Chinese Economics Thread

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ACuriousPLAFan

Brigadier
Registered Member
SanWenYu said:
On July 7, China starts boring tunnels of 194.8 km in total length to connect the Yangtze river with upstream of the Han river.

The project budget is 58.235 billion yuans and expected to complete in 9 years.
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To put it simply, China has started the contruction of a 194.8 km-long water-diversion tunnel using 8.9 billion USD, and 9 years to complete.

8.9 billion USD and 9 years is only sufficient for making a feasibility study for a certain superpower across the lake.
 
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Nutrient

Junior Member
Registered Member
supercat said:
This is how dominant China is in the solar energy industry:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1544950198811725824
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Indeed, China is extremely dominant in solar power. Could the Middle Kingdom be preparing for a massive switch to solar energy?

There is huge potential in solar, thousands of times greater than the current global energy consumption**. The consumption figure includes every energy source: oil, coal, nuclear, hydro -- everything. And the sun pours down thousands of times more than that.

So I am fairly optimistic about China's future. And the world's energy future may depend on how well China overcomes the US's resistance to renewables.

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** A simple calculation: the sun pours onto Earth thousands of times more power than all of human civilization currently uses.

First,
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, the world uses about 10,000 Mtoe of energy per year. This includes all energy sources: coal, oil, hydro, nuclear, etc. One Mtoe is a million tons of oil equivalent, or about 42 gigajoules. Thus 10,000 Mtoe/year translates to 13e12 W = 13 terawatts of power.

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is 3.8e26 watts. At the Earth's orbit, the radiated power is spread more or less evenly over a sphere of radius 150 million km. This sphere's surface area is 4 * pi * (150 million km)^2 = 2.8e23 m. Thus the Earth gets roughly 1300 watts per square meter.

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, the Earth's albedo is 0.30, which means Earth reflects 30% of the sun's radiation back to space. This leaves 1300 W * (1 - 0.30) = 910 watts per square meter for us Earthlings.

The Earth's radius = 6400 km, which means the planet's cross section is 2 * pi * (6400 km)^2 = 2.6e14 m^2.

Thus 910 W/m^2 * 2.6e14 m^2 = 236,000 terawatts of solar energy is available.

This is 236e3 TW / 13 TW = 18,000 times more power than all of humanity is currently using. I don't know how much of this we can actually capture, but I think it's safe to say that solar energy is thousands of times greater than we currently use.
 
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Biscuits

Major
Registered Member
dengyeye said:
Can you see something like the Cultural Revolution happening in a western styled democracy like the US, UK or Australia? As in the ruling party says "OK, no more school, in fact start beating your teachers and professors. Start defacing cultural artifacts." Do you think people would go along with that? Do you think opposing parties would stand by and do nothing? Don't exaggerate. Democracies have their weaknesses but one of its strength is its checks and balances (relative to authoritarianism).

Btw, do you know why the Cultural Revolution ended? Mao died. Imagine if Mao lived to be 90 or 100. Thank god that bastard loved chain smoking. If I had it my way Mao would have dropped dead the moment he proclaimed the PRC atop Tiananmen in 1949.
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Yes, if people in charge of controlling public opinion decide to embark on such a course. You could see similar things happen during Jim Crow or Mccarthyism era.

China during the 1960s had a far more centralised news system, mostly cuz things were old af and ppl were not educated generally. This meant that similar to how it works in America, key press details must be checked by the security apparatus before being published, and said apparatus can also secretly commission (true or false) news which all major medias across China must then distribute. This security apparatus doesn't consist of elected officials that are responsible to the people, but merely qualified hired workers who can be politically unreliable.

In theory, the government has a system of checks and balances, but this doesn't work if you can hijack public opinion. If say you can control media to make 30% of the population become vocal extremists, then they can commandeer the National People's Congress, through 1. Simply convincing their representatives to follow the cause. 2. Blackmailing and threatening the representatives who don't conform. Then, the Politburo which is appointed by Congress immediately becomes paralyzed, including the "leader" (General Secretary) of China who doesn't have special powers without consulting the Politburo. This is why Liu Shaoqi couldn't do anything during the cultural revolution.

The internal investigation faction can counter crimes inside the government, but these are essentially juridical branch officials, policemen etc which cannot properly enforce laws if ppl just riot because the laws go contrary to the propaganda they have been dosed with. In the end, they were the check that worked, but it took ages and they had to call in the PLA.

The gang of four exploited a vulnerability in the Chinese system (lack of educated populace, centralised ww2 type media control) which is not existing nowadays. Many countries that have checks and balances on paper are vulnerable to similar happenings, which can paralyze the country, stop growth and cause political/racial violence.
 
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