Posted on 08/30/2015 7:11:45 PM PDT by Lorianne
How China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in the entire 20th Century
China used more cement between 2011 and 2013 than the U.S. used in the entire 20th Century.
It’s a statistic so mind-blowing that it stunned Bill Gates and inspired haiku. But can it be true, and, if so, how? Yes, China’s economy has grown at an extraordinary rate, and it has more than four times as many people as the United States. But the 1900s were America’s great period of expansion, the century in which the U.S. built almost all of its roads and bridges, the Interstate system, the Hoover Dam, and many of the world’s tallest skyscrapers. And China and the U.S. are roughly the same size in terms of geographic area, ranking third and fourth in the world, respectively.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Well, they've been building buttloads of stuff, and the rest goes into the "food" they export to us! ;)
Here’s hoping that they didn’t use Chinese cement in all of that. there is some really low quality stuff out there.
I bet a lot of it went into the “Three Gorges Dam”. A disaster waiting to happen.
Infrastructure-wise, they still have a long way to go until the same percentage of their people have clean running water and toilets.
After tearing everything down in the culture revolution they had to rebuild almost everything.
Cement was over $16 per bag at the nearest lumberyard only a few days ago. Beware the gouging at main street building supplies and hardware stores.
But is it quality cement?
You mean concrete?
Recalled Maggi noodles to feed cement plants’ furnaces
About 27,420 tonnes of Maggi noodles, under recall process, will end up in furnaces of cement plants across the country
http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/maggi-heads-to-cement-plants-115061600034_1.html
The article states that about 1/3 of the cement used is the really poor stuff, and, much of China’s housing is concrete — much more than in the US. If, no, when China gets a major earthquake in the wrong place, the casualties could be horrific. The quake a few years ago was just a “hint”.
My brother spent quite a bit of time in China, and other aspects of the construction were often no better: Modern, new, impressive buildings, but with rust stains on the sides... (One can even see this in the crappy contacts plating in most flashlights and other battery powered consumer items these days.)
That’s insane.
Quickcrete concrete mix is about 3.59 a bag at Home Depot.
Some of the special stuff (fast cure, resurfacer, etc.) with special additives is over ten dollars a bag.
Remember all the ghost cities?
Fixed it for ya.
No charge.
One concrete takes that water to mix, it’s removed from the H20 cycle forever.
One damn big dam.
Three Gorges Dam:
The project used 27.2 million cubic metres (35.6×106 cu yd) of concrete (mainly for the dam wall), 463,000 tonnes of steel (enough to build 63 Eiffel Towers) and moved about 102.6 million cubic metres (134.2×106 cu yd) of earth.[28] The concrete dam wall is 181 metres (594 ft) high above the rock basis.
I mean, read it for yourself:
The project used 27.2 million cubic metres (35.6×106 cu yd) of concrete (mainly for the dam wall),
See? Even CHINA built "the dam wall" /ba-dum t'sssssh>
The first big earthquake in that region ought to be interesting.
That’s insane
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Wanna hear insane? My wife bought an 18 pack of eggs from Wal-Mart today and didn’t notice the price on the receipt until she got home, $6.53.
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