Only " Tibet Water to Xinjiang Project" can save China from severe economic&social unrest

AndrewS said:

Xinjiang and the rest of Western China simply doesn't have much population, so there is a limit to how much industry can move there.

For example, VW only opened a small 50K car production plant in Urumqi, because that is all the local market can support.

Inner Mongolia is not a dead end alley. We can see the existing cities of Hohhot and Baotou do have self sustaining and growing industries.
They are located just on the edge of densely populated core China and near BeiJing and the port of Tianjin.

China already has a lot of geographical strategic depth. What China currently lacks is technological depth, but that will not come from relocating hundreds of millions of people from where they currently reside in core China to a distant periphery.

A wealthy China would have an economy some 4x larger than the USA, and would presumably have it's own set of hi-tech companies in every industry. China would be a much more important trade and investment partner for Asia than the USA.
China would also be spending a lot more on the military than the USA.

That wealth is what will allow China can chart its own independent course, irrespective of what anyone else.

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tidalwave said:

Industry creates goods in Xinjiang so China can export westward (middlle east, europt) without having so many of them transport across the whole China from eastern CHina. That saves money.

At the current geopolitic environment, trade war and being saboraged by US across full spectrum, CHina's to being wealthy is not a sure thing.

Now , in China , they talking survival and you talking being wealthy. We have a big gap in here.

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AndrewS said:

A container from Xinjiang to Europe, is easy more expensive than a container from coastal China to Europe.

The China Europe railway is a niche for high value products compared to the huge volumes sent by sea. I reckon just 2-3 lines are viable, which is very little compared to total trade.

China has a larger consumer retail market for goods and a larger manufacturing sector than the USA. So as long as China keeps up R&D spending, eventually China can be self sufficient, no matter what anyone else does.

Wealth is what will allow China to entangle Asia's ecinomies so they revolve around China.

And which will buy a larger military then the USA.

That obviously means China more than surviving.

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tidalwave said:

remember Belt and Road involves many countries. Europe maybe far by through train. What about Central Asia and Middle East countries, Which one is better?

China wants to establish a train route as alternative because they are preparing in case military conflict, sea route may be blockaded.

I getting daily internal analysis of China situation through mandarin channels and fighting to survive is not a overstatement.

WHy do you think Jack Mad step down from Alibaba at this time? Fan Bing Bing being house arrested or even jailed? You sound too optimistic here.

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AndrewS said:

Just look at the population in Central Asia and the distances and the capacity of a railway line.

Yes, the overland routes are an alternative for critical trade during a blockade, but they can only account for a small fraction of peacetime trade levels.
It's the same for the Middle East, but the numbers favour sea even more.

China is taking the trade war very seriously yes. But you do realise that the US and Europe aren't taking this seriously as all. So this is why I think China will win this round.
And the USA in particular doesn't seem to realise that the trade war is being seen as the USA trying to keep China down and poor.

Personally I think you're being overly paranoid, as the USA and China do still speak to each other every day on a whole host of issues.

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tidalwave said:

obviously we have totally different viewpoints on this .
Are you only getting western source of news???

Ok, I threw a tidbit for everybody.
When Trump accused China on election meddling at UN and said him and Xi may no longer be friends.
China calling this Slander.
Words are out that when Xi was watching Trump made this statement at UN with others, He called Trump "混蛋", Equivalent to "Bastard"

China and US still speak to other and thats continuous accusation from US and protest from China. Thats about it.

This Tibet water to Xinjiang is already internally endorsed. You may Not like it but Policy already set and done deal,
They plan to channel the water through underground tunnel. And now testing those structures at Yunnan.

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AndrewS said:

I look at a mix of news sources and analysis.

Most political leaders in the world think Trump is a 混蛋. But professional politicians are used to having to deal with 混蛋 anyway.

I'm saying that from an economic perspective, it would be a disaster to relocate hundreds of millions from core China to the periphery where there are no jobs due to high overland transport costs for freight. Plus the estimate is "each kilometre of tunnel would cost at least one billion yuan due to the difficult terrain and taxing altitude of the Tibetan Plateau."

But from a political control perspective, you can make a case for some subsidies to encourage a limited population movement to Xinjiang.
There are only 10million Uighurs in total, so it doesn't take a many people to dilute Uighur influence.

That would solidify political control in Xinjiang and accelerate the assimilation process and also make it less harsh or as urgent.

But if you look at the huge cost of constructing tunnels, dams and water turbines, it seems like a waste compared with what that money could be spent on.

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tidalwave said:

For starter, maybe 20millions folks can be migrated there.

If China willing spent billions on loan to foreign countries to build road, dam, infrastructure, what's to say it's a waste of money to build something so strategic at home.

Also China spent hundreds of billions go build ghost cities that have no one living there, whats to say it's a waste of money to build something that's strategic?

The main thing the project put people to work. Once water reached there, what's to say no jobs outhere? It's not waste of money if it's an circular economy.

Tremendous opportunities for agriculture or livestocks as well as industries that will followed

China already built the largest fertilizer potash at Lop Nur at Xinjiang.

Keep putting people to coastal cities is geared toward export driven which China already vowed to change. China government try to help local rural areas to develop so people dont need to cram into packed cities.

Also hightech economy simply does not need that many unskilled workers . A modern chip plant is run majority on automation.

You are advocating something that goes against the trend of time

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AndrewS said:

20million new migrants to Xinjiang would be more than enough, if just for security/strategic purposes.

We can see what happened with Siberia, where the USSR built entire new cities which were just too far inland and isolated to be viable without huge subsidies.

The vast majority of Chinese construction is in core China, so those ghost cities can expect to be filled up one day.

What jobs would be available in Xinjiang?

Agriculture is a low-value activity which makes up a 1-3% of GDP and employment for a modern economy.
Low-value manufacturing is bulky and the high cost of railway transport means Xinjiang can't compete with factories in core China.
High-value industries rely on a technical R&D base located in cities which are large enough and connected enough to support such an industrial/knowledge base.

Xinjiang simply doesn't meet the criteria for being able to create or support large numbers of jobs.

Developing rural areas really means developing the interior of core China, not Western China (Xinjiang/Gansu)

Interior provinces in Core China do have the necessary connectivity for viable industries as they have:
1. have railways and airports for high-value freight
2. inland waterways for low-value freight.

So provinces like Henen, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guizhou, etc etc should be able create viable cities in the long-term.

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tidalwave said:

Alot of low valued goods manufacturing sites are have already setup and continue to setup in Xinjiang.


Export them by Short distance by rail to landlocked Central Asia and middle East and part of Russia is more cost friendly than ship by sea through long distance and then have unload at ports and ship by trucks , to land locked countries.

Imagine shipping to Kazakhstan which is next door, you think it's better to ship across Asia and Indian ocean and unloaded at Pakistan and truck moved all the way through paskian, afghanistan and and then to Kazakhstan?

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