Chinese Economics Thread
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Xi Jinping has been gradually decreasing the spending on infrastructure since 2015. So far, it made sense to build more rail despite being unprofitable because the faster movement of goods and people always leads to more economic activity (1% faster transportation leads to a 0.1% larger GDP). An unprofitable rail line may be enabling more economic activity than the loss it causes. It seems China will decrease the infrastructure spending further and will support education and science/technology instead. At this point in China's development, this is probably a better strategy.
China built already lot of expressways and high speed railways, so heavy intense investment in such infrastructure is naturally to getting down as it built it up already, so now focus on maintaing it properly, not to allow it to crumble like in US. Next phase would be investing in future transport such is supersonic flight, hyperloop, introducing drone transport to big cities as well as to remote rural areas...
No way. They are still building the 8x8 high speed rail grid. They are also building a railway from Sichuan into Tibet.
After that investment in high speed rail might slow down but there is no sign of it happening right now.
Hyperloop is an unworkable pointless concept. It is a smokescreen by US EV auto industry to prevent rise of high speed rail there.
China is working on maglev but I doubt it will be built to the same degree high speed rail was as the economics aren't there. It will probably happen next decade or late this decade.
Supersonic flight still has the noise issue and it is energetically expensive, so I doubt it will be used for anything other than transoceanic travel if any. Given that the main target will be travel to the Americas I doubt European or Asian manufacturers will be allowed to compete.
I think over the next decade we will see minor investment into maglev and major investment into converting the vehicle fleet to EVs. The major investment into infrastructure will likely switch to decarbonization of the electric power industry with massive construction of gas and nuclear power plants as well as transmission grids.
After that investment in high speed rail might slow down but there is no sign of it happening right now.
Hyperloop is an unworkable pointless concept. It is a smokescreen by US EV auto industry to prevent rise of high speed rail there.
China is working on maglev but I doubt it will be built to the same degree high speed rail was as the economics aren't there. It will probably happen next decade or late this decade.
Supersonic flight still has the noise issue and it is energetically expensive, so I doubt it will be used for anything other than transoceanic travel if any. Given that the main target will be travel to the Americas I doubt European or Asian manufacturers will be allowed to compete.
I think over the next decade we will see minor investment into maglev and major investment into converting the vehicle fleet to EVs. The major investment into infrastructure will likely switch to decarbonization of the electric power industry with massive construction of gas and nuclear power plants as well as transmission grids.
This is just the "West", aka. Anglo-Americans attempt to subvert Belt & Road through some sort of so-called rules based hand tying to prevent China investment without their direct or indirect oversight. Mark my words, most or all such "Western" aka. Anglo-American investment will include restrictions on China investment that must be either compatible with or entirely incompatible. Meaning, compatible in the sense that China must follow the standards allowed by the Anglo-Americans and incompatible in the sense that China investments are not allowed in every other case.
This will never work. Even now with the limited pro-China sentiment that exists on Western, aka. Anglo-American, social media, any overt pro-China content creators are actively shadow banned by algorithm. None of them can gain any lasting viral traction because of this and even if then can, manual shadow banning comes next. The Great Firewall was absolutely needed and China should be volunteering this service to every single country in the world targeted by this toxic social media echo chamber environment.
100%
Open source it, donate this service for free to any country that wants it
Help them set up quantum networks for secure comms
Blind the 5Eyes
This image from "Lao Ah Tang"
India country behavior is almost entirely because of their national inferiority/superiority complex that is the result of the racist Caste System and inferiority complex from colonialism by British whites. The world needs to see a rational India, not knee jerk reactions because of their inferiority complex against what they perceive as inferior non-white countries like China. All this does is entrench a defensive superiority complex against East Asian China in response. China should respond to India without insulting it like they should with the West.
I think you are largely right but I think in terms of maglev tho, there are potentially other applications… such as low - med speed intra-city/intra region trains (by region i mean area like the Greater Bay Area or Shanghai or Beijing one) as areas integrate and become mega cities… I can see the high speed maglev serving as express routes with fewer stops or no stops to the major economic centres like Bay Area to Shanghai for example…
The potential construction scale would still be massive but not like the high speed trains snaking around the country… but rather snaking around these mega city regions instead. So I disagree that investment into maglev would be minor… but maybe just not in the country changing level and not high speed… there are already already a lot of projects/demonstrators on low - med speed maglev being developed
With this one I find quite interesting
There is also the Beijing line in operation
And I think there are other industries that might potentially receive massive investments over the next decade or two, vertical/indoor farming within these mega city regions, so stuff that can’t be farmed with these methods can be farmed on the land vacated land… water conservation/reservoirs/security projects, stuff like pumped-storage hydroelectric facilities to both store water and act as added flood control or maybe even as added part of the water transfer project…