Posted on 07/06/2011 1:04:49 PM PDT by AfricanChristian
Very interesting journey of Chinese guy from China to India and back via Malaysia.......
(Excerpt) Read more at yaohua2000.org ...
Pretty cool! I think I’d need a vacation after all of that :)
High speed cattle cars.
There are 62 million registered automobiles in China, by 2020 the figure is likely to rise to 200 million. What the impact could be on gas prices is best imagined.(We haven't talked about India yet....)
That looks like a true adventure!! I wish I could make it. I wonder what the total travel cost was?
Demand for automobiles in India is one of the principal driving forces in that country’s economic growth. The industry provides jobs to literally millions of people throughout the direct, and indirect production chain.
I don’t doubt that. But unlike say, the US India lacks significant Oil reserves and unlike Brazil, India has little land to spare for bio-fuels.
China has built up a 20 year head start over India in forming strategic natural resources partnerships. With a rapidly rising middle class in Africa it is conceivable that India will be squeezed. That’s why India has to seriously consider alternatives to automobile driven economic growth - it may not be sustainable.
Thanks AfricanChristian.
But it has a population that could reach 1.6 billion by 2050.
Immaterial. Improved agricultural knowledge will easily take care of that, as it has done so, before.
China has a far more serious ageing population problem due to its idiotic forced one-child policy. Soon, China will have more old people to take care of, than youngsters who will be paying an increasingly greater price to support them.
I think the squeez from Africa had much less to do with rising middle class in Africa as much as it has to do with the crisis in (but not restricted to)North Africa. If China has 20 years head start over India. India has the same over much of Africa. Right now as we speak Ethiopia, Somali, Kenya, Djibouti and Uganda are facing massive food crisis. Too early for the African “middle class†if there is such a thing to worry about energy crisis of the future at this point. As poor as India maybe with the looming population increase, you still don’t have Oxfam and UN aid agencies working in India. Not to mention Africa’s struggling energy sector has grown only 3% annually in last three decades which has inhibited Africa’s GDP growth.
India’s problem is not shortage of food. India is the world’s third highest producer of food after China and EU and ahead of United States! India’s food production as of 2009 was worth $210 billion while that of US was $171 billion. Even with population increase India has a surplus production at 65 million ton, India is considering exporting some of her excess stock during the global crisis.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/egom-may-discuss-food-security-billmonday/442025/
The issue is not the availability of improved agricultural methods but whether India will adopt them successfully. Indian farmers are predominantly small holders, this makes adoption of new methods / technology tricky. There are also problems with preservation - a good proportion of farm produce is lost due to inadequate storage / transportation.
India is also heavily skewed towards Services, Telecommunications and Pharmaceuticals. The Industrial sector employs only about 8 million people - these are not the numbers that will take many farmers off their small holdings and free land for optimised agricultural practices.
To change this will require aggressive policy adjustments and real political will. (I don’t envy Indian politicians!).
China can deal with its aging problem by eliminating the one child policy and implementing a guest worker problem. Nothing stops the Chinese from heavily recruiting workers from densely populated South East Asian nations like Indonesia and the Philippines. Secondly, China could simply place more emphasis on automation and increase worker productivity. (The technology already exists).
ravager,
These resources are located in Africa,that’s the difference. The window of opportunity for India to form strategic partnerships to exploit these resources is rapidly closing. The major players are still the West and increasingly China.
The next twenty years will produce African Governments that are more attentive to the needs of their people - not out of choice but of necessity. Africa has a ‘middle class’ of 313 million and this figure could easily double in the next few decades.
I live in Africa’s most populous nation and I observe these changes first hand on a daily basis. We built infrastructure for gas export not factoring the growth of the internal market. After the infrastructure was done we found out that our priorities were wrong and we should have focused more on the internal market.
Oxfam works in India (http://www.oxfamindia.org/)and so does UNICEF (http://www.unicef.org/india/).
About the growth in the energy sector,the barriers are less structural than political. The Niger Delta crisis is a significant contributor to the low growth figures. But with new production in Ghana, the expected liberalisation of the Libyan Oil sector after Gaddafi, political resolution of the Niger Delta crisis and production in Angola I expect high growth this decade. (Sudan is a big question mark).
I accept India does not have a problem with food but it has an energy problem. The question is this - can India support of bio-fuels programme like Brazil? I don’t think so.
We’ve seen energy deficient nations adapt to changing circumstances. The Japanese did it during the seventies and caught Detroit flat footed and I am very confident that the nation that gave us the Tata Nano will adapt.
Looking forward to some more Indian innovation.
The resources were always located in Africa. One thing Africa was never short of was natural resources. What they never had was political stability. Except for a few countries most of African continent is at best chronically ill and struggling and at worst dysfunctional and devastated by internal strife. The natural resources hardly ever helped bring up the economy out of poverty. Africa was always historically the land that was exploited first by the Arabs, then the West and now the Chinese. What makes you think the fate of Africa will be different this time because the Chinese are coming in now?
“The next twenty years will produce African Governments that are more attentive to the needs of their people - not out of choice but of necessity.”
That “necessity” was 20 years ago, not 20 years hence.
“Africa has a ‘middle class’ of 313 million and this figure could easily double in the next few decades.”
The 300 million or so middle class out of a 1 billion is only good on paper. The middle class is spread over a huge 30 million sq km land mass that comprising of 54 countries. It is not a single entity and does not constitute a market. A better organised, much more politically stable, and economically dynamic ASEAN has only 10 member country. Several half heated attempt at creating African union on similar lines ultimately went nowhere.
“Oxfam works in India (http://www.oxfamindia.org/)and so does UNICEF (http://www.unicef.org/india/).";
Oxfam also works in US and UK for that matter. http://www.oxfam.org.uk/
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/
My point was Indian does not have an international food aid program like Africa. In Africa that is a bigger priority then investments in alternative energy.
Libyan Oil, Niger Delta crisis and Sudan are a lot of ifs
Bio fuel is a no go. It is expensive, inefficient and causes greater greenhouse emission.
Trains in China and India and Europe make sense as there are dense networks and people live in large concentrated cities. it makes sense along the East Coast and in southern California and perhaps in the Texas corridor, but it makes little to no sense in the rest of the country. however, that’s not a reason to dismiss them for other countries or other regions
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