China, Argentina sign $10 billion railway deals

Too funny. US welcomed millions from around the world over the last 2 centuries.

China has no use for foreigners taking jobs/resources it desperately needs for its +1 billion people.

Ironic that US & Europe set up the train technologies for them to just copy and now they're becoming a supplier/competitor.

What the hell can the West do that the Chinese can't copy/produce cheaper?

 

I wonder if they also investigated that Alaska is the highest center of earthquakes, some severe, in North America.

 

Good thing we have planes.

 

Which is precisely why high speed rail is so appealing to various countries around the world... 100 A380s can carry how many people on a daily basis, at what cost, for how many years, and while generating how much carbon?

 

I dont know why you guys just keep spewing shit about china, a country obviously most of you have not a clue about yet still fear mixed with jealousy.

US didnt have anything, you think the chinese want those 20 yearold amtrak train technology? China first started getting into trains to build its infrastructure, it was a partnership with Germany. They wanted to connect the entire country using germany's maglev trains, but soon realized it wasnt feasible, it cost something like $30million usd to build 1 km of track. Also the chinese was very unhappy with the speed/cost the germans were doing things.

So they shelved the maglev (only a small part was built in shanghai mostly for tourism), and did the next best thing and got into the regular high speed train(ie: the trains that do not lift off the track). Initial technology came from germany and i think some studies from the japanese.

Eventually it was improved upon significantly by china themselves and right now china has the WORLD'S BEST TRAIN TECHNOLOGY. Look it up, many countries are asking china to provide their train technology/service to build its own system, including california.

I was on one of those trains while there for the world trade expo 2010, it was very nice, the tracks are single piece so you dont get those bumps like on regular tracks when the two end meet, it was very smooth. Took only 9 hrs to get from shanghai to beijin(~800 miles), they are building even faster trains now that will cut that by half to <5 hrs!

It's quite amazing. We are not talking about some showpiece, but plans to connect the entire country and replace traditional trains altogether in 10 years.

here's a relatively accurate and balanced cnn article with some background on this project for those of you redneck china "experts" who never left your hometown your whole life.

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China's amazing new bullet train

This year Beijing will spend $50 billion on what will soon be the world's biggest high-speed train system. Here's how it works.
By Bill Powell, senior writer
Last Updated: August 6, 2009: 10:06 AM ET

(Fortune Magazine) -- When lunch break comes at the construction site between Shanghai and Suzhou in eastern China, Xi Tong-li and his fellow laborers bolt for some nearby trees and the merciful slivers of shade they provide. It's 95 degrees and humid -- a typically oppressive summer day in southeastern China -- but it's not just mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the midday sun.

Xi is among a vast army of workers in China -- according to Beijing's Railroad Ministry, 110,000 were laboring on a single line, the Beijing-Shanghai route, at the beginning of 2009 -- who are building one of the largest infrastructure projects in history: a nationwide high-speed passenger rail network that, once completed, will be the largest, fastest, and most technologically sophisticated in the world.

Creating a rail system in a country of 1.3 billion people guarantees that the scale will be gargantuan. Almost 16,000 miles of new track will have been laid when the build-out is done in 2020. China will consume about 117 million tons of concrete just to construct the buttresses on which the tracks will be carried. The total amount of rolled steel on the Beijing-to-Shanghai line alone would be enough to construct 120 copies of the "Bird's Nest" -- the iconic Olympic stadium in Beijing. The top speed on trains that will run from Beijing to Shanghai will approach 220 miles an hour. Last year passengers in China made 1.4 billion rail journeys, and Chinese railroad officials expect that in a nation whose major cities are already choked with traffic, the figure could easily double over the next decade.

Construction on the vast multibillion-dollar project commenced in 2005 and will run through 2020. This year China will invest $50 billion in its new high-speed passenger rail system, more than double the amount spent in 2008. By the time the project is completed, Beijing will have pumped $300 billion into it. This effort is of more than passing historical interest. It can be seen properly as part and parcel of China's economic rise as a developing nation modernizing at warp speed, catching up with the rich world and in some instances -- like high-speed rail -- leapfrogging it entirely.

But this project symbolizes even more than that. This monumental infrastructure build-out has become the centerpiece of China's effort to navigate the global financial crisis and the ensuing recession.
China's stimulus package

Last November, as the developed world imploded -- taking China's massive export growth and the jobs it had created with it -- Beijing announced a two-year, $585 billion stimulus package -- about 13% of 2008 GDP.
.......

How China mobilized its vast resources

At a moment when the developed world -- the U.S., Europe, and Japan -- is still stuck in the deepest recession since the early 1980s, China's rebound is startling. And the news comes just as Washington is embroiled in its own debate about whether the U.S. requires -- and can afford -- another round of stimulus, since the first one, earlier this year, has thus far done little to halt the downturn. Tax cuts made up about one-third of the $787 billion package, and only $60 billion of the remaining $500 billion has been spent so far.

Proponents of more stimulus are likely to cite China's example of what a properly designed stimulus program can accomplish. Maybe so. But a closer look at China's high-speed rail program also reveals some risks that should factor into the "Why can't we do that?" debate that's surely coming in Washington.

Xia Guobin, an amiable 51-year-old, is vice president and chief engineer for China Railway Construction Co., the largest of three state-owned companies that are the primary contractors for China's railway build-out. Sitting in the company's Beijing headquarters, I tell him it's likely that U.S. policymakers will look at China and suffer a pronounced case of infrastructure envy. He chuckles and says, "Well, it's not as if we were all standing around here doing nothing when the world financial crisis hit."

He says it jokingly, but it's the first key to understanding why China seems to be getting quick economic traction from its spending. As anyone who lives here knows, the government's massive infrastructure investment has been underway for years. Ports, bridges, airports, highways -- China in three years' time will have more miles of multilane highways than exist in the U.S. The rail program itself began four years ago, and the first spur opened just before the Olympics last year, linking Beijing with the city of Tianjin, 70 miles away -- a ride that now takes just about 30 minutes.

This is the definition, in other words, of "shovel-ready." China, for instance, was able to more than double its rail spending this year because, for the most part, it could simply move up plans that were already in place. That means existing orders for steel and cement and process-control systems and computer chips were all expanded (and given the softness in the export sector, most suppliers have had no trouble meeting the increased demand).

Last year China Railway Construction Co., the nation's largest railroad builder, hired 14,000 new university graduates -- civil and electrical engineers mostly -- from the class of 2008. This year, says Liang Yi, the vice CEO of the CRCC subsidiary working on the Beijing-to-Shanghai high-speed line, the company may hire up to 20,000 new university grads to cope with the company's intensifying workload. But with the private sector cutting way back on hiring -- and university students desperate for work -- taking on that many new engineers and managers hasn't been too difficult.

It's been even less of a problem offering jobs to manual laborers on sites across the country. Liang says his unit alone is absorbing 8,000 more workers this year than it did last. It gives each one five days of basic safety training, which isn't a lot, but in China it's very rare for manual laborers to get any safety training. Says chief engineer Xia: "Yes, we have more pressure on us, but we're not doing anything we weren't doing before. We're just doing more of it."

The other key thing to remember is that China's brand-new high-speed rail network will be the product of the country's economic system. For all the free-market progress China has made in the past 30 years, a heavy "command and control" component still exists. The central government in Beijing holds all the key levers of power. The Railroad Ministry sets the plans, state-owned banks lend the money, and state-owned companies get the projects rolling. In the meantime many private businesses struggle to get bank loans.

Indeed, "command and control" is an especially fitting metaphor for the high-speed railway build-out. Until 1984 the Ministry of Railroads and what are now the construction companies were all part of China's People's Liberation Army. To this day, many of the senior and middle management ranks are made up of former army officers -- conservative executives who are very good at following orders.


full article: http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/03/news/international/china_high_speed_bullet_train.fortune/index.htm

 

China Set to Exert Its Military Influence Abroad

Communist China remains passive in pointing the finger at North Korea over the the sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan, seemingly giving the benefit of the doubt to the North. If a shooting war flares up on the Korean Peninsula, would China intervene militarily on behalf of the North, as it did in the Korean War?

Though the answer to that question is unknown, it is clear that China possesses significant military clout and views the United States as a hostile power. It is also clear that a new shooting war in Korea would necessarily involve U.S. soldiers as combatants, regardless of whether the U.S. Congress or the American people would want to enter or avoid such a conflict, since the United States still maintains tens of thousands of soldiers in South Korea, more than half a century after the Korean War.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) on August 16 released its annual report to Congress on the current military status of the People’s Republic of China. According to the report, the DoD “estimates China’s total military-related spending for 2009 to be over $150 billion, using 2009 prices and exchange rates.” By comparison, the DoD 2009 annual report estimated “China’s total military-related spending for 2008 to be between $105 billion and $150 billion, using 2007 prices and exchange rates.”

The new DoD report outlined China’s recent military buildup, offering an assessment of China’s current military readiness and long-term plans.

The Executive Summary of the DoD’s report states that “China’s ability to sustain military power at a distance, today, remains limited.” But how about the future? The China Daily (the Communist state-run Chinese newspaper) reported that “more than 1,000 army and air force officers and soldiers from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will take part in an anti-terror exercise in Kazakhstan this autumn,” according to Chinese Defense Ministry spokesmen.

The Chinese military exercise will take place at the Matybulak base, near Gvardeisky in Kazakhstan, as part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) “Peace Mission 2010” annual military exercises, which will be held this year from September 9 to 25.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a Euroasian collective security pact composed of China, Russia, and several former Soviet central Asian republics such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Other SCO observer member-states include Belarus, Mongolia, Pakistan, India, and Iran. Working together as one, the SCO’s main goal, according to its official website, is to combat “terrorism, separatism and extremism.” The SCO is described by ma in the West as constituting a challenge to U.S. or Western influence in central Asia, viewing the SCO as the anti-NATO of the East or new Warsaw Pact.

China’s ability to project its military might beyond its borders may well be limited for now, but its spearheading of the SCO in 2010 has given it new opportunities to conduct mock-war games and military drills outside its country. The news of China’s deployment to Kazakhstan, even if only for a couple of weeks, demonstrates that China is determined to expand its foreign and/or overseas capabilities.

Page 2 of the DoD’s report also stated that the Chinese Navy is “improving its over-the horizon (OTH) targeting capability with Sky Wave and Surface Wave OTH radars. OTH radars could be used in conjunction with imagery satellites to assist in locating targets at great distances from PRC shores to support long range precision strikes, including by anti-ship ballistic missiles.” (Emphasis added.)

In regards to anti-ship ballistic missiles, the Chinese PLA recently officially unvieled its new deadly "game changing" sea-killer — the Dong Feng 21A. The Dong Feng 21A, as reported by FOX News, is capable of penetrating the "defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier from a distance of more than 900 miles" and would be able to cause severe or critical damage to such an aircraft carrier well before it could retaliate by luanching its fighter jets to Chinese shores.

Read more. Full article......................

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index...a-sets-to-exert-its-military-influence-abroad

 

China will not goto war with us, us will not goto war with china. So much sensationalism over nothing.

 

China will bore a "hole" through the center of the Earth in order to do that.......and rescue those trapped miners at the same time.