Posted on 06/20/2013 7:47:18 AM PDT by opentalk
BEIJING —China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years —a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come.
The government,often by fiat,is replacing small rural homes with high-rises,paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population of the United States —in a country already bursting with megacities
… Across China,bulldozers are leveling villages that date to long-ago dynasties. Towers now sprout skyward from dusty plains and verdant hillsides. New urban schools and hospitals offer modern services,but often at the expense of the torn-down temples and open-air theaters of the countryside.
(Excerpt) Read more at mobile.nytimes.com ...
Agenda 21, coming soon to a town near you!
The anti-cultural revolution. Mao must be rolling in his well deserved grave.
The Lear Jet Leftist and their lackeys will survive — think Bill Gate's fortress residence.
Since it worked out SO well for Nicolae Ceaucescu. /sarc
Yet strangely enough, the father of Agenda 21 (Maurice Strong) lives in China. I’m guessing that he has plenty of acreage to himself outside the cities.
He has expressed a desire to reduce the population of the North American continent by three quarters and those remaining would live in one large mega city on the plains.
Will not work out, backfires.
Just like any animal, humans are easier control in confinement.
When I visited China in 1983, the wealth was in the countryside.
The rural farmer could have more than one child and could have a business on the side, beyond what he had to contribute to the collective. He could plant his own garden and sell the excess. Funny thing, his personal garden was often more productive that the land he tilled for the collective.
He also could have a business producing goods to sell in the city. I saw farmers on bicycles, or donkey carts, delivering red velvet upholstered couches to customers in the cities, riding many miles unpaved roads to do so.
The poor came from the educated class and slaved as accountants, etc., at low wages and lived in tiny apartments in the city.
I'm confused. Most of what I have heard suggests that very few are "receiving apartments for free". Most of these were construction workers and free is only temporary. These mega-cities are mostly vacant last I heard.
He also cautioned, however, that it would require a series of accompanying legal changes “to overcome various problems in the course of urbanization.”
Also confusing. A lot of the construction of the housing in China came from private (and foreign) investments. The asking price for many of these units is WAY of the price range that most Chinese can afford. The legal changes include taking over the properties by the government that private investors purchased. In order for China to fill these housing developments, they will either have to pay the investors for each resident (or some difference to subsidize) or they will have to confiscate the property completely. I know that the Chinese government was also an investor in each property so they do have some control. They will just have to take more control at a loss to either the government or the investors.
Their plan is not sustainable until the workers are being paid significantly more money. This will devalue their currency while at the same time drive production and export costs up.
I was in China at the same time. Those ‘personal gardens’ so simply pointed out the uselessness of their road to Socialism. Why put any effort in, when it all goes to the collective? Let someone else do it! The little personal gardens started a change in China.
Those “empty cities” built in China...
vacant, and starting to decay. think of all the gaskets everywhere outgassing and not being used under normal conditions.
Here’s another article on the subject, with a couple of fast-facts of to put things in perspective:
General Motors now sells more cars and trucks in China than it does back home.
Starbucks is opening stores at a rate of more than one a day.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22949602
Starbucks is opening stores at a rate of more than one a day.
I don't know if things have changed in the last 10 years. But there are government agreements that have to be executed to do business in China. These agreements included some control over your business in their country. In one case (that I am aware of) the government would assess "taxes" on an individual business bases and had a say in what products would cost or who could be employed (depending on product/service).
In short, unless the Chinese government has relented, the government owns at least part of your business (enough to have some level of control) with an option to "purchase" more of it. You keep profits at their discretion. "Just trust us."
I don't think bunching up more people will be a good idea. Influenza A virus can skip across person and animal. This could create more chaos.
People don’t believe me when I tell them about China, circa 1983. It has changed a great deal. Now, the tourists go there and stay in luxury hotels. When I traveled there, the bath towels in the hotel rooms were the size of dish rags and about as absorbant! LOL.
You had towels? LOL! Yeah, quite a difference then. All Mao suits, cabs only at the airport, or hotels, no cars on the streets. Wagons and horse- drawn wagons near the city center in Beijing. My Walkman was a curiosity. So many things different. One place had a roll of TP outside the bathroom, and you tore a piece off as you entered.
But I loved China then. I’ve been back many times since, in the 80s and 90s, but those first times will be remembered always. I haven’t been back since the late 90s, so can’t even imagine what it is like now. Maybe I don’t want to know.
I was there on a cruise with flights into Beijing and Xian and a train ride back to Shanghai. I was traveling with my mother who insisted on washing her clothes each night and rolling them in what towels we had to aid in drying them. Therefore I had NO towels because she used them all. LOL
The hotel attendants were very reluctant to furnish us with more. I haven’t been back, but I have friends who travel there frequently on business and local Chinese friends who were all born since 1983 and do not recognize the country I describe.
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