Chinese Economics Thread

[Equation]

Australia said Wednesday it will join the new Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as a founding member, contributing Aus$930 million (US$719 million) in paid-in capital over five years.


Australia is the latest US ally to sign up to the bank, which has been shunned by Washington and Tokyo, the world's largest and third-largest economies respectively.

The AIIB has 57 prospective members, and will have a paid-in capital of US$20 billion and total authorised capital of US$100 billion, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Treasurer Joe Hockey said in a joint statement.

"The decision comes after extensive discussions between the government, China and other key partners around the world," the ministers said.

"There is an estimated infrastructure financing gap of around US$8 trillion in the Asian region over the current decade. The AIIB will be part of the solution to closing this gap."

Hockey will seal the agreement in Beijing on Monday.

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Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey speaks during the Budget Lockup press conference at Parliament House …
The bank, expected to be operational later this year and based in the Chinese capital, has been viewed by some as a rival to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, two institutions under strong US influence.

Its success has caught the US off guard, after it led a high-profile attempt to dissuade allies from taking part, and now finds itself increasingly isolated.

There have been concerns over transparency of the lender, which will fund infrastructure in Asia, as well as worries that Beijing will use it to push its own geopolitical and economic interests as a rising power.

But Hockey said that following "intense negotiations" with China and other prospective founding members, Australia was satisfied with how the bank would be governed.

"We are absolutely satisfied that the governance arrangements now in place will ensure that there is appropriate transparency and accountability in the bank," the treasurer told broadcaster Sky News.

"I have spoken with the Secretary of the US Treasury Jack Lew about it in the last 48 hours and we've also spoken with the Japanese government to address their concerns.

"They (the Americans) understood exactly where we were coming from. It is a significant opportunity for Australia."

The Australian government expects the bank, through its support of Asian infrastructure projects, to help boost the nation's exports -- including minerals, agriculture and services -- to the region.

Australia and China signed a landmark trade deal last Wednesday after a decade of talks that Prime Minister Tony Abbott said would give the two nations unprecedented access to each other's markets.

NEXT!

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[AssassinsMace]

The Chinese government is moving out of "the Forbidden City."

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[kyanges]

So, if I'm understanding the article correctly, the "Chinese" government stays in Beijing, but the city government is the one actually moving.

 

[solarz]

So, if I'm understanding the article correctly, the "Chinese" government stays in Beijing, but the city government is the one actually moving.

Yup, misleading headline and shameful article, especially this line:

BEIJING — For more than 65 years, government officials here have tried to emulate China’s imperial rulers, working and living in the city center near the emperor’s old palace, the Forbidden City.

Yeah, because no other government in the world is located in the center of a city.

When the Chinese do it, it's because they want to "emulate imperial rulers".

 

[delft]

It reminds me of the Dutch "Randstad", the combination of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht and the towns around them, together about 4 million people and so about 3% of the planned Chinese counterpart.

 

[Franklin]

The Chinese military is using the HSR system too.

High-Speed Rail Aids Disaster Deployments by Chinese Military

Loudspeakers screeched no-smoking warnings as scores of men in blue camouflage uniforms massed on platforms No. 6 and 7 at the Hongqiao Railway Station in Shanghai early Tuesday afternoon, 16 hours after the capsizing of the Oriental Star cruise ship with 456 people on board.

It was not clear whether they were sailors headed to Jianli, the site of the sinking on the Yangtze River, but the air of urgency about the man in a white officer’s uniform as he shuffled papers on the ground, and the steady pace of men in blue moving up the escalator, suggested that something was afoot.

Nearly a hundred of the ship’s passengers had boarded in Shanghai. Most of the others boarded in Nanjing, an hour away by high-speed train. Radios blared details of the disaster throughout the day. The tear-ravaged face of a woman waiting for a taxi at the high-speed rail station stood out in the usually reserved Chinese crowd, and everywhere in the city, people discussed the tragedy.

Inside the Shanghai station, a hub of China’s new, multibillion-dollar high-speed rail network adjacent to Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, the presence of the uniformed personnel highlighted how the massive rail project had facilitated not just family reunions and business deals, but troop movements and disaster relief.

On April 27, in response to the powerful earthquake in Nepal that also affected some parts of Tibet, members of the People’s Armed Police from Gansu Province traveling to the quake zone rode the high-speed train for part of their journey — the first time that this stretch of high-speed rail had been used for disaster management since it opened in late 2014, according to The Lanzhou Morning Post.

In December 2013, more than a thousand People’s Armed Police personnel left Shanghai for a base in northern China to test the network’s effectiveness in moving troops, The Liberation Army Daily reported. The exercise was a success, the report suggested. The high-speed rail network had “enormously shortened the reaction time” of the military, read the headline.

In May 2012, nearly a thousand troops rode the high-speed train from Nanjing to a training base in southern Anhui Province for a military training exercise, Xinhua reported.

“We achieved a fast departure and fast arrival,” a military officer at the Nanjing railway station told Xinhua. “We weren’t off by a minute or even a second. This proves that military transport has reached a new level.”

As the China News Service reported last year: “The high-speed railway has given wings to China’s military.”

China’s high-speed rail network began operation just seven years ago, in 2008, with a line connecting Beijing and nearby Tianjin.

By the end of 2014, the government said it had built 16,000 kilometers, or nearly 10,000 miles, of high-speed railway, investing 808.8 billion renminbi, or about $130 billion, in the construction of 5,236 miles that year alone, according to the National Railway Administration. Speeds regularly reach 185 miles per hour, but can go higher.

The multiyear project has been criticized as an over-investment that will never be recouped, but the money is still flowing. From 2011 through this year, China will have invested about $300 billion in the system, according to People’s Daily.

Other major infrastructure projects in China may have assisted the response to the sinking of the Oriental Star. The merits of the giant Three Gorges Dam have been disputed in China for years, but it may have aided rescue and recovery efforts of People’s Liberation Army Navy divers and other military personnel.

Dam operators reacted to the ship’s capsizing by reducing the water flow to the disaster site downstream, in that way exposing more of the ship to divers and technical personnel, according to a news report that was posted on the Hubei provincial government website on Wednesday.

With little visibility inside the vessel, which news reports said had 100 rooms, and divers reduced to swimming by touch, efforts have shifted to cutting open the hull and lifting the ship with cranes, according to the state news media.

“Under the control of the Three Gorges Dam, water levels dropped on the evening of June 2, and more and more of the ship appeared out of the water,” the report by Jingchu online, a news portal owned by the Hubei government propaganda bureau, said.

By 6:40 a.m. on Wednesday, “a large contingent of frogmen were busy preparing the ship for being set upright. A navy officer said that more than 100 divers from the three big fleets at Beihai, Donghai and Nanhai had already arrived at the scene and were working unceasingly,” the report said, referring to the waters off China that the Chinese call the North Sea, the East Sea and the South Sea.

Although the dam was not built with such catastrophes as the capsized cruise ship in mind, its construction fulfilled a longstanding dream in China to control the often deadly flooding of the Yangtze.

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[broadsword]

When the Y-20 becomes operational, air travel will be the preferred mode of travel as in the US, whenever speed is essential.

 

[getready]

Thread Back to normal Now that the troll is gone. Thank heavens. Looking to read more China's economy news than Japanese BS

 

[delft]

When the Y-20 becomes operational, air travel will be the preferred mode of travel as in the US, whenever speed is essential.

Y-20 is a military type transport aircraft, not a passenger aircraft. And air travel is so very popular in US because the passenger railway system is grossly inadequate.
In numbers, assuming that the time to the railway station is the same as that to the airport, over what distance is the aircraft faster than the train? Take a block speed for the train as 250 km/h, for the aircraft 750 km/h ( block speed is distance as the crow flies divided by travel time from closing doors to opening doors ). Take half an hour each from entering a railway station to closing doors and from opening doors to leaving the railway station ( seems a lot ) and 3 hours from arriving at the airport to closing doors, 2 hours from opening doors to leaving airport. That gives a distance of 1500 km over which the train is faster than the aircraft. As most travel in China will be inside the, by now wide, coastal area with most of the high speed lines the opportunity for air travel will grow slower than travel by train. International air travel will grow of course.
Also don't forget the people who prefer to travel by train over longer distances because of the higher level of comfort, better opportunities to work and lower prices.

If you are really in a hurry to speak somebody take the internet.

 

[Equation]

When the Y-20 becomes operational, air travel will be the preferred mode of travel as in the US, whenever speed is essential.

I think China will use both hsr and airplanes to get to where they needed quickly.