Reasons for Dragon train-crashing:
China Bullet Trains Trip on Technology
SHANGHAI—China celebrated its bullet trains as the home-grown pride of a nation: a rail system faster and more advanced than any other, showcasing superior Chinese technology.
However, China’s high-speed rail network was in fact built with imported components—including signaling-system parts designed to prevent train collisions—that local engineers couldn’t fully understand, according to a review of corporate documents and interviews with more than a dozen rail executives inside and outside China…
Getty Images
At 8:37 p.m., Train No. D301 rammed into the back of No. D3115, which was nearly stationary on the tracks, in Wenzhou. The accident killed 40 people and injured at least 190. The impact sent four carriages plunging 65 feet off the elevated rail line
Why China won’t conquer the world
Its young are incapable, its old are exhausted, and box-ticking bureaucrats make life hell. China, a superpower? First it needs to grow up, says acclaimed author Xué Xinran
The switches were quite likely designed by Bomardier in Canada. It’s one of the reasons that their stock is plummetting.
The train switches were lilkely designed by Bombardier in Canada. It’s one of the reasons that their stock is plummetting.
Yeah well back in the day….we had an expression…
“It’s like a Chinese gun-boat…as long as it moves and makes smoke…they’re happy.”
“Its young are incapable, its old are exhausted, and box-ticking bureaucrats make life hell. China, a superpower? First it needs to grow up, says acclaimed author Xué Xinran ”
I think it has – that sounds just like the rest of the “grown-up” “mature” western democracies.
Heh, people said all the same stuff about South Korea in the mid-1970s at the beginning of their big modernization push. Lots of crowing about how their infrastructure had a succession of rather spectacular failures.
And today? Just for starters they design, build and operate the best nuclear reactors in the world. Their automotive industry is bidding to displace Japan for offering the best quality for money.
Where went Japan and South Korea, so too will go China. Anyone who believes that China’s growing pains will continue indefinitely is in for a series of very unpleasant surprises in the decades to come.
This is all just typical smug garbage from the decadent former Western powers that once dominated the world. Keep convincing yourselves of this, guys, as the West drowns in a sea of red ink. It reminds me of the famous British doggerel at the turn of the last century:
“Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun and they have not.”
And where is the British Empire today? Gone in a puff of smoke.
One big difference, cgh. Japan and South Korea did not have communist governments during their period of industrial growth. Also, they were not governed by a tyrant who killed off large segments of their best people.
Posted by: albertaclipper at October 3, 2011 11:07 AM
you beat me to it by a whisker
and industrial espionage only works for a while…
It will happen only because the west is totally dedicated to self destructing. If they do nothing more than stand still, we will sink below them in a few short years.
It will happen only because the west is totally dedicated to self destructing. If they do nothing more than stand still, we will sink below them in a few short years.
Apologies for the double post by a fat finger.
Does imported include stolen, pirated, copied, etc.??
Sasquatch,
Keep whistling in the dark. Before WWII, Americans were saying that the Japanese couldn’t build a decent fighter plane and that their pilots wouldn’t be much good because their slitty eyes restricted their peropheral vision. Compared to China, Japan was a flyspeck, and look at the bloody noses the Japs gave to a few world powers, including the USA.
We(the West)gave China its first leg up by moving our factories to its cheap labour environment and buying most of our hardware and drygoods from them to save a few bucks. Now they have momentum and no longer need us to kiss their asses while they take over the world’s economy, re-colonize Africa and arm their gigantic military with 21st century hardware.
What western population has the guts to endure austerity to rebuild its crumbling industrial base? What western country has the foresight to rebuild its public education system to the point that its people become fully functional in the modern world? When will we start putting the same efforts into rebuilding our military that we now put into sports, entertainment and vacation facilities?
Like Republican Rome, Europe and America are going down the crapper. Only a few burned-out old farts like me seem to give a damn, and we don’t even have a Cicero among us.
It’s George Bush’s fault.
Re: “The problem, these people say, is that Hitachi—fearful that Chinese technicians might reverse-engineer and steal the technology—sold components with the inner workings concealed from Hollysys.”
I wonder where they got that idea.
cgh: I agree with you regarding Japan and S. Korea (and with China to a certain extent). I don’t recall the first two stealing ideas to the extent that China does though.
As alluded to earlier, communist governments were not running Korea or Japan.
China is due for a huge financing and real estate crash, due to their over leveraging to construct empty cities, well-documented previously on this website, and elsewhere.
China’s little ‘miracle’ is about to implode, much like the US market did in 2008.
Modern China and any industrial Asian country is a mimic of the west.
They copy, and they copy well, it’s a strength of the Asian people. In the end very few copies are as good as the original, but it is hard to distinguish Asian Main Street from the west today. You need to step over the city facade and go rural to really understand the stage show.
probably reading text messages..
Look, worst case scenario, a few hundred peasants die gruesomely in a needless, horrific accident. Mr. Hu’s not going to cry himself to sleep over a thing like that. On the other hand, it might cause a loss of face, which would be bad…
Xinran may be right, BUT I’m sure western arrogance will insure China’s success.
Zog
It’s glaringly obvious you never spent anytime along the China coast….
From the article……
“CRSC hasn’t commented about the accident directly, aside from a statement Aug. 23 stating that its top executive, 55-year-old Ma Cheng, collapsed and died during questioning by crash investigators.”
SOP in China…SNAFU…..
“CRSC its top executive, 55-year-old Ma Cheng, collapsed and died during questioning by crash investigators.”
–
Cause of Death was attributed to
Chinese Quality Control..
albertaclipper, indeed, Korea had a nasty little military dictatorship. Given how rigorously the country was controlled, there was little practical difference. In both cases, economic freedom was minimal. Korea overcame it, and China will too.
John, Japan and South Korea got a lot more direct technical transfer from the US in the 1950s and ’60s than China ever got from anyone. Technical transfer or technology theft, the net result is essentially the same.
Knight, just keep telling yourself that. It will make the pill go down easier.
cgh >
Whatever, I’ve been all over China doing business. Again, Whatever you say, I know how they operate, and you will never convince my lying eyes otherwise. World super power eventually? Of course, but that’s not a credit to their ingenuity and hard work as much as it is a failure of the west on every level that mattered.
One notable Chinese credit is that while the west has been hell bent and determined to become third world, the Chinese are determined to climb out, and keep it out.
Sasquatch,
I don’t quite see what spending “time along the China coast” has to do with the emergence of China as a world power but, for the record I am what used to be known as an “old Asia hand”. I worked in Southeast Asia for five years, including a year in Taiwan when that little country was still economically and militarily a match for the giant across the staights. I have also been in Taiwan since Taiwanese businessmen became major investors on the mainland and travel restrictions between the two countries were relaxed – i.e. since incremental reintegration began.
And along the China coast? In your lexicon, would that include brief visits to Hong Kong and Macao and travel by ferry between the two? (Not really relevant but, neither was your comment.)
Knight: “One notable Chinese credit is that while the west has been hell bent and determined to become third world, the Chinese are determined to climb out, and keep it out.”
Exactly. They still understand that material progress really does matter. And it’s that determination which is what is important. They’ve got it; we lost it. Take a look again at the last sentence in your first paragraph. It contradicts the one I’ve quoted here.
Zog, and if you go to Hong Kong and Macau today you will see one of the world’s largest bridge systems connecting Hong Kong, Macau and the mainland. Unlike us, China is still thinking big enough to encompass truly grand mega-projects. Like railways over the Himalayas, like returning to manned space programs.
Your reference to Cicero was interesting. After all, he failed spectacularly, and it was Caesar and his nephew who had to clean things up. Violently.
Listening to a retail specialist on Bloomberg this week. She said she toured a lot of second-tier Chinese cities, 4-8 million people size. (Toronto is second-tier in China kids.)
She said they were building a -lot- of malls. The malls are -empty-. No stores, no shoppers. Just big, new, empty mall buildings.
Tiffanie’s is expanding in China. They are taking extremely short leases and moving a lot, as the cool shopping spots seem to change bi-monthly. Empty mall syndrome.
Lots of signs like that. I think China is teetering on the brink of insolvency and lying their way through.
cgh,
Do you know how much of the island-hopping bridge has been completed? Are they working from both ends? (For readers unfamiliar with the geography, to total length of roadway will be 50km, and the project is scheduled for completion in another 5 years.) This is a perfect illustration of how the technically savy Chinese are thinking big while the west is deindustrializing and wallowing in trivia.
Poor old Cicero probably wasn’t the best example for me to use but, he did at least TRY to save the republic, until Marc Antony had his head and hands chopped off. When Octavius et al., as you say, “cleaned things up”, they restored the trappings of the republic but they were largely symbolic.
@ zog
“Like Republican Rome, Europe and America are going down the crapper”.
Absolutely and too many people try to ignore the whole situation. The US has outsourced more than 42000 manufacturing facilities in the last couple decades. This is simply capitalism at its finest, but it seems to me that both China and India took up the challenge without too many problems. Now they own us. Good thing we did’nt outsource the industrial military complex. We will need it if the Chinese ever want to cash in on the debts they hold.
cgh >
No contradictions on my part. As I’ve said I have spent allot of time in China. Your glorifying Chinese intelligence and ingenuity over the west is the fallacy in this argument.
The leadership of China is intelligent, the masses are not. That is why every “epic” project in China is a western concept, developed with western corporations and engineering. Not to say that China does not have engineers, but it is western engineers that are hired to design, engineer and supervise every major national project.
I’m sorry, but the west built modern Asia, whether you like it or not.
The fact that the west is now failing is the result of 40 years of liberal left political domination. That includes “dumbing down” the population, introducing restrictive economic regulations, flooding the economies with third world labour and third world entitlement recipients. China won’t do that too be certain, but it doesn’t make them “smarter”. It simply means we lost the plot 40 years ago through internal decay via our own success. We have rotted from within due to our own excesses, as did many cultures before us.
Zog, the bridge complex will be finished 2015-16. Which is a good pace considering that construction only started in 2009.
And yes, the trappings of the Republic were restored, but let’s face it, the Empire was far more efficient and effective than the Republic ever was.
Knight, you need to look at the scale of China’s development in education. Just as an example, the country is producing 40,000 engineers every year.
@cgh
Just as an example, the country is producing 40,000 engineers every year.
Even worse is that their college graduades can read, write and spell.