapore was mad for rebuilding every overhead bridge twice every year... but I get the impression they're constructing 8000+ hotel floors for the Olympics, expandable skyscrapers so they'll always have the tallest one in the world, and lots and lost of residences for their ever growing urban population, and digging subways such that the ground starts to resemble Swiss cheese.
Fear this: partly because of this has the price of steel tripled (from its previous low which admittedly was also caused by low cost Chinese steel producers, but guess what, there's a shortage even now), nto to mention copper and other commodities. Oil is at 40+/50 dollars a barrel thanks to.... yes... so they can create enough electricity to shine endless spotlights into the Shanghai night sky and light up every damn people's monument from Hongkong to Harbin.
That's until they complete Three Gorges, flooding 6000 sq km and generating 1 third of their electricity capacity. I think that's about 70 nuclear power plants.
There's a lot to say about Chinese culture and stuff... films and stuff (maybe because the Shanghai film festival happened to be one when I was there), but my lasting impression of urban China is their insane ambition when it comes to commerce and economics... and the sights of millions of students mugging for their uni entrance exams causes me to tremble.
Of course it probably conceals the beauty of rural China that I often see on film, and the lives of 800 million people in rural China who miss out on this sort of growth (maybe not that bad, maybe those unlucky enough to be born in Gansu or Xinjiang). Still, before I lament/applaud the intense drive of the Chinese to succeed financially and economically, let's not forget I bought a nice 30's Shanghai-inspired tumbler from... Starbucks.
Make trade wars not bloody war. Peace.
# posted by Jesse @ 12:07 PM 
