PRC Economy and Industry: News and Discussions

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 20 Dec 2010 16:41

yeah the rest 6000 would be other makes like king long and so on I suppose...thats a lot of buses...no indic metro city has more than few 100 of such low floor ac buses of large size volvo/marcopolo....delhi would likely have the most.

I suppose thats one way the chaos of 2 wheels is not allowed in.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 20 Dec 2010 21:48

Amit,

Hate to say this but you are wasting time with the trolls.

After all the 'research' I've done I can say this for sure. These trolls have 'NO' idea what the situation is like in rural China. They have either never been there or they are willfully ignoring it. 99% of China in terms of area is completely untouched by new investment. The reason these people are migrating to the cities is the low infrastructure level in the countryside compared to newer city type development.

What China really needs is
- proper rural roads esp. in terms of grades (rural roads are far too steep for bicycle use)
- move to using asphalt rather than the rough, hard and slippery concrete slabs, proper lighting of rural areas
- Proper public transport system in rural areas. Nothing like our busing system exists there. 50% plus towns that have 200,000+ residents don't have a rail connection.
- govt. help in improving their rural housing, esp. in terms of weatherizing (cold/wet)
- Help in replacing rural roofs. Every single one I've seen requires complete replacement.
- proper septic system and organized trash removal
- complete rebuilding of all the concrete structures built in the 50's & 60's
- help to renovate the dilapidated shrines that people can revolve around
- more bridges over the innumerable rivers and canals

More than anything the government needs to invest in its rural areas. There is no sign of help anywhere. The newer cities have nice broad boulevards and garish, self aggrandizing public construction, but right out side the city the rural areas are completely ignored. Even by Indian standards. And those rural areas are still 95% of China. They need to at least try.

What these people need is more HSR. Right!

Since we are discussing South Korea I went looking to see what Korea looks like. This is the type of rural roads I'm talking about.

wrdos · Post by **wrdos** » 21 Dec 2010 08:33

Hehe, it is not easy to collect all these pics from the internet, good job.
And then to imagine 99% Chinese are living such kind of areas, excellent imagination.

vina · Post by **vina** » 21 Dec 2010 09:08

Hehe, it is not easy to collect all these pics from the internet, good job.
And then to imagine 99% Chinese are living such kind of areas, excellent imagination

Right.. But to think that 99% of Chinese live in the shining pictures kind of places we get to see on the internet like the Shanghai Bund or the Pudong areas is actually reality and not some propaganda machine churning out rubbish.

amit · Post by **amit** » 21 Dec 2010 10:22

wrdos wrote:Hehe, it is not easy to collect all these pics from the internet, good job.
And then to imagine 99% Chinese are living such kind of areas, excellent imagination.

Come on Wrdos, you know the pictures being posted by Theo ain't that hard to find. The ones that are really hard to find are of villages described in, for example, in this sentence:

In 16 villages in Beijing’s southern suburbs, where most residents are migrants, iron gates slam shut at night and lock the population in, except for those with special permits for night labor.

Now if someone could post a picture of this, in the land of the Proletariat, then I'd impressed!

Why don't you impress me, and the rest of BRF?

amit · Post by **amit** » 21 Dec 2010 10:33

^^^^^^

Actually not so hard to find after all!

Here's a NYT report on Shou Bao Zhuang one of the migrant villages in Beijing with pictures.

Wrdos, you know what, in India no government would last one day if they tried something like that in any city, leave alone the capital.

Now you most probably would take that as a weakness on the part of the government. However, most people in this world would think otherwise.

amit · Post by **amit** » 21 Dec 2010 10:36

Theo_Fidel wrote:Amit,

Hate to say this but you are wasting time with the trolls.

Theo,

I understand your point and your right in a way. But I intend to keep on hammering these points not for the Chinese trolls but for our own BRFites. Unfortunately, many of them are taken in by the picture painted by the superb Public Relations machinery of the Chinese Communist Party (- make no mistake many of the posters here are part of that machinery). The moment they close their eyes and think of China, they see the amazing Shanghai skyline and Pudong* area or they visualise the new Beijing airport or some such mega structure.

Sure there's lots happening in China that's amazing and unprecedented and from which India could learn a lot. However, we need to be discerning and be able to spot the warts and excesses as well. Otherwise we can't learn a thing.

JMT and all that.

* Note: I would advise folks to read up the brutal history of how villages were raised to the ground and entire buildings bulldozed with the belongings of the residents still inside them, to clear the land for the fantastic building activity that took place there. Incidentally none of the villagers got alternative accommodation on that piece of land. Contrast that with what they are trying to do in Dharavi.

chaanakya · Post by **chaanakya** » 21 Dec 2010 19:08

Just met a guy , few days back at BKK airport , returning from Shanghai after participating in some business exhibition. He saw Shanghai and also went to Rural areas where some of the factories were situated. He was astonished and said condition was worse , be it living condition, working condition or infrastructure such as road. His views were similar to what Theo found out after research.

The guy told many things but he also told one very important thing. Chinese are teaching english to their children. And they would be a threat they join mainstream. it would be difficult to compete with them then. don't know how far this is true.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 21 Dec 2010 23:55

chaanakya wrote:The guy told many things but he also told one very important thing. Chinese are teaching english to their children. And they would be a threat they join mainstream. it would be difficult to compete with them then. don't know how far this is true.

It is not so easy to master a foreign language. It taken years for India to get it right. One of the reasons our english sounds OK right now is because the media has been influenced by it over time. Indian english idioms and peculiarities now show up all over the world. For instance 'Why for.." is now a conversationally accepted idiom.

As can be seen by the trolls on this board the chinese never pick up on the nuances of the language cos they don't use it every day. They make huge blunders in comprehension and speaking because of this. Classic example is that guy who goes 'he he he..', all the time not knowing that this is the laugh of of a senile perverted old man showing his d#@k per the language.

Abhijeet · Post by **Abhijeet** » 22 Dec 2010 01:28

If the changes in Seoul happened only during the 2000s, as the article says, then it happened at a far higher per capita GDP than China is at now. In other words, South Korea pursued development at any cost till they became rich, and in the last decade (at which point their per-capita GDP was probably over $15,000 -- it is over $20,000 now), they beautified the place. I don't see how this really argues against what the Chinese are doing in their cities.

I've seen the Chonggyecheon, and it's great. If that's an example of what can be done to a natural artifact that had pretty much been left for dead while the country was developing, then the same thing could happen in the Chinese cities as well.

Hari Seldon · Post by **Hari Seldon** » 22 Dec 2010 08:58

Despite myself, have to agree with abhijeet here. Seems we're wishing for PRC to be proved a fake and a fraud and all that. Well, maybe it is but the jury is still out on that one. Time will tell. In another 5-7 yrs, PRC at current real growth rates will again double+ its per capita and should be close to the 10k USD mark, perhaps.

vina · Post by **vina** » 22 Dec 2010 09:14

PRC at current real growth rates will again double+ its per capita and should be close to the 10k USD mark, perhaps

Err. Haven't you paid attention to the statutory warning in any investment solicitation ?

"Past returns do not guarantee future performance"

amit · Post by **amit** » 22 Dec 2010 09:20

Abhijeet wrote:If the changes in Seoul happened only during the 2000s, as the article says, then it happened at a far higher per capita GDP than China is at now. In other words, South Korea pursued development at any cost till they became rich, and in the last decade (at which point their per-capita GDP was probably over $15,000 -- it is over $20,000 now), they beautified the place. I don't see how this really argues against what the Chinese are doing in their cities.

I've seen the Chonggyecheon, and it's great. If that's an example of what can be done to a natural artifact that had pretty much been left for dead while the country was developing, then the same thing could happen in the Chinese cities as well.

Abhijeet,

Sure China can do that same as South Korea as regards their cities. But I think you missed the central point which the article made. And that is Seoul was given back to its residents - so to speak - after mindless development only when democracy supplanted the autocratic dictatorship that was the character of South Korea till the 1990s. (Of course even during that time protest activities, especially student demonstrations, were alive and well, held in full glare of media scrutiny, unlike the case in China.)

China would also look to the needs of its citizens and stop atrocities like locking up poor migrant workers at night or not giving "citizenship" rights to their shinny cities to the people who build them only when it makes a transition from being a dicatatorship to being a democracy. Now will the autocratic and feudalistic CCP allow that change willingly?

We all saw what the reaction was to Liu's Nobel prize. And all he did was write out a charter on democratic rights! I don't see a glasnost/perestroika type change happening anytime soon. And meanwhile the hotungs of Beijing which have existed for a thousand years will be destroyed to make way for some wet dream projects of a Gora architect and the historical oriental look that made Shanghai so famous pre-Communism will be bulldozed down to make way for mindless and soulless skyscrapers which makes the CCP bosses feel TFTA.

I really hope India in its mad rush for development doesn't commit the same mistakes.

JMT and related disclaimers.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 22 Dec 2010 12:24

Abhijeet,

The key point you are missing is that Seoul was built to make money. It was never under commie overlords.

Much of this Panda building is essentially in the mold of the Soviet/Mao era blocks of flats. These are not cities. No one lives there. These cities don't make money.

starek · Post by **starek** » 22 Dec 2010 13:44

Theo_Fidel wrote:For instance about 60% of Shanghai is still like this. Esp. in the peripheral areas.

According to license plate -- "赣P2363" in your photo, it means Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, please show me the real 60% of Shanghai

Christopher Sidor · Post by **Christopher Sidor** » 22 Dec 2010 16:46

starek wrote:
Theo_Fidel wrote:For instance about 60% of Shanghai is still like this. Esp. in the peripheral areas.
According to license plate -- "赣P2363" in your photo, it means Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, please show me the real 60% of Shanghai

Are you telling me that chinese dont have the freedom to take their two wheelers from one province to another?

Ohhhh so sorry, please forgive me, I forgot that Chinese don't live in a free society.

And what about the rest of the photos? Are they air-brushed-copy-for-propaganda?

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 22 Dec 2010 22:39

Sounds like they have a hukou local residency system for cars too

VikramS · Post by **VikramS** » 22 Dec 2010 22:52

Map of China. Jiujiang seems to be less than 450 miles from Shangai, about the same as SFO to LAX.

I did not see anything significantly depressing in the rural China pictures. Very similar to rural India (the not so remote areas).

While I am skeptical of the sustenance of these growth rates going forward, I admire the way the CCP has been able to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. All the derision about the unequal distribution of wealth is meaningless. In India the wealth being generated by the new economy is being cornered by politicians and the big businesses while the professionals are very happy slogging 50 hours a week to come over to their 3 BedRoom flat.

The sheer scale of the looting as illustrated by the 2G scandal and what not is mind-boggling. One way to measure it is to look at real-estate prices in the prime areas, since that is where a bulk of the ill-gotten wealth gets invested. And every time there is some new infrastructure being planned we see politicians grabbing land by hook or crook or selecting proposals which favor their ownership. Property rights are great but not when you can be intimidated out of your home or land by the goondas.

starek · Post by **starek** » 22 Dec 2010 23:02

Christopher Sidor wrote:[quote="starek]Are you telling me that chinese dont have the freedom to take their two wheelers from one province to another?
Ohhhh so sorry, please forgive me, I forgot that Chinese don't live in a free society.

And what about the rest of the photos? Are they air-brushed-copy-for-propaganda?

[/quote]
please show me the real 60% of Shanghai , thank you.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 22 Dec 2010 23:16

Guys,

The trolls always get (deliberately?) the language wrong.

What I said was that the third picture was from Shanghai. In any case everyone of the slum pictures is from Shanghai.

But I have never seen a comment here where they get it right. It is a deliberate tactic they have been taught. Ignore them all.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 22 Dec 2010 23:20

He has indirectly acknowledged that the rest of 40% of Shanghai can be not so picturesque.

DavidD · Post by **DavidD** » 23 Dec 2010 05:35

amit wrote:
What the Seoul Mayor did was set right the excesses committed during the autocratic phase which resulted in over building. In Beijing we have yet to see any of that. Only a few original hutongs were rebuilt so as please western tourists.

As a Chinese, I do not need to remind you that those hutongs and one-story houses built around square inner courts date back 1000 years as far as architectural style goes.

Where's the contrast again? Please be a bit more specific than "set right the excesses..." For example, what were the excesses, what did he do to set them right, and most importantly, how are they different from China's case?

I'm from Beijing, so I know full well what hutongs are. They're the bane to efficient transportation. Charming, yes, but when you're stuck in traffic for 2 hours getting to somewhere you'll only spend an hour at, you'll see why the majority of them needed to be torn down. They could've preserved more, but the tradition vs. modernization thing is an issue for any modernizing country.

DavidD · Post by **DavidD** » 23 Dec 2010 05:39

Theo_Fidel wrote:Amit,

Hate to say this but you are wasting time with the trolls.

After all the 'research' I've done I can say this for sure. These trolls have 'NO' idea what the situation is like in rural China. They have either never been there or they are willfully ignoring it. 99% of China in terms of area is completely untouched by new investment. The reason these people are migrating to the cities is the low infrastructure level in the countryside compared to newer city type development.

What China really needs is
- proper rural roads esp. in terms of grades (rural roads are far too steep for bicycle use)
- move to using asphalt rather than the rough, hard and slippery concrete slabs, proper lighting of rural areas
- Proper public transport system in rural areas. Nothing like our busing system exists there. 50% plus towns that have 200,000+ residents don't have a rail connection.
- govt. help in improving their rural housing, esp. in terms of weatherizing (cold/wet)
- Help in replacing rural roofs. Every single one I've seen requires complete replacement.
- proper septic system and organized trash removal
- complete rebuilding of all the concrete structures built in the 50's & 60's
- help to renovate the dilapidated shrines that people can revolve around
- more bridges over the innumerable rivers and canals

More than anything the government needs to invest in its rural areas. There is no sign of help anywhere. The newer cities have nice broad boulevards and garish, self aggrandizing public construction, but right out side the city the rural areas are completely ignored. Even by Indian standards. And those rural areas are still 95% of China. They need to at least try.

So I take it that you've been to rural China?

Now, your criticism of uneven development in China is very valid, and it's definitely an issue. But really, you're making it sound like a great sin for a developing country to have some glistening cities and some dirty slums.

PrasadZ · Post by **PrasadZ** » 23 Dec 2010 08:29

The Indian state could not use goondas against property rights here : Mumbai airport, tata factory. Just top of my head n without getting into pros n cons of individual cases. Am not aware of public activism in china, leave alone the ability to change decisions to (say) raze a hutong.
Moving millions of people out of poverty? Guess what? India has done it too. China has done a whole lot more but the right lessons need to be learnt here. Briefly: public investment in health, education, infrastructure consistently over a long period gives enormous gains to hdi. Muzzling public opinion leads to over investment in infra n military causing brfites to question the intelligence of public leaders

PrasadZ · Post by **PrasadZ** » 23 Dec 2010 08:34

To me, amit's photos provide criticism n balance to our appreciation of china's success. Hopefully saves us being suckered into a non optimal path

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 23 Dec 2010 09:08

Thing though guys, as I've posted before, the level of investment in Panda land is orders of magnitude above anything we see in India or the world.

I'm talking of $2.5 Trillion, 600 million tonnes of steel, 1Trillion tonnes of concrete, 4 Trillion tonnes of coal, etc. And this is accelerating over 20+ year. This is 10 times Indias investment level. For this level of investment you would expect to see the country transformed. I know India would be. Yet this is not true at all. Other than the isolated pockets near cities, investment in 99% of the country by area is very minimal. Esp. WRT existing infrastructure. Even in Panda land if the commie overlords could get over their ego's they could have easily transformed the country with just the money invested so far. Instead, in terms of the size of their country they have pissed it all away.

All I can see is that China has built several hundred 'Las Vegas' style developments and linked them w/ access controlled highways. For everyone else, Zilch.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 23 Dec 2010 09:17

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/world ... ml?_r=1&hp

chinese drivers seem to have same bad habits as indians

DavidD · Post by **DavidD** » 23 Dec 2010 09:34

Theo_Fidel wrote:Thing though guys, as I've posted before, the level of investment in Panda land is orders of magnitude above anything we see in India or the world.

I'm talking of $2.5 Trillion, 600 million tonnes of steel, 1Trillion tonnes of concrete, 4 Trillion tonnes of coal, etc. And this is accelerating over 20+ year. This is 10 times Indias investment level. For this level of investment you would expect to see the country transformed. I know India would be. Yet this is not true at all. Other than the isolated pockets near cities, investment in 99% of the country by area is very minimal. Esp. WRT existing infrastructure. Even in Panda land if the commie overlords could get over their ego's they could have easily transformed the country with just the money invested so far. Instead, in terms of the size of their country they have pissed it all away.

All I can see is that China has built several hundred 'Las Vegas' style developments and linked them w/ access controlled highways. For everyone else, Zilch.

You don't see the transformation? Those brick house slums used to look like this:

What are you trying to prove anyway? If you think 20-30 years of development is enough to pull a nation of 1.3 billion people into first world conditions then you're delusional.

amit · Post by **amit** » 23 Dec 2010 10:06

^^^^^

So David, you fell into the trap set up very nicely. Thank you!

You see it's nobody's case here on BRF that India does not have poverty. However, that poverty is open and in your face, as it should be in any open and free society. The folks you pictured may be poor and may live in abysmal conditions but each one of them above the legal voting age has a say in who runs thing for them in government and every five years they exercise that power to great effect. The net result of that would be eventually - and pretty fast - their lives will change but the change would be more sustainable change and will not be at the cost of the environment and at the cost of others.

Read Theo's post above yours very carefully to understand what the issue is.

In mid 2000s I had a chat with an diplomat from a western country. He was lavish in praise of China (more so since his country had been slapped recently by India at one of the WTO talks and it hurt) and demeaning of India. His reasoning (warning to others: the guy wasn't an economist so please don't laugh!) was that instead of catching up with China, India was actually falling behind. I asked him for evidence. He pointed to FDI investments. I think around that time India was getting around $5-6 billion while China was getting more than $50-60 billion. His contention was that consistently over a long period China was absorbing much more FDI and had a higher savings rate than India and hence India was falling behind.

I then asked him a question: If China gets 10 times more FDI than India then could he explain why that was not reflected in comparative GDP growth? What I meant was despite 10 times FDI China's GDP growth was only about 20 per cent or so higher than that of India. That stumped him a bit and while he was fumbling for an explanation, I gave it to him.

And that - again this is a nobrainer for folks on BRF but bear with me - was China was an extraordinarily inefficient user of resources/capital which results in massive wastage. India by comparison was far more efficient and so got more bang for the buck. Again in simple terms that meant - I told the guy - that India used its meager $5 billion FDI far more efficiently than China did with its $50billion. At this point the guy said he had to rush off to a meeting but he would like to take it offline.

Needless to say that more efficient usage of resource was noticed and nowadays, even with the old fashioned calculations of FDI that India follows, the inflow is several orders of magnitude greater than that of those years.

And this brings us back to Theo's great post. Read it again, to understand what would have happened in India if that kind of money - which China has spent - was spent in India.

Do note all of us admire many things the Chinese have done, many of which is unprecedented in human history. But along with that has come a huge cost and accounting for that will happen sooner or later and its not going to be pretty.

What we are trying to learn from the Chinese experience is how to achieve the same things without incurring the same costs.

This is no psy-ops pissing context so don't try to turn it into one.

JMT

DavidD · Post by **DavidD** » 23 Dec 2010 10:11

Theo_Fidel wrote:Guys! those arn't slums! There is plenty of that around. esp. in the cities. Some of the interior cities are much much worse.

For instance about 60% of Shanghai is still like this. Esp. in the peripheral areas.

These pics look almost exactly like where my grandparents live and lived! I just uploaded a few pics that I took ~2 years ago when I visited my grandparents. They live on the outskirts of Wuxi, which is pretty close to Shanghai:

This is the area they're currently living in(the flats, not the highrises). The highrises in the 2nd pic are built for the ex-farmers who used to live in the villages(shown in the 3rd pic):

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/594/05012009102.jpg
http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/7649/05012009101.jpg

This is the village where my grandparents used to live. When I was a kid, the village was still full of people, but these days most people have moved out:
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/6296/05062009309.jpg

It's funny how you mentioned that some of us haven't been to rural China, while you and amit are taking upon yourselves to "educate" the BRFites on how rural China is like when neither of you have been to rural China and probably China at all. Let me tell you how the situation in that region is like.

As mentioned before, the 3rd picture I posted is where my grandparents lived until only a few years ago. Those houses may look old and dirty, but they're actually really nice. They're certainly old, but they're very sturdy, as they've withstood countless floods and typhoons, and they're still in great condition. They had electricity, plumbing(for water, not for toilets though, I hated the toilets which were just a big bucket on a hole in the ground. I was always afraid I'd fall in when I was a kid.), and TV. I always liked living there, because the houses they're much more spacious than the cramped conditions I lived in in Beijing. Now, I didn't exactly live in a slum in Beijing either. I lived inside of the National Defense University, right near the Summer Palace and across a hill from Central Party School of the CPC. These days, about half of those houses are empty, as many villagers have moved into the city. The farmlands have been consolidated so that the land/family ratio has soared along with farming efficiency.

My uncle's family lived in the nearby Yang Shi, and my grandparents moved there to be closer to them. He lives in a $100,000 house, nicer than any I've lived in, and my grandparents are welcome to live there, but they preferred living by themselves. So now, they live in the area in my first 2 pics. That area looks pretty rundown too, but those houses are, again, actually pretty nice. Most of them even have AC, which was unthinkable just 10 years ago. Most of the neighbors aren't locals, they're migrant workers. Their goal is just to make some money and they do pretty well(they make about $500 a month) at that. Those people don't care about how good their houses look, they're not staying there for more than a few years anyway. Plus, they seem to be pretty into gambling, and lose a lot of their money that way. As for my grandparents, they're from another time, and they certainly don't care much about how the area looks. Compared to how things were when they grew up, the place is already like heaven. Just a couple of blocks away and you get to Yang Shi proper, and it's a really nice little city.

My point is that don't even think you can understand a place with only "google image". You have no idea who lives there, if anyone, what their living conditions are really like, and even how things are just a few blocks away. To you, those pictures might look like "slums," but if you've spent time there, you might see that things really aren't so bad and that beneath the exterior squalor, a true transformation has indeed taken place on the inside.

vina · Post by **vina** » 23 Dec 2010 10:14

Theo_Fidel wrote:I'm talking of $2.5 Trillion, 600 million tonnes of steel, 1Trillion tonnes of concrete, 4 Trillion tonnes of coal, etc. And this is accelerating over 20+ year. This is 10 times Indias investment level. For this level of investment you would expect to see the country transformed. I know India would be.

Ah.. Now you are talking about the power of the vote and the questions that will get asked when people start thinking, when will my condition improve?

Even in Panda land if the commie overlords could get over their ego's they could have easily transformed the country with just the money invested so far. Instead, in terms of the size of their country they have pissed it all away.

Yes.. With Beijing bean counting and a totally authoritarian command system which answers to no one, you can do anything you want. Sort of like Dr Leader building the "Juche Tower" (the shape evokes/probably compensates for the small size of his weenie I guess) for what?..hold your breath for JAPANESE TOURISTS to frolic in PyongYang, the land of milk and honey!

Shanghai is a 1000 Juche towers, and much of the overbuild is like a million Juche towers , all subsidized by the energy, enterprise, hard work , smarts and business acumen of the Pearl River Delta. I keep repeating. The China story is two parts. The dynamism and real growth of Shenzen/Guangdong/Pear River and the massive waste and show boating at Shanghai and Beijing driven by a rapacious and incestous communist party elite.

All I can see is that China has built several hundred 'Las Vegas' style developments and linked them w/ access controlled highways. For everyone else, Zilch.

Yes. See, when the Golden Quadrilaterals and NSEW corridors were planned out during the NDA regime, the thought was to build these kind of protected access expressways , instead of what actually got built out.

Thank goodness they didn't in India. It would have taken you from point A to point B some 20 kms or so outside cities .. How could you get Abdul Lungis riding int he bus say between downtown Hosur to Attibelle by paying Rs 25 to experience it and also look at the huge boards of Vajpayee gazing down at you benevolently and the words.. PM -BJP (aka .. Pradhan Mantri - Bharat Jodo Pariyojana).. ie Prime Minister's India Connect Initative aye ?. Good politics makes good sense sometimes na ?.

If they had built Panda style, there would have been roads out of sight going from nowhere to nowhere for the vast majority of the people, totally out of sight to everyone and for the benefits of the kind of GD and other IT/Vity Karnails/Jarnails/Prig-e-diyars driving their fast chariots from their city out of holidays , who in all probability dont vote anyways!.

amit · Post by **amit** » 23 Dec 2010 10:15

DavidD wrote:point is that don't even think you can understand a place with only "google image". You have no idea who lives there, if anyone, what their living conditions are really like, and even how things are just a few blocks away. To you, those pictures might look like "slums," but if you've spent time there, you might see that things really aren't so bad and that beneath the exterior squalor, a true transformation has indeed taken place on the inside.

And yet you pull out a random image from the Internet to show poverty in India? Who knows maybe your image is not a Google image but a Baidu image cleared by the CCP?

DavidD · Post by **DavidD** » 23 Dec 2010 10:16

amit wrote:^^^^^

So David, you fell into the trap set up very nicely. Thank you!

You see it's nobody's case here on BRF that India does not have poverty. However, that poverty is open and in your face, as it should be in any open and free society. The folks you pictured may be poor and may live in abysmal conditions but each one of them above the legal voting age has a say in who runs thing for them in government and every five years they exercise that power to great effect. The net result of that would be eventually - and pretty fast - their lives will change but the change would be more sustainable change and will not be at the cost of the environment and at the cost of others.

Yea, I can totally see how much all that voting power has done for them. Did they get new tents this year?

DavidD · Post by **DavidD** » 23 Dec 2010 10:34

amit wrote:
DavidD wrote:point is that don't even think you can understand a place with only "google image". You have no idea who lives there, if anyone, what their living conditions are really like, and even how things are just a few blocks away. To you, those pictures might look like "slums," but if you've spent time there, you might see that things really aren't so bad and that beneath the exterior squalor, a true transformation has indeed taken place on the inside.
And yet you pull out a random image from the Internet to show poverty in India? Who knows maybe your image is not a Google image but a Baidu image cleared by the CCP?

So you're agreeing with me that google image doesn't constitute research? I'd be happy to retract that post if that means you and theo will retract your last 2 pages' worth of "research."

Look, it's easy to dig up some pictures and make snide, generalizing, and oversimplifying comments. There's no reason to denigrate China's accomplishments by posting some pictures of poverty just like there's no reason to denigrate India's accomplishments with pictures of Indian poverty.

As for your other arguments, they merit a more serious discussion. For example, why does China have so much more FDI but not as much GDP growth? Just look at the numbers! What did that diplomat say, $50-60 billion? What percentage of China's GDP is that? Like 1%? Instead of immediately seeking an answer that you want to hear, which is that India is more efficient, the real answer is much simpler: GDP is about much more than just FDI. Now, that doesn't mean that India is not more efficient, it may very well be, but this is no proof of it.

jamwal · Post by **jamwal** » 23 Dec 2010 12:29

vina wrote:
Thank goodness they didn't in India. It would have taken you from point A to point B some 20 kms or so outside cities .. How could you get Abdul Lungis riding int he bus say between downtown Hosur to Attibelle by paying Rs 25 to experience it and also look at the huge boards of Vajpayee gazing down at you benevolently and the words.. PM -BJP (aka .. Pradhan Mantri - Bharat Jodo Pariyojana).. ie Prime Minister's India Connect Initative aye ?. Good politics makes good sense sometimes na ?

How do you define a city ? Most cities in India are growing rapidly and the old area that used to be heart or The City is nowadays only a very small densely populated part of a big constantly expanding metropolis. 20-30 km is not a big distance to travel even inside tier-II cities. A drive of 20 km to reach the core of city wouldn't be too much for people traveling on something like Golden Quadrilateral.
Take Nai Dilli. Government has constructed a big Inter State Bus Terminal and a fairly large railway station on eastern outskirts. Passengers getting off take taxi, bus or metro to reach elsewhere from there. It'd have been impossible to construct either inside the city. I'm not an expert on city infrastructure, but for the most parts, population tends to cluster around highways and roads once they are constructed. It's a nightmare acquiring land and evicting people from well settled areas to construct anything, roads, buildings, factories including.
Also I don't agree with your assumption that most of Chinese construction is for H&D purposes only. Sure, a fair part might be, but not most of it. Basing this on assumption (naive ? I don't think so) that Chinese can't be that stupid. I'm deliberately not going into percentages

Sudip · Post by **Sudip** » 23 Dec 2010 12:44

Theo_Fidel wrote:
chaanakya wrote:The guy told many things but he also told one very important thing. Chinese are teaching english to their children. And they would be a threat they join mainstream. it would be difficult to compete with them then. don't know how far this is true.
It is not so easy to master a foreign language. It taken years for India to get it right. One of the reasons our english sounds OK right now is because the media has been influenced by it over time. Indian english idioms and peculiarities now show up all over the world. For instance 'Why for.." is now a conversationally accepted idiom.

Most schools in China have made it compulsory for students to learn english from the very bottom classes. I know some young chinese people at my place (2-3 yr younger to me and im 27). He has studied english since very elementary classes too. They all speak standard and comprehensible english, right from the day they landed here. So as far as I see it, english problems for chinese will become a non issue after 10-15 years.

h.jay.s · Post by **h.jay.s** » 23 Dec 2010 13:20

Unfortunately this is not my experience and a lot of my colleagues, ex-classmates from PRC (i am 26) needed extra courses to bring their language skills up to the mark.

However, the PRC equivalent of doon school, rk puram etc would be very MUTU even in English.

This is not to say that lack of familiarity with English has affected them in any major way.

amit · Post by **amit** » 23 Dec 2010 14:06

jamwal wrote:Also I don't agree with your assumption that most of Chinese construction is for H&D purposes only. Sure, a fair part might be, but not most of it. Basing this on assumption (naive ? I don't think so) that Chinese can't be that stupid. I'm deliberately not going into percentages

Sorry boss but this sound wishy washy. If you make a claim back it up with evidence. You can't base you're posts on the assumption that somebody is not stupid.

What if I told you that Chinese CCP is not stupid and they deliberately do all the construction for H&D purposes?

Would you believe me because I'm not stupid?

amit · Post by **amit** » 23 Dec 2010 14:18

DavidD wrote:So you're agreeing with me that google image doesn't constitute research? I'd be happy to retract that post if that means you and theo will retract your last 2 pages' worth of "research."

David,

Theo has been saying something else as well.

And that is many Chinese have learnt to speak and write grammatically correct English but they've yet to understand the nuances of the language. Please don't take it as a knock down on you and your countrymen. You guys have made great strides in the language. Even on BRF I've see how successive generations of Chinese posters have come and each generation is better in the language than previous ones. However, due to historical reasons the Indians have a head start in the language...

What I meant was a rather snide comment on the state of Internet freedom in China - the Baidu reference was in relation to the recent spat between Google and the Chinese govt and the fact that China was the only place in the world were Google - due to govt pressure - is not the No1 search engine, Baidu has 70 per cent share. Yet you as a Chinese first turned to Google as an adjective... You didn't say: I'll do a Baidu and show you how poor India is!

As for your other arguments, they merit a more serious discussion. For example, why does China have so much more FDI but not as much GDP growth? Just look at the numbers! What did that diplomat say, $50-60 billion? What percentage of China's GDP is that? Like 1%? Instead of immediately seeking an answer that you want to hear, which is that India is more efficient, the real answer is much simpler: GDP is about much more than just FDI. Now, that doesn't mean that India is not more efficient, it may very well be, but this is no proof of it.

I'm afraid you don't understand the numbers here. You can't just say $50 billion is just x per cent of GDP and so not important. You gotta spell out FDI especially the I to understand why. Any investment has a multiplier effect or should have on the economy in order to be "sound" investment. If FDI was so unimportant in economic growth then why does China even bother to attract it. The reason is FDI also brings in new knowhow, technology etc and these have a multiplier effect.

The HSRs technology or the stuff which Huawei and ZTE build first came into China via FDI didn't it? If they didn't come in do you think you guys would have been able to copy the technology?

No sir, in the years we are discussing $50-$60 billion FDI was very important to China. And there's no shame to admitting that.

In India capital is used much more efficiently. Almost everybody who invests acknowledges that. If you haven't seen evidence of that then tough luck!

zlin · Post by **zlin** » 23 Dec 2010 23:07

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... 0?page=0,1

The 10 Worst Predictions for 2010
Ten pundits and politicians whose prognostications for this year completely missed the mark.
BY JOSHUA E. KEATING | DECEMBER 17, 2010

"The market is telling you that something is not quite right ... The Chinese economy is going to slow down regardless. It is more likely that we will even have a crash sometime in the next nine to 12 months."
-Investment analyst Marc Faber, Interview on Bloomberg, May 3, 2010

Well, to be fair, the Chinese economy has slowed since the famously bearish investor and analyst made his prediction ... to a still-astounding 9.5 percent growth, one of the highest rates in the world and well above Beijing's fixed 8 percent target. If the crash is coming, it's taking its time.

Other outspoken China bears this year included investor James Chanos, who predicted that the country's property bubble would begin to burst in late 2010, unleashing "Dubai times 1,000 -- or worse." Property values are still rising, though they seem to be starting to cool.

Analysts have been predicting the end of the Chinese miracle for the last 30 years, but it never seems to happen. Maybe 2011 will finally be the year, but don't bet on it.