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While the U.S. dawdles with much needed domestic infrastructure upgrades, China is already engaged in a project so massive that it will tilt the Earth in its favor. The trillion-dollar Belt Road Initiative (BRI) is a plan for a web of transportation routes (road, rail, shipping lanes, more—all leading to China) that will be created or expanded over the next 30-plus years. The BRI’s main purpose is to facilitate trade. China, the world’s leading producer of exports, no longer wants to rely on slow moving boats to move its goods out.
While China has earmarked $900 billion to spend on the New Silk Road, the country is also prepared to loan $8 trillion to over 60 countries, many of them too poor to fund their own big infrastructure projects. One trillion dollars is said to have already been allocated by these countries. By comparison, the entire 47,000 miles of the US Interstate Highway system cost roughly half that amount ($459 billion).
Slow Boats to China
The Middle Ages led to ocean-going ships that took over from camel caravans over deserts and mountains. The Silk Road lapsed to serving local trade.
The modern maritime fleet relies on container ships for dry goods and tankers for liquids, both of which have reached gargantuan proportions. The biggest of all ships, a tanker, holds enough oil for 15,000 tanker trucks. Only a bit shorter, the biggest container ship carries 19,000 truck loads. Since China houses the world’s biggest labor force and produces the most goods, it makes sense that China also has the largest set of container ports to get those goods out, including the world’s biggest in Shanghai.
It’s not enough. The world’s growing appetites for goods demand that more of them arrive faster. Those ships could use more ports, and existing ports could be modernized. More ships could be built. For goods that are to be consumed and producers on the same landmass, why not connect them with modern highways and railroads? Why go around continents or through choke points (examples: the Suez and Panama canals) when you can make a relative beeline with a tractor trailer on a smooth multilane highway?
Iron Will, Iron Road
Only China would seem to have the ability to even consider a project the magnitude of the New Silk Road. Upheavals caused by mega-projects are plagued by detractors in democracies. Transecting an unspoiled wilderness with pipelines or roads in the U.S. may be met with protest from environmentalists. Trying to move villages for a hydroelectric project will cause riots in India. In China, the national will overrides individual and special interests.
But joining the super initiative are 68 countries, all seeking benefits of trade passing through their borders—lands that time and technology may have forgotten can now hope to get into the act.
Pakistan’s old roads will be improved, and new roads will be built. No small task, as the roads will snake over the tallest mountain range in the world with passes of over 5,000 meters. China has promised Pakistan $46 billion in energy and infrastructure—about 1/6 of Pakistan’s GDP. While the roads and rail will shortcut Chinese goods to Karachi and the Gwadar Port (half the cost of the much longer sea route), the coal power plant and hydro power stations planned will benefit the local economy for generations.
Gassing up in Russia
The China-Russian deal in 2014 has China buying 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Moscow for $400 billion. Parts of the New Silk Road are the pipelines that must be built to handle the flow of gas.
China’s trade with European nations is said to be a billion dollars a day and the E.U. trade with China is second only to the US—a situation that could easily switch to China’s favor with the completion of the New Silk Road.
Will it Work?
China has spent some of its 5,000 years of civilization in isolation. But since the emergence of a globalized economy, the choice has been either active participation or marginalization as the world passes by. Haltingly at first, Communist-led China has found advantage in participating in capitalist markets with its incredibly large human population. Cheap labor never seems to run out and workers work diligently for more hours per day and more days per week than in the West.
Nevertheless, there is no mistaking such a huge investment will make a big difference when coupled with the force of a unified people and government and a massive investment.
Historians may one day see the New Silk Road as the catalyst for a new world order, with China on top. All without firing a shot.
Read the entire article here --> https://www.engineering.com/BIM/Art...ucture-Project-is-One-You-Never-Heard-Of.aspx
While China has earmarked $900 billion to spend on the New Silk Road, the country is also prepared to loan $8 trillion to over 60 countries, many of them too poor to fund their own big infrastructure projects. One trillion dollars is said to have already been allocated by these countries. By comparison, the entire 47,000 miles of the US Interstate Highway system cost roughly half that amount ($459 billion).
Slow Boats to China
The Middle Ages led to ocean-going ships that took over from camel caravans over deserts and mountains. The Silk Road lapsed to serving local trade.
The modern maritime fleet relies on container ships for dry goods and tankers for liquids, both of which have reached gargantuan proportions. The biggest of all ships, a tanker, holds enough oil for 15,000 tanker trucks. Only a bit shorter, the biggest container ship carries 19,000 truck loads. Since China houses the world’s biggest labor force and produces the most goods, it makes sense that China also has the largest set of container ports to get those goods out, including the world’s biggest in Shanghai.
It’s not enough. The world’s growing appetites for goods demand that more of them arrive faster. Those ships could use more ports, and existing ports could be modernized. More ships could be built. For goods that are to be consumed and producers on the same landmass, why not connect them with modern highways and railroads? Why go around continents or through choke points (examples: the Suez and Panama canals) when you can make a relative beeline with a tractor trailer on a smooth multilane highway?
Iron Will, Iron Road
Only China would seem to have the ability to even consider a project the magnitude of the New Silk Road. Upheavals caused by mega-projects are plagued by detractors in democracies. Transecting an unspoiled wilderness with pipelines or roads in the U.S. may be met with protest from environmentalists. Trying to move villages for a hydroelectric project will cause riots in India. In China, the national will overrides individual and special interests.
But joining the super initiative are 68 countries, all seeking benefits of trade passing through their borders—lands that time and technology may have forgotten can now hope to get into the act.
Pakistan’s old roads will be improved, and new roads will be built. No small task, as the roads will snake over the tallest mountain range in the world with passes of over 5,000 meters. China has promised Pakistan $46 billion in energy and infrastructure—about 1/6 of Pakistan’s GDP. While the roads and rail will shortcut Chinese goods to Karachi and the Gwadar Port (half the cost of the much longer sea route), the coal power plant and hydro power stations planned will benefit the local economy for generations.
Gassing up in Russia
The China-Russian deal in 2014 has China buying 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Moscow for $400 billion. Parts of the New Silk Road are the pipelines that must be built to handle the flow of gas.
China’s trade with European nations is said to be a billion dollars a day and the E.U. trade with China is second only to the US—a situation that could easily switch to China’s favor with the completion of the New Silk Road.
Will it Work?
China has spent some of its 5,000 years of civilization in isolation. But since the emergence of a globalized economy, the choice has been either active participation or marginalization as the world passes by. Haltingly at first, Communist-led China has found advantage in participating in capitalist markets with its incredibly large human population. Cheap labor never seems to run out and workers work diligently for more hours per day and more days per week than in the West.
Nevertheless, there is no mistaking such a huge investment will make a big difference when coupled with the force of a unified people and government and a massive investment.
Historians may one day see the New Silk Road as the catalyst for a new world order, with China on top. All without firing a shot.
Read the entire article here --> https://www.engineering.com/BIM/Art...ucture-Project-is-One-You-Never-Heard-Of.aspx
