potemkin village = facade (like film set) put up by russian kulaks to make emperor believe countryside was prospering when he rode by in his train. there was nothing behind the facade.
china's $585 billion stimulus is buying it... virtually nothing.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: A
China's empty city: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h7V3Twb-Qk
From: A
China's empty shopping mall: http://www.pbs.org/pov/utopia/
8 comments:
This is inner mongolia. That is like pointing to an abandoned city in the middle of nowhere Utah and then claiming that the US is on the verge of anarchy.
China has done this before, they build up cities and infrastructure before inviting in residents, they all have been filled up eventually. Inner Mongolia has been quite a wonder for the Hans anyway. They are taking a page from the manchurian playback, basically make the mongols think that they are actually chinese, sincize them and then mate with them. Don't underestimate CCP brainwashing.
This is why Outer Mongolians are so angry yet afraid of Han intentions. Many Outer mongolians even reject inner mongolians as fellow mongols due to their loyalties to china rather than mongolia, even though almost half of Mongolia is in China and most mongols (by blood anyway) live in China. A lot of inner mongolians actually see themselves as chinese and don't even speak mongolian anymore.
asd123, I agree with you that China will force residents to move in and so it will be what you can call a success, but it would still not be a success of the economy.
One disagreement with you though - the hypothetical city in USA you talk about would be abandoned AFTER it was a vibrant city once and people left it for greener pastures. The Chinese version is a city that has never been occupied but has been built up by slave labor.
Did you see the part about pumping sewage or whatever it is into the canal so that the cleaner has to clean it everyday? That is how they keep their people busy.
My point was that the Chinese have done this before, they created new modernized areas and these areas were soon populated. What is happening now is not a new phenomenon. They are urbanizing rapidly and have industrial needs.
Industrialization and infrastructure improvements are actually productive by themselves.
Until the railroads were built in the 19th century the Western United States and a great part of the Mid-West were almost completely uninhabited. Now you see working modern industrial cities such as Denver, Phoenix, etc.
railroads and cities are not the same. connectivity is good, although there were dubious things happening with the 'robber barons' of the railroads such as leland stanford and mark hopkins -- they stiffed all the people living along the railroad by charging them freight rates that basically meant all the profit went to the railroads. also the govt gave 1 sq mile of land free in a checkerboard pattern to the railroads wherever they built the line, which ended up giving them fabulous wealth as settlers came in.
a city built by edict may or may not succeed. example: the ghost-town of fatehpur sikri. similarly, it took brasilia a long time to be adopted, and that may well be the case with chandigarh too.
puhleeeze, don't preach that industrialization is a self-evident good. at least not on this blog. and anyway, building cities does not equal industrialization. or even infrastructure.
i am reminded once again of ozymandias and the vanity of men in building memorials. cities grow generally for organic and good reasons, not because some central planner wishes them to.
It worked for China in the past few years and has paid off economically as well as socially.
The American west has natural resources, and so does inner mongolia/mongolia and siberia. China is developing its vast landscape to increase the standard of living and productive capacity for all of its people which is smart.
The Mongols were mostly nomads of course they never did have that many notable cities to begin with. The Hans came in and vitalized the area.
The last time China didn't industrialize it ended up as a vassal state for the European powers and Japan.
China's urbanization rate will rise to 70% by 2035
It is currently 45%
for every square foot of real estate currently in existence in China it'll be doubled over the next 25 years.
It took the West and Japan between 50 and 150 years to industrialize. So far China has had only 30 years.
Geographically China is about the size of the US or Canada, both of these countries took around 150 years, China is taking the fast track.
What is india doing? absolutely nothing and it had a larger gdp per capita than china in the 50s. You have to give credit where credit is due.
asd123, forced labor is not the same as a good economy. the fact remains that this was built using forced labor. is government mandating happiness to be considered a great success?
This has always been the case for China. Mandarin bureaucrats controlling and directing the masses. The CCP Mandarins are doing the same.
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