China Economy Forum

[EagleEyes]

This will be the new sticky for the updates on Chinese economy.

Please only use this thread for all contents regarding Chinese Economy.

 

[Brotherhood]

China's investment on water diversion hit 115 bln - People's Daily Online January 25, 2011

China has invested 115 billion yuan ($17.45 billion) on the South-to-North Water Diversion Project as of the end of last year, a senior official said Monday.

E Jingping, director of the Office of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project Commission (SNWDPC) of the State Council, said construction on 40 projects began last year, marking a new annual record.

No major accidents happened while constructing the projects last year, E said.

The South-to-North Water Diversion Project is designed to divert water from the water-rich south of China, mainly the Yangtze, the country's longest river, to the country's arid northern regions. It will consist of three routes: an eastern, middle and western route. The project started with construction of the eastern route in 2002.

Up until now, both of the eastern and middle routes were already under construction. The western route, meant to replenish the Yellow River with water from the upper reaches of the Yangtze through tunnels in the high mountains of western China, is still in the planning stage.

About 330,000 people in Hubei and Henan provinces will be relocated before the middle route is completed in 2014.

Source: Xinhua

 

[中国万岁-ProsperThroughCo-]

FT
China beats the US in wind energy

By Sheila McNulty in Houston
Published: January 25 2011 00:29 | Last updated: January 25 2011 01:17
China has become the leader in wind energy capacity, seizing the lead from the US, where last year installations dropped to half of what they were in 2009.

US installations totalled 5,115 megawatts of wind power in 2010, barely half of 2009’s record pace because of what the industry sees as the lack of predictable long-term federal policies on renewable energy grants.

US wind capacity now stands at 40,180 megawatts, an increase in capacity of 15 per cent over the start of 2010, the American Wind Energy Association said on Monday. It said China now has 41,800 megawatts in operation, an increase of 62 per cent in capacity over a year ago.

Towards the end of last year, wind installations came to a standstill as the industry waited for Congress to renew a provision enabling the industry to obtain a cash grant in lieu of an investment tax credit, which had been a key factor behind growth. The provision eventually passed in late December but only for one year, resulting in long-term uncertainty.

“Our industry continues to ensure a boom-bust cycle because of the lack of long-term predictable federal policies,” said Denise Bode, chief executive of the American Wind Energy Association, the national trade association.

Research by General Electric has shown that investments in the wind industry have risen and fallen along with the renewal and expiration of renewable energy incentives. The expiration of incentives in 2000, 2002 and 2004, for example, caused a 76-90 per cent drop in installed capacity in the US from the previous year.

Complicating the efforts to maintain US growth in wind generation are low natural gas prices, which are leading power producers to favour that fossil fuel.

”Now that we’re competing with natural gas on cost, we need consistent federal policies to ensure we have a diverse portfolio of energy sources in this country, and don’t become over-reliant on one source or another,” Ms Bode said.

The renewal of the tax credit at the end of last year means the industry entered 2011 with more than 5,600 megawatts of electric power under construction, encouraging a more robust growth rate for this year.

Copenhagen 2009 anyone?

‘Made in China’ tells us little about global trade

By Pascal Lamy
Published: January 24 2011 22:43 | Last updated: January 24 2011 22:43

As recently as 30 years ago, products were assembled in one country, using inputs from that same country. Measuring trade was thus easy. 2011 is very different. Manufacturing is driven by global supply chains, while most imports should be stamped “made globally”, not “made in China”, or similar. This is not an academic distinction. With trade imbalance causing friction between leading economies, the measures we use can gravely exacerbate geopolitical tensions at a time when co-operation is more vital than ever.

International trade is currently measured in what is known as gross value. The total commercial value of an import is assigned to a single country of origin, as the good reaches customs. This worked fine when economist David Ricardo was alive: 200 years ago Portugal was trading wine “made in Portugal” for English textile “made in England”. But today the concept of country of origin is obsolete. What we call “made in China” is indeed assembled in China, but its commercial value comes from those numerous countries that precede its assembly. It no longer makes sense to think of trade in terms of “them” and “us.”

This is not to suggest that all international trade tensions will vanish overnight if we change the way trade is measured. But if we are to debate something as important as trade imbalances, we should do it on the basis of numbers that reflect reality. A distorted trade picture can inflame bilateral relations, while raising anti-trade sentiment at a time when protectionist pressures are already rising. Economists have long abandoned the view that trade is a zero-sum game, but the day-to-day worlds of politics and markets still seem to work on old mercantilist beliefs. The crisis has naturally exacerbated this feeling, even at a time when global manufacturing has made distinctions between “us” and “them” ever less relevant.

Apple’s iPhone illustrates this clearly. It is assembled in China, then exported to the US and elsewhere. Yet the components come from numerous countries. According to a recent Asian Development Bank Institute study, the phone contributed $1.9bn to the US trade deficit with China, using the traditional country of origin concept. But if China’s iPhone exports to the US were measured in value added – meaning the value added by China to the components – those exports would come to only $73.5m.

It isn’t just phones. Automobiles, aircraft, electronics – even clothing – are increasingly made in many countries. No car or commercial jet could now be built with inputs from just one country. Business leaders also know that new trade frictions are especially damaging in an era of global supply chains. Import duties, red tape or other delays or costs in the delivery of inputs means higher costs. And our traditional trade statistics make such frictions much more likely.

The statistical bias created by attributing commercial value to the last country of origin perverts the true economic dimension of the bilateral trade imbalances. This affects the political debate, and leads to misguided perceptions. Take the bilateral deficit between China and the US. A series of estimates based on true domestic content can cut the overall deficit – which was $252bn in November 2010 – by half, if not more.

Measures we use also change the way trade affects jobs too. Research on Apple’s iPod shows that out of the 41,000 jobs its manufacture created in 2006, 14,000 were located in the US. Some 6,000 were professional posts. Yet since US workers are better paid, they earned $750m, while only $320m went to workers abroad. Indeed, the iPod may have never existed if Apple had not known that Asian companies could supply components, while both Asian workers and Asian consumers would manufacture and buy it. Statistics that measure value added can provide a more reliable way of seeing how trade affects employment.

Different means of calculating trade is relevant well beyond the US and China. Thinking about trade in value-added terms can take us beyond the politics of bilateral trade balances. Seen this way, trade shifts from a one-to-one balance into a network of value-added chains, where interdependence dominates and everyone can win. Most importantly, it will help policymakers, and their populations, see the need for stronger multilateral trade co-operation – and the global growth and jobs they can bring.

The writer is director-general of the World Trade Organisation

 

[Brotherhood]

Power firm seeks to lift grid investment - People's Daily Online January 25, 2011

China Southern Power Grid Corp, the smaller of the mainland's two state-owned power distributors, aims to boost investment in grid networks by almost a third in the next five years.

The company, which runs networks in five provincial areas in south China, said it has earmarked 400 billion yuan (US$61 billion) to invest in grid networks between 2011 and 2015, up 32 percent from 302.3 billion yuan it spent in the past five years.

China has been improving its grid coverage so that more homes will have access to electricity and is also investing in power network that is generated by renewable sources like wind.

Southern Power Grid said about 28 percent of the proposed 400 billion yuan investment will go to rural areas. The company, which also has some power generating assets, last week said it plans fixed-asset investment of more than 500 billion yuan during the five-year period.

Source: Shanghai Daily

 

[Martian2]

A wind farm in Roncheng, China

China leapfrogs U.S. wind power industry | Greenspace | Los Angeles Times

"China leapfrogs U.S. wind power industry
January 24, 2011 | 10:24 am
by Tiffany Hsu

Chinese turbines are now harnessing more wind power than machines installed in the U.S., according to a trade group Monday.

For the first time ever, the Asian giant’s capacity –- the amount of electricity that can be generated using wind –- blew past the U.S. to soar 62% to 41,800 megawatts. American-based turbines can produce up to 40,180 megawatts, a 15% jump from the beginning of 2010, according to a report from the American Wind Energy Assn.

The U.S. wind market had a rough year overall, ending 2010 with 5,115 megawatts of new installations –- just half of the record amount put up in 2009. The fourth quarter saw just 3,195 megawatts erected, a slide from the 4,113 installed in the same period in 2009.

The association blamed short-lived government subsidies.

But after a key incentive, the 1603 federal Treasury grant program, was extended for a year in December, the wind industry began to perk up. As 2011 begins, roughly 5,600 megawatts of wind power capacity is under construction, the trade group said.

Some new projects being hammered out include electricity prices set at 5 cents or 6 cents per kilowatt hour, which would make wind power competitive with natural gas, the association said.

“Our industry continues to endure a boom-bust cycle because of the lack of long-term, predictable federal policies, in contrast to the permanent entitlements that fossil fuels have enjoyed for 90 years or more,” said Denise Bode, the group’s chief executive, in a statement.

Companies have built utility-scale wind projects in 38 states so far. Texas leads the pack with 10,085 total megawatts of capacity, followed by Iowa with 3,675 megawatts.

California, which features the windy Altamont Pass and Tehachapi regions, lags in third place with 3,177 megawatts installed."

Note: Thank you to "ProsperThroughCo-op" for posting the earlier wind power article.

 

[Brotherhood]

Installation of world's largest water turbo generator underway - People's Daily Online January 25, 2011

Installation began on a Chinese water turbo generator with completely independent intellectual property rights and the world's largest single unit capacity at the Xiangjiaba Hydropower Station on Jan. 24.

The domestically-produced water turbo generator, with a single unit capacity of 800,000 kilowatts, is the world's largest water turbo generator both in size and capacity.

After the one-year installation period and commissioning, this unit set is expected to generate electricity by October 2012. The Xiangjiaba Hydropower Station joins the Gezhouba Hydropower Station and the Three Gorges Power Station as another national key clean energy construction project.

By People's Daily Online

 

[Brotherhood]

More overseas buyers willing to settle up in RMB - People's Daily Online January 25, 2011

More and more overseas buyers in the trade are gradually becoming willing to accept RMB as a settlement currency.

According to a survey that covered 385 overseas buyers released on Jan. 24, 17 percent of the respondents indicated that they had used RMB in commercial transactions with Chinese exports, and 39 percent of the respondents said that in the future they are willing to pay RMB.

The survey was conducted by the well-known by B2B media group Global Sources. Respondents cover 385 buyers from China's major export markets, such as Europe, America, the Middle East, Central and South America, and Asia. Their procurement of goods in China covers electronics, home appliances, gifts, garments and textiles and metal products and other fields.

Central parity of RMB against the U.S. dollar recently hit record highs and is showing a noticeably accelerating growth rate, causing overseas buyers to pay close attention. Data shows that 68 percent of respondents said their procurement from China is affected by the appreciation, 54 percent of respondents think the appreciation of the RMB leads to the rise of Chinese export prices.

By Huang Beibei, People's Daily Online

 

[Brotherhood]

Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed intercity rail to open in 2014 - People's Daily Online January 25, 2011

At the Beijing-Zhangjiakou intercity rail line feasibility assessment meeting held recently, it was announced that the maximum design speed of Beijing-Zhangjiakou intercity rail line is 300 kilometers per hour, construction on the line will start this year, and it will be open to traffic in 2014, according to the Bejing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

It is understood that the new Beijing-Zhangjiakou intercity rail line, one of Beijing's key projects this year, is located within the boundaries of northwest of Beijing and Hebei province. It will run from the Beijing North Railway Station (Xizhimen) and end at Zhangjiakou South Station in Hebei province.

It will go by way of Beijing's Haidian District, Changping District, Yanqing District, and enter the boundaries of Hebei Province by Kangzhuang Town of Yanqing District. Then it will cross Guanting Reservoir and run by way of the Huailai district to Xuanhua district and finally to Zhangjiakou City.

The intercity rail line will have a length of about 174 kilometers and about 27 billion yuan of static investment. It has now temporarily set up 10 stops, including Beijing North Railway Station, Tsinghua University Park, Qinghe, Shahe, Changping West, Badaling West, Shacheng, Xiahuayuan North, Xuanhua North, Zhangjiakou South, etc. It has a length of about 70.24 km within the boundaries of Beijing.

It is understood that the design speed of Beijing-Zhangjiakou intercity rail line is divided into three stages. The design speed in the section that runs from Beijing North Railway Station to north Fifth Ring Road is 250 kilometers per hour, the north Fifth Ring Road to Kangzhuang section is 250 kilometers per hour and the Kangzhuang to Zhangjiakou section is the fastest at 300 kilometers per hour.

By Yan Meng, People's Daily Online

 

[中国万岁-ProsperThroughCo-]

Why China Does Capitalism Better than the U.S.
By Tony Karon Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011

One of the great ironies revealed by the global recession that began in 2008 is that Communist Party–ruled China may be doing a better job managing capitalism's crisis than the democratically elected U.S. government. Beijing's stimulus spending was larger, infinitely more effective at overcoming the slowdown and directed at laying the infrastructural tracks for further economic expansion.

As Western democracies shuffle wheezily forward, China's economy roars along at a steady clip, having lifted some half a billion people out of poverty over the past three decades and rapidly created the world's largest middle class to provide an engine for long-term domestic consumer demand. Sure, there's massive social inequality, but there always is in a capitalist system. (Income inequality rates in the U.S. are some of the worst in the industrialized world, and more Americans are falling into poverty than are being raised out of it. The number of Americans officially designated as living in poverty in 2009 — 43 million — was the highest in the 51 years that records have been kept.)
(See TIME's photo-essay "The Rise of Hu Jintao.")

Beijing is also doing a far more effective job than Washington of tooling its economy to meet future challenges — at least according to historian Francis Fukuyama, erstwhile neoconservative intellectual heavyweight. "President Hu Jintao's rare state visit to Washington this week comes at a time when many Chinese see their weathering of the financial crisis as a vindication of their own system, and the beginning of an era in which U.S.-style liberal ideas will no longer be dominant," wrote Fukuyama in Monday's Financial Times under a headline stating that the U.S. had little to teach China. "State-owned enterprises are back in vogue, and were the chosen mechanism through which Beijing administered its massive stimulus."

Today Chinese leaders are more inclined to scold the U.S. — its debtor to the tune of close to a trillion dollars — than to emulate it, and Fukuyama noted that polls show that a larger percentage of Chinese believe their country is headed in the right direction, compared with Americans. China's success in navigating the economic crisis, wrote Fukuyama, was based on the ability of its authoritarian political system to "make large, complex decisions quickly, and ... make them relatively well, at least in economic policy."
These are startling observations from a writer who, 19 years ago, famously proclaimed that the collapse of the Soviet Union heralded "the end of history as such ... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

Fukuyama has had the good grace and intellectual honesty to admit he was wrong. And he's no apologist for Chinese authoritarianism, calling out its abuses and corruption, and making clear that he believes the absence of democracy will eventually hobble China's progress. Still, as he noted in the Financial Times, while they don't hold elections, China's communist leaders are nonetheless responsive to public opinion. (Of course they are! A party brought to power by a peasant rebellion knows full well the destructive potential of the rage of working people.) But the regime claims solid support from the Chinese middle class, and hedges against social explosion by directing resources and investment to more marginal parts of the country.

China's leaders, of course, never subscribed to Fukuyama's "end of history" maxim; the Marxism on which they were reared would have taught them that there is no contingent relationship between capitalism and democracy, and they only had to look at neighbors such as Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore to see economic success stories under authoritarian rule — although the prosperity thus achieved played a major role in transforming Taiwan and South Korea into the noisy democracies they are today. Nor were Beijing's leaders under any illusions that the free market could take care of such basic needs as education, health care and infrastructure necessary to keep the system as a whole growing.

But Fukuyama also made a point about the comparative inability of the U.S. system to respond decisively to a long-term crisis. "China adapts quickly, making difficult decisions and implementing them effectively," Fukuyama wrote. "Americans pride themselves on constitutional checks and balances, based on a political culture that distrusts centralised government. This system has ensured individual liberty and a vibrant private sector, but it has now become polarised and ideologically rigid. At present it shows little appetite for dealing with the long-term fiscal challenges the U.S. faces. Democracy in America may have an inherent legitimacy that the Chinese system lacks, but it will not be much of a model to anyone if the government is divided against itself and cannot govern."
(See "China's High-Speed Rail.")

Money has emerged as the electoral trump card in the U.S. political system, and corporations have a Supreme Court–recognized right to use their considerable financial muscle to promote candidates and policies favorable to their business operations and to resist policies and shut out candidates deemed inimical to their business interests. So whether it's health reform or the stimulus package, the power of special interests in the U.S. system invariably produces either gridlock or mishmash legislation crafted to please the narrow interests of a variety of competing interests rather than the aggregated interests of the economy and society as a whole. Efficient and rational decisionmaking it's not. Nor does it appear capable of tackling long-term problems.
(Comment on this story.)

China is the extreme opposite, of course. It can ride roughshod over the lives of its citizens (e.g., building a dam that requires the forced relocation of 1.5 million people who have no channels through which to protest). But China's system is unlikely to give corporations the power to veto or shape government decisionmaking to suit their bottom lines at the expense of the needs of the system as a whole in the way that, to choose but one example, U.S. pharmaceutical companies are able to wield political influence to deny the government the right to negotiate drug prices for the public health system. Fukuyama seems to be warning that, in Darwinian terms, the Chinese system may be more adaptive than the land of the free.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2043235,00.html#ixzz1C5bQp65K

China to create largest mega city in the world with 42 million people

China is planning to create the world's biggest mega city by merging nine cities to create a metropolis twice the size of Wales with a population of 42 million.

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai and Peter Foster in Beijing
The Telegraph
24 Jan 2011


City planners in south China have laid out an ambitious plan to merge together the nine cities that lie around the Pearl River Delta.

The "Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One" scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area that is 26 times larger geographically than Greater London, or twice the size of Wales.

The new mega-city will cover a large part of China's manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.

Over the next six years, around 150 major infrastructure projects will mesh the transport, energy, water and telecommunications networks of the nine cities together, at a cost of some 2 trillion yuan (£190 billion). An express rail line will also connect the hub with nearby Hong Kong.

"The idea is that when the cities are integrated, the residents can travel around freely and use the health care and other facilities in the different areas," said Ma Xiangming, the chief planner at the Guangdong Rural and Urban Planning Institute and a senior consultant on the project.

However, he said no name had been chosen for the area. "It will not be like Greater London or Greater Tokyo because there is no one city at the heart of this megalopolis," he said. "We cannot just name it after one of the existing cities."

"It will help spread industry and jobs more evenly across the region and public services will also be distributed more fairly," he added.

Mr Ma said that residents would be able to use universal rail cards and buy annual tickets to allow them to commute around the mega-city.

Twenty-nine rail lines, totalling 3,100 miles, will be added, cutting rail journeys around the urban area to a maximum of one hour between different city centres. According to planners, phone bills could also fall by 85 per cent and hospitals and schools will be improved.

"Residents will be able to choose where to get their services and will use the internet to find out which hospital, for example, is less busy," said Mr Ma.

Pollution, a key problem in the Pearl River Delta because of its industrialisation, will also be addressed with a united policy, and the price of petrol and electricity could also be unified.

The southern conglomeration is intended to wrestle back a competitive advantage from the growing urban areas around Beijing and Shanghai.

By the end of the decade, China plans to move ever greater numbers into its cities, creating some city zones with 50 million to 100 million people and "small" city clusters of 10 million to 25 million.

In the north, the area around Beijing and Tianjin, two of China's most important cities, is being ringed with a network of high-speed railways that will create a super-urban area known as the Bohai Economic Rim. Its population could be as high as 260 million.

The process of merging the Bohai region has already begun with the connection of Beijing to Tianjing by a high speed railway that completes the 75 mile journey in less than half an hour, providing an axis around which to create a network of feeder cities.

As the process gathers pace, total investment in urban infrastructure over the next five years is expected to hit £685 billion, according to an estimate by the British Chamber of Commerce, with an additional £300 billion spend on high speed rail and £70 billion on urban transport.

China to create largest mega city in the world with 42 million people - Telegraph

 

[no_name]

^^^^

The transportation system better be top notch.

Similar proposals may also be useful for places like regions around shanghai.

Look at the map - the megacity will suck HK dry - won't be too long before they want let in.

The metropolis will be as powerful as a small country, will put places like singapore to shame.

In the distant and unlikely even of china falling back into chaos, you'll see warlords call themselves kings and preside over various such city states.

Probably the most ambitious projects for a long time.

btw just adding populations in the various cities together gives me a figure of 47.9 million. South Korea by contrast has a population of 48.8 million as of 2010.

 

[below_freezing]

China to create largest mega city in the world with 42 million people

Wow, just wow!!! even I have not heard of this!!! Amazing!

^^^^

The transportation system better be top notch.

Similar proposals may also be useful for places like regions around shanghai.

Look at the map - the megacity will suck HK dry - won't be too long before they want let in.

The metropolis will be as powerful as a small country, will put places like singapore to shame.

In the distant and unlikely even of china falling back into chaos, you'll see warlords call themselves kings and preside over various such city states.

Probably the most ambitious projects for a long time.

btw just adding populations in the various cities together gives me a figure of 47.9 million. South Korea by contrast has a population of 48.8 million as of 2010.

Actually, I think this makes rebellion less likely. Urban centers are extremely hardened against invasion but at the same time, high speed national transport networks make troop and police deployment rapid, and modern communications systems are easily intercepted from the inside. This makes the communication of orders by a rogue general, and the actual carrying out of the rebellion, almost impossible. If anyone had such an order, it could be listened to immediately, a broadcast would make the conspiracy known to the public, and troops/police from other parts of the country could be brought in to crush it.

 

[no_name]

Actually I did not comprehend the magnitude until I realised that this is about 10 New Zealands put together in terms of population. They could just round off and call it 50 million.


Compared to it we in Auckland are like hermits!

 

[Brotherhood]

China approves 10 more nuclear power generators - People's Daily Online January 26, 2011

China is expected to raise its 2020 target for the nuclear power industry to 86 gigawatts (gW), or 5 percent of its power generation, representing at least 70 billion yuan ($10.6 billion) of investment annually.

The nation will approve another 10 nuclear power projects during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), according to Zhang Guobao, former director of the National Energy Administration.

In line with the country's move to accelerate the development of the industry, China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC), the country's largest nuclear power company, plans to invest 800 billion yuan ($121.5 billion) in nuclear projects by 2020.

CNNC said the total investment in nuclear power plants is expected to reach 500 billion yuan by 2015, resulting in 40 gW of nuclear energy available nationwide.

The investments have created a huge market for nuclear equipment, the value of which is estimated at 500 billion yuan.

That equipment forms the largest part of investment in nuclear power stations, accounting for 50 to 60 percent of the total.

Dongfang Electric, the country's largest nuclear equipment maker by market share, has already benefited from the investment spree. The company said in a statement that it currently has orders worth 45 billion yuan and it expects the figure to skyrocket this year.

Meanwhile, there are concerns that China's equipment manufacturing industry is lagging behind the fast-developing nuclear power industry.

The localization rate stands at 50 percent for nuclear power equipment installed in China, which means half of the country's nuclear equipment is provided by foreign manufacturers.

The localization rate of equipment using second-generation technology is 80 percent while that of the third generation is only 30 percent, said Xiao Xinjian, a researcher at the Energy Research Institute affiliated to the National Development and Reform Commission.

China's 11 nuclear power generating units all use second-generation technology, the Xinhua News Agency has reported.

China should focus on developing reactors based on Westinghouse Electric Co's third-generation AP1000 design, instead of older, second-generation technology, according to a commentary by the research unit of the State Council.

"The equipment manufacturing industry will have to catch up if China is to realize its target of 86 gW of nuclear power capacity," said Xiao.

In addition to China's nuclear industry flagship operator CNNC, all of the nation's major power groups have established nuclear energy departments to enter the capital-intensive but lucrative market.

To enhance its competitiveness, CNNC recently began building the CNNC Beijing Nuclear Technology Park in Beijing, which will be the largest research and development center for the country's nuclear power industry.

Meanwhile, the China Institute of Atomic Energy, the cradle of Chinese nuclear science, plans to step up research efforts to narrow the gap between China and developed nations in nuclear science.

China, the world's second-largest economy, aims to get 15 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020.

Nuclear power will have to account for 5 percent of power generation by then, said Xiao from the Energy Research Institute.

Currently, nuclear stations account for only 2 percent of the total power generation.

China Daily

 

[no_name]

Actually, I think this makes rebellion less likely. Urban centers are extremely hardened against invasion but at the same time, high speed national transport networks make troop and police deployment rapid, and modern communications systems are easily intercepted from the inside. This makes the communication of orders by a rogue general, and the actual carrying out of the rebellion, almost impossible. If anyone had such an order, it could be listened to immediately, a broadcast would make the conspiracy known to the public, and troops/police from other parts of the country could be brought in to crush it.

I was assuming under the condition that central authority had already broken down - like the warlords era of 1920s.

The warlord with the most human resources has the greatest chance of expansion and survival.

How to keep so many people fed and supplied will be a problem, though.

 

[Brotherhood]

'Chimerica' a powerhouse, not hegemony, for global economy - People's Daily Online January 26, 2011

Two years after the global financial crisis in 2008, China overtook the United States as the largest trading partner of the European Union. Also, in the same year, China became the second largest economy in the world. And in early 2011, China and the United States, the world’s No. 1 economic power, pledged to build a "cooperative economic partnership." What do the closer relations between the world's two biggest, albeit different, economies mean for other economies and the world economy as a whole?

The economic interdependence between China and the United States, or "Chimerica," to use the phrase coined by Harvard economic historians Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick, will further increase in the next 10 years. However, what such interdependence will mean for the rest of the world depends on to what extent the world's two largest economies can cooperate.

Together, China and the United States can play a leading, positive role in the world economy. But that can be possible only when they overcome the following challenges.

First, interdependence is just a "platform" upon which further cooperation is "attainable" rather than any reflection of the "reality" of cooperation because interdependence could also lead to conflicts, said Qin Yaqing who leads China Foreign Affairs University as one of the most respected Chinese scholars on international relations.

He stressed that great efforts are crucial to realize the cooperation potential that has been provided by the growing interdependence. A key part of the solution, he asserted, is to tip the balance of mutual "perception" toward the side of cooperation instead of competition.

There is concern over the increasingly competitive nature of China-U.S. economic ties, which are normally described as "complementary. Jin Canrong, deputy principal of School of International Studies at the Beijing-based Renmin University, for example, has warned that the growing competition could potentially be one of the biggest risks for China-U.S. economic relations in the future.

Although that is not an imminent challenge, it is an important one to tackle now. Qin believes that it is important to focus on the cooperative side both practically and rhetorically. Otherwise, it will create a self-fulfilling prophecy that competition will prevail in China-U.S. economic ties and in turn undermine China-U.S. relations as a whole.

The current spat between China and the United States in the economic domain mainly comes from the huge U.S. trade deficit with China. As Yao Jian, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Commerce said, trade is no more than "a tip of the iceberg" in China-U.S. economic relations. He urged the two sides to pay more attention to much wider cooperative areas beyond trade, such as the service sector, finance and investment.

Second, both China and the United States have to be highly aware of the significance of their cooperation in global economic governance. Although any China-U.S. G2 pattern is neither realistic nor desirable as a result of the cooperation between the world's largest two economies, their joint contribution to the stability and reform of the global economic governance is.

The rise of China and other emerging economies will definitely bring some "non-Western ideas" into the existing Anglo-American-dominated form of global economic governance, Qin said. And it has made real difference in the globalization process, Yao said. That will in turn make a difference to the global economic growth as a whole.

But that does not mean that China would challenge the existing system. Instead, it would contribute to the stability and proper reform of the existing system. The G20, Qin believes, can be effective as possible in supporting a balanced world economy only insofar as China and the United States have healthy bilateral relations and make concerted efforts within this framework. He has high hopes for the G20's "crucial role" in global economic and political governance.

Jin also agrees that China-U.S. cooperation should move toward balancing the world economy as a whole. Benefiting from the existing global governance system, China has "no intention" of challenging that system, he noted.

In addition, emerging economies as a whole have a long way to go before they have real participation in global economic governance despite the fact that the voices of the major emerging economies, such as China, Brazil and India, have increased in the IMF and World Bank. Yao said that China's per capita GDP still lags behind most other countries in the world. And China has to think about the right balance between greater rights and greater obligations brought by higher shares, Qin said.

Third, any cooperation between China and the United States should not be regarded as anything like a joint dominance in the world economy or world economic governance. The importance of the European market for China, for example, is even more evident after the global financial crisis as the two sides became the largest trading partner for each other for the fist time in 2010. China's trade with other emerging markets, particularly the ASEAN, has soared after the China-ASEAN free trade zone was built in 2010.

Because those old industrial countries are declining as the new emerging economies are on the rise, world economic power will be structurally even more diversified than ever, making any dominance or hegemony even less possible, Jin said.

The China-U.S. Joint Statement issued on Jan. 19 during Chinese President Hu Jintao's high profile visit to Washington reaffirms their support to "strengthen the global financial system and reform the international financial architecture" and for a bigger role for the G20 in international economic and financial affairs. How much substantial cooperation they can make for the sake of the world economy will be this year outside China and the United States in Cannes, France, the venue of the G20 Summit, at which the two largest economies have committed to jointly "push for positive outcomes."

By Li Jia, People’s Daily Online