Horny photographer 
Posted on 10/11/2008 11:59:20 AM PDT by KingJaja
Click on the link to view the Beijing to Tianjin High Speed Rail link
The Chinese are really up to something.
Tianjin has a population 11.5 million and rapidly growing industrial zone
Yeah, but those NYC trains are works of art.
I wonder if the engineers in China are texting while the trains are doing 300+ km/hr?
Horny photographer
Go live there. Do they allow FReeRepublic?
Frankly speaking I’d love to!
Expats clean up financially speaking.
I could live without FR if I had freedom to make money adn get away from the socialism in the U.S..
Aren’t you familiar with the bennies of Expats?
We ARE moving IN the driection China is moving AWAY from.
THAT you cannot honestly deny.
Not just China, but SE Asia and India in general. Three billion people are rushing towards more economic - and political - freedom, and we’re heading right back to where they came from. Insanity, like we’ll do socialism “right”.
yes, many are returning HOME to India, SE Asia and China.
Yes, it is insane that the FLEEING the U.S. for what we USED TO STAND FOR.
The stubborn and ignorant don’t want to admit that or put their pointed heads where the sun refuses to shine. I suppose pride gets in the way as well.
They already have a nice Maglev from the edge of Shanghai out to the airport.
About 2/3rds of my posts come from China. I have a nice little apartment in the Minhang district of Shanghai, and spend about 60% of my life over there.
It's not quite as restrictive as you paint it to be. Is it as open as the US? Not a chance. But it's not really much more restrictive than Europe. And if Obama and the Democrats take over, I'll bet we end up MUCH more restrictive than China.
How’s the pollution there? Do people spit all the time and everywhere like they do in other parts of China?
Pollution isn’t too bad in Shanghai; I don’t think it’s any worse than LA from the early 80s.
Spitting is common outside the city center, but it’s not excessive, about what I see in Spain, Italy, or most of South America.
No, it’s not America. But it’s not Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” from the 60s and 70s, either.
That's right.
Can you say “Prevailing Wage”?
Not from start to finish of course, but about one to three a week comes on line. So there maybe a couple of hundred currently under construction.
It's not unrealistic really. China currently has 822,000 MegaWatts (MW) of capacity (as a caparison, the US has about 980,000 MW of capacity). China wants to add another million MW. A typical coal fired plant is about 500 MW. If they put one on line every week, it would take close to 40 years to add another one million mega watts of generating capacity. They will want to do it well before then. So, it is likely that the capacity they are adding is closer to an average of about two coal fired plants a week. Along with other power generating capacities from Hydro power, nuclear, and some natural gas. From my extrapolations, they will add another million megawatts by 2020-2025. As far as steel, they produce enough. I don't know how much steel it takes to produce a coal fired plant, but as a comparison, it took 40,000 tons of steel to build the Birds Nest Stadium in Beijing. China produces over 500 million tons of steel a year. That's an equivalent to 10,000 Birds Nest Stadium. So, I don't believe steel capacity is a problem......well, it will be as they will assuredly need close to a billion tons a year within a decade.
The average Chinese want freedom of course, but they also want the infrastructure. Isn't it better to enjoy freedom when there is sufficient resources to make the nation of 1.32 billion people completely mobile. Here in the US, there is sufficient transportation and housing for people to move about whenever and however they want. Even if China became a complete democracy today, there isn't enough infrastructure for ALL the people to easily and conveniently move about. So, I disagree with you, all the infrastructure that is going on over there is an ever increasing vehicle to enjoy freedom.
I thank God on a regular basis for all the infrastructure work that is going on over there.
I used to work on nuke plants back in the day as a steamfitter, which were typicaly twice the generating cappacity of a coal plant. But I am unaware of the amount of steel, ie: rebar, pipe, structural support, etc. Then you need to factor in the volume of copper for wiring and portland cement for concrete and that is a load of raw materials.
This will be the USA’s downfall when and if the country ever decides to start building this plants again, or for that matter building off shore drilling rigs and pipelines
Certain infrastructure projects in America, such as nuclear reactors, get tied up in the political wranglings of the times. But projects that don't, can be built rather quickly. Of the 980,000 MW of capacity I mentioned, about 270,000 MW is from natural gas. Almost all of them built since 1992...so in the last 16 years. That's the equivalent to 270 nuclear reactors of generating capacity or the equivalent to 540 coal fired plants, all built in less than 20 years. So, while America's nuclear program may be slowing going, other sources of energy will be used instead. It is unfortunate though, with such a head start in nuclear energy, that the US will be constructing significantly less nuclear reactors than China in the coming decades.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.