Chinese Academy of Sciences Urges Re-Evaluation of High Speed Rail

I blogged earlier today

about how the meme of China Inc. is being used to justify all kinds of government interference in our economy. One of the upshots of this kind of populist industrial policy nonsense is that one often hears something to the effect that if China is doing it, then we've got to do it too. Apparently lots of would-be industrial planners have China envy when it comes to high speed rail. In fact, the Obama administration is planning to hand out $8 billion to jumpstart a bunch unconnected high speed rail lines scattered around the country. A couple of days ago, Fox Business News anchor Brian Sullivan breathlessly blogged:

China's Incredible 5 Year Train Run Makes America Look Third World.

But this isn't simply about high-speed rail.  Whatever one's views on rail is beside the point.   The amazing China rail story is just one metaphor for how incredible China's central planning has become and the speed at which the country accomplishes massive projects.   Compare that to America, where we dither for years over much-needed tunnels, have thousands of failing bridges and nearly 10 years later our World Trade Center site is just beginning to take shape.   

It's understood that a communist country would have some advantages in building out such huge projects; namely fewer personal property rights and protections.    

That said, the incredible five year run in China's rail system is beginning to make our bloated and slow system even more, well, bloated and slow.   If we want to add jobs in this country and improve our ailing infrastructure, our bureaucrats may need to take a lesson from those in Beijing and get our collective act together.   Fast.

Let 's pause for a moment to consider just what lessons Sullivan thinks our bureaucrats should learn from China. OK. That was scary.

Reason has long pointed out the economic stupidity of subsidized passenger rail (and it's all subsidized). Now the Chinese Academy of Sciences is apparently agreeing with us:

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) reported to the State Council recently, urging the large-scale high-speed railway construction projects in China to be re-evaluated. The CAS worries that China may not be able to afford such a large-scale construction of high-speed rail, and such a large scale high-speed rail network may not be practical. …

The report submitted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences said China's high-speed rail construction has caused debt that has already reached unsustainable levels….

But I bet those Chinese high speed trains run on time.

Comments

[Max]

So, wait a minute. You're saying that the Chinese are much better at reevaluating a plan and changing course than, say, GM?

[xaM]

You really should stop talking. No one can understand you when my cock is in your mouth, anyway.

Although you do look very nice wearing your mother's under garments, Maxie.

[Max the Hitler-Boy]

You are saying that Hitler made better sense than, say, any of your favorite corporations.

[Old Mexican]

Re: Max,

Max, H&R's pet yorkie.

Here Max! Here boy! Go fetch! That's a good boy! Yeah!

Noooo, no no no! Don't do your banalities on the carpet! Bad Max! Bad, bad Max!

[We know one thing, MaxPad]

The Chinese were much more efficient mass-murder then let's say....

[Ben Wolf]

The real problem is that this post is premature. we have no access to the CAS report. The story linked to cites no source, it simply claims the Academy is urging the government to re-think high speed rail.

We can't confirm the study even exists.

[J sub D]

Reason doesn't get it. It's the Chinese economic planners that are geniuses, Chinese scientists are a bunch of third world witch doctors.

[Max]

Who's to say the economic lanners won't listen to the scientists?

[xaM]

Maxie...concentrate on your job, which is in your mouth

[Max]

Try hard to think outside the box. In your case that would involve pulling your head out of your ass.

[Old Mexican]

Re: Max,

Max, H&R's pet yorkie.

Here Max! Here boy! Go fetch! That's a good boy! Yeah!

Noooo, no no no! Don't do your banalities on the carpet! Bad Max! Bad, bad Max!

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Try hard to think outside the box.

Lock up the environmentalist lobby in Supermax for about 10 years, and ignore just about every "green law" Congress has passed in the last 40 years.

The latter(lack of environmental regulations) is what it took to get massive public works projects completed in record time during the early 20th century; since these have well-connected support of the former, you'd have to cut out both at once.

If you don't give a crap for personal property rights and potential environmental impacts, it's pretty easy to get just about anything built quickly. Just ask all the social engineers of the early to mid-20th century.

[xaM]

Max, you're so naughty - it's you with your own shit on your own head.

And my dick in your mouth. And wearing your mother's under garments.

Now suck me like the subservient troll that you are.

[Steven Smith]

I don't know where this article got its info from, but the actual website of the Chinese Academy of Sciences doesn't have a link to any such study.

[Almanian]

Of course, we'll need to implement China's population controls, processes to respond to political dissidents, and excellent pollution-control policies. Among other things in which they're way ahead of the US.

Apologies if Paul Thomas Krugfried already made that observation - they're out front on the whole "if only we could be just like China" thing. Just trying to catch up...

[Jeffersonian]

And here I was beginning to think that throwing dumptrucks full of renmibi down a rathole was a whole lot smarter than throwing trainloads of dollars down said rathole.

[Southerner]

It gets better; they're buying our dollar-denominated debt with those renmibi. They're also selling us all their consumer goods in exchange for dollars. Guess what happens to their holdings when the dollar finally hyperinflates. (See: Japan's Lost Decade.)

[BakedPenguin]

They were buying our debt. Considering recent events, I think they've stopped.

[Amakudari]

Well, technically they're selling us goods in dollars and then using those dollars to build reserves of Treasuries. They send us cheap plastic, we send them cheap paper.

[Max]

But what if the Chinese state capitalist model just works better?

[Old Mexican]

Re: Max,

Max, H&R's pet yorkie.

Here Max! Here boy! Go fetch! That's a good boy! Yeah!

Noooo, no no no! Don't do your banalities on the carpet! Bad Max! Bad, bad Max!

[Jeffersonian]

Why would it?

[Max]

Why wouldn't it?

[Old Mexican]

Bad Max! Don't do your banalities on the carpet! Bad boy!

[Jeffersonian]

Because it relies on force rather than negotiation to implement its investments, falling into the same trap as the old Soviet Union did. It says an investment is good because the State says it's good, not customers. Malinvestment is almost assured.

[Old Mexican]

Jeffersonian, stop giving treats to the yorkie, you're going to spoil him!

[Jeffersonian]

I'll throw him a bone now and then in hopes it goes crosswise in his gullet.

[Old Mexican]

Re: Max,

But what if the Chinese state capitalist model just works better?

Better than what?

[BakedPenguin]

"Better" is a relative term. In a certain way of thinking, the government gives you orders, and you obey. To Max, that's "better" than how it is now.

Because the failures of central planning are so numerous, obvious, and such a part of historical record that only a complete moron or troll could think central planning is "better" because it's more efficient.

[sevo]

"...advantages in building out such huge projects; namely fewer personal property rights and protections...."
So long as you think state projects are more important than personal property, those are "advantages".
I'd say not so much.

[Jeffersonian]

He does, however, have a point about the endless government red tape the Chinese can cut through with a single slash.

[sevo]

Remember that the red-tape is a product of that government.
So you're saying the Chinese government can ignore its own rules.
I'm not sure I like that either, since at least some of those rules are there to protect you and me.

[Jeffersonian]

I'm really not sure to what extent the EPA, OSHA, the SEC, the FTC, the EEOC and the rest of the alphabet soup of the Central State is "protecting" us.

[J sub D]

Those were dissidents.

[Old Mexican]

A couple of days ago, Fox Business News anchor Brian Sullivan breathlessly blogged:

"China's Incredible 5 Year Train Run Makes America Look Third World.

But this isn't simply about high-speed rail. Whatever one's views on rail is beside the point. The amazing China rail story is just one metaphor for how incredible China's central planning has become and the speed at which the country accomplishes massive projects."

"Doesn't matter where you waste the money, as long as you waste it in awesome projects that can impress the easily-impressed!"

The report submitted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences said China's high-speed rail construction has caused debt that has already reached unsustainable levels[.]

Not even the Chinese can repeal the Laws of Economics.

[Max]

If economics were an exact science, the idea of not being able to repeal its laws would make some sense. Like the marxists you have been deluded into thinking that the religion uou've built on economic assumptions is scientific. But then, you're a moron.

[Old Mexican]

Re: Max,

If economics were an exact science, the idea of not being able to repeal its laws would make some sense.

One thing has NOTHING to do with the other, imbecile. Before Science, nobody could repeal the law of gravity either.

Like the marxists you have been deluded into thinking that the religion uou've [sic] built on economic assumptions is scientific.

Yet debt IS still debt.

But then, you're a moron.

You're a pet yorkie. Go fetch!

No, don't do you banalities on the carpet! I just cleaned! Bad Max! Bad, bad Max!

[Jeffersonian]

As most of us are firmly in the Austrian camp here, Maxie, you won't find many saying it is an exact science. That said, the economic law that says wealth is created when lower-order goods are exchanged for higher-order goods is one the Chinese think they can ignore with their brobdignagian projects meant to gull fools such as you. They cannot, as we will discover.

[alan]

You're arguing with a guy who didn't know that 'scientific management' of the economy is an idea tried, implemented and failed by his side of the fence. This side of the fence was saying the entire time that it was insane to spend trillions of dollars on matters you could not possibly have an iota of certainty. Of course, the certitude of their beliefs alone is nuts. He also thinks Locke was just a proto Marx, so you know, its fun to argue, but don't expect anything rewarding to come out of it.

[Old Mexican]

"If we want to add jobs in this country and improve our ailing infrastructure, our bureaucrats may need to take a lesson from those in Beijing and get our collective act together. Fast."

"We are Borg."

This guy is clueless.

[Max]

Clueless in the sense of unorthodox vis a vis your particular dogmas? Don't you long for the good old days when you could burn fuckers like that at the stake?

[Old Mexican]

Here, Max! Here, boy! Go fetch!

[Sy]

How about you just leave this 'we' bullshit out of it. It's 'you'. 'You' want to make people build a train to have a dick-measuring contest with China. So what if they have a fucking high-speed rail? That's what a centrally-planned economy can do when you have an endless supply of low-skilled labor.

[MaxiPad]

Max Fuck, you long for the return of the 20th-century socialist mass murderers. Fuck anyone who gets in the way of the state planners, right?

[Warty]

Where's kenneth?

[Max]

Has he skipped catechism class again?

[Old Mexican]

Not on the carpet!!! Bad Max! Bad, bad boy!

[Warty]

I love when you're this feisty, Edward. Whose cock should I go suck, again?

[Trespassers W]

Ron Pual's. Pay attention, for God's sake.

[T]

It does seem odd. He's been drooling all over himself about high speed trains in every other thread. A thread about trains finally appears and he's as quiet as a church mouse.

[C'mon man]

Cat Butthole got your tongue, Kenneth?

[C'mon man]

You can't very well expect to be a superpower without subsidized high speed rail.

Perhaps the high speed rail unions in China can step up and save the Chinese middle class.

[Kant]

Seriously no god damn Kenneth on here yet? All flippin week its China this high speed rail that. I figured he would have jizzed all over this thread by now. Or Kenneth=Max?

[sevo]

"Kenneth=Max?"
Sorta. name-brand, house-brand; different labels, same shit.

[Old Mexican]

Max is H&R's pet yorkie. He's just a fussy pet - a very fussy pet...

[Art]

That "incredible China's central planning has become and the speed at which the country accomplishes massive projects. Compare that to America, where we dither for years over much-needed tunnels, have thousands of failing bridges and nearly 10 years later our World Trade Center site is just beginning to take shape"

Unless you add in the first 60 years of useless and crumbling centrally planned massive Chinese projects.

And who controls all of those tunnels, bridges and the world trade center site. Yes that would be city and state governments like NYC that believe very strongly in central planning and have no regard for private property.

[Old Mexican]

Re: Art,

Unless you add in the first 60 years of useless and crumbling centrally planned massive Chinese projects.

Lovers of State Might simply overlook these little inconvenient things, like for instance 60 million dead after one centrally-planned project or tons of useless iron smelted from badly needed tools after ANOTHER centrally-planned project.

No, the statist fucks are impressed with the Chinese speedy rail...

[matth]

The speed the projects are completed is reflected in the quality of the construction. The buildings that look all shiny and new from a distance look much different up close.

[prolefeed]

What I'm wondering is how a collectivist twit like this who doesn't understand economics works for Fox Business News.

[Old Mexican]

FBN unfortunately is filled with a few collectivist twits, like this one:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/wat.....amond-bio/

[matth]

Why not? The NYT is full of them too.

[Trespassers W]

Compare that to America, where we dither for years over much-needed tunnels, have thousands of failing bridges and nearly 10 years later our World Trade Center site is just beginning to take shape.

I don't know about you guys, but I've been busy with other stuff.

[P Brooks]

If we want to add jobs in this country and improve our ailing infrastructure, our bureaucrats may need to take a lesson from those in Beijing and get our collective act together. Fast.

I, for one cannot wait for the fireworks when Governor Brown, in his inauguration speech, announces his plan to forcibly expropriate and expel hundreds of thousands of people from some extremely valuable real estate in order to get a high speed rail line built between San Francisco and Sacramento.

I forget; are states allowed to conscript citizens in order to form a death squad militia sworn by oath to serve the whims of the governor?

[BakedPenguin]

...Governor Brown, in his inauguration speech, announces his plan to forcibly expropriate and expel hundreds of thousands of people...

It's the suede / denim secret police!

[alan]

Fact they do; they're called state troopers.

[generic Brand]

I've been looking for some evidence about the subsidized nature of trains. I'm so pissed that I live in one of the regions chosen for the high speed rails (Orlando-Tampa). Nobody can understand that first off, there's nowhere near enough funding from the start to pay for the project, and then they fail to see that the actual operations costs and maintaining of the trains will cost additional money. Unless they are charging $140 a ticket for an hour and half (by car) trip, this thing will be oozing lost money faster than the Deepwater Horizon leaked oil.

[Jeffersonian]

High speed/low speed, it doesn't matter. Our local light rail system is an absolute money furnace, one that has bankrupted the transit authority, who promptly thumped the tub for (and ultimately got) another 0.5 cent sales tax to support the massive boondoggle. Even though Uncle Sam paid for most of its construction (at one time it was listed as CAGW's #1 pork project), we can't reap enough to pay for its operation, much less to retire the bonds issued to build it.

[matth]

That's something I have a hard time understanding. With effectively zero capital investment these transit authorities can't break even. How do you screw up the ROI calcs that bad? And it happens all over the country in different ways - my community recently installed a fiber network and started an internet service provider. Naturally can't make money. If private business ran this way...

[Jeffersonian]

Without recounting the details, a brainless editor of the local fishwrap made the argument against the free market by pointing to a fiasco that happened at the private parking garage near her work when they tried to automate their attendant function. Her argument: The free market isn't full of smart people who always get it right, so we need to surrender more money to the government so they can get it right.

I emailed her to disabuse her of her nearly-bottomless ignorance.

[sevo]

matth|11.24.10 @ 5:18PM|#
"...How do you screw up the ROI calcs that bad?..."
The return in this case is votes; the investment is other peoples money. Simple.

[Rrabbit]

Amtrak is just plain horrible.

[Rrabbit]

This looks wrong. If done efficiently, it should be possible to operate and maintain such a connection at a ticket price of approximately $40 one way.

[Tman]

But I bet those Chinese high speed trains run on time.

Some days the jokes, they just write themselves don't they..

[Trespassers W]

Guys, remember how we won the space race, and all the awesome stuff that came out of that, and how we left the rest of the world in our dust technologically?

This'll be just like that.

[Max]

Yeah, and the space program was run entirely by the private sector. Didn't McDonald's invent the material for the nose cones?

[Dean Wormer]

Vicious, stupid and irony-proof is no way to through life, son.

[Trespassers W]

I should have known that comment was too subtle for the 10th percentile.

[A P Moller Maersk]

When you find a greater purpose than nationalistic vanity to put men in space, let us know. Meanwhile, shiny baubles like supertankers will just have to remain our forte.

[A P Moller Maersk]

And of course, you do realize the space program is one hundred percent funded by the private sector, right? Who the fuck credits the child who gets to play with the toys instead of the father who worked to pay for them?

[Laoshi]

I've been riding Chinese trains, both hard berth and soft berth, for 27 years, and have had a chance to ride a couple of the high speed trains this last year or so. If you aren't familiar with the system here you should know that the soft berth trains have closed compartments with four bunks and a small table. Hard berth cars have open ended compartments with six bunks in each compartment. Tickets are sold randomly with no advance knowledge of with whom you will be sharing an open or closed compartment. I have shared with students, soldiers, grandmothers, etc. all random. During the last ten years the cleanliness and efficiency of trains has dramatically improved, and they do run on time. What makes this work is that Chinese culture allows it to work. As often as not the strangers in a compartment end up having a kind of lunch or dinner party with lots of socialization.
What is not apparently considered in applying this model to American trains is that American culture tends to be more confrontational, and to put six Americans randomly together in a compact space may result in more murders than dinner parties.

[Jeffersonian]

As evidenced by the almost-daily massacres we see on Greyhound buses and Southwest airplanes.

Any group sex with strangers after the dinner party?

[alan]

American trains is that American culture tends to be more confrontational, and to put six Americans randomly together in a compact space may result in more murders than dinner parties.

What kind of propaganda could you have been fed your entire life that you would believe something so stupid?

[alan]

I thought better of the Chi-Com government but from your rhetoric I now have to consider the possibility they may be as barbaric and socially useless as American Academia.

[BakedPenguin]

These are the same people who think Falun Gong is a threat.

[alan]

In spite of being communist they still tend to be less hardcore anti-capitalist than the average liberal arts or social science department in the States; hence, there is some chance you could have a reasonable exchange, and a chance to co-exist peacefully. For the latter, nothing short of a bulldozer applied judiciously to the habitats they congregate would be of use in an attempt to bring them into this epoch.

You just pulled his covers, alan.

[Rrabbit]

to put six Americans randomly together in a compact space may result in more murders than dinner parties

Like planes, maybe?

[Tman]

During the last ten years the cleanliness and efficiency of trains has dramatically improved, and they do run on time.

Great! Then they should be becoming self sustaining cost-wise in what, a few centuries if all goes well?

No? You mean the subsidies paid by the government to support them are unsustainable?

SHE'S A WITCH!! BURRRRRNNNN HERRR!!!!

[Kenneth]

In 20 years, we're going to be buying high speed rail and other green technology developed in China, even if they lose money on it now.

In the long run, they'll make billions off of us. It's called R&D, and it's what makes superpowers.

The Chinese understand investing for the future, Americas are too short-term thinking.

[Jeffersonian]

If that's the case, why aren't we buying it off the French or Japanese now, since they've already developed and implemented the technology for years?

[Kenneth]

LOL you think we don't buy any Japanese technology?

Take a look around your home some time, and look at the brand names. Or look in your driveway.

[Jeffersonian]

Indeed we do. So why haven't we already bought their high-speed rail tech and implemented it?

[Tman]

And what about Japan? PJ O'Rourke- "Trading with the Enemy?"

Instead of the luxuries of life, the Chinese import money. There's no such thing as a trade deficit, but there is such a thing as a current account deficit. China holds an enormous amount of U.S. currency. This worries America's policymakers, although I'll be damned if I know why.

A U.S. dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It's a promissory note that doesn't actually promise anything. It's not backed by gold or silver. If Hu Jintao brought a $100 bill with him to Washington, and if he took the $100 bill over to the Federal Reserve, what he got for it was a hundred dollars. He may have gotten it in twenties, tens, or dimes. But all the Fed will give anyone for their American money is other American money. Hu Jintao is stuck with his IOU.

Maybe America's policymakers are worried that China will spend that cash and this will somehow damage sectors of the American economy. I spent three weeks eating Chinese regional delicacies, and I'll admit that, if the Chinese spend all their U.S. dollars, our pet shops will be stripped bare. But let us consider the parable of Japan in the 1980s. Japan kept giving America radios, TVs, stereos, and cars, and we kept giving Japan money. The Japanese didn't want anything America made except Michael Jackson tapes, and we didn't even make the valuable part--the tape cassette part--of those. So the Japanese decided to buy America itself. They bought office complexes, hotels, and golf courses. The Japanese bid up the price of American real estate until the bubble did what bubbles do. By the 1990s America had all the radios, TVs, stereos, and cars, and all the office complexes, hotels, and golf courses, and all the money.

[BenDU99]

But Kenneth, I thought you always said that manufacturing makes superpowers. R&D, technology and services were the enemy according to you. Now its the opposite?

[sevo]

Kenneth|11.24.10 @ 7:03PM|#
Check the house-brand label to make sure.

[sevo]

Jeffersonian|11.24.10 @ 4:43PM|#
"I'm really not sure to what extent the EPA, OSHA, the SEC, the FTC, the EEOC and the rest of the alphabet soup of the Central State is "protecting" us."

I'd agree, but buried somewhere under all those, there's the 5th Amendment. And if a government can arbitrarily ignore one, why you can bet it'll be the one without an employee list; me or you.

[Jeffersonian]

That's the same Amendment the "liberal" wing of the USSC said wasn't voilated by a city snatching someone's land and giving it to a multinational corporation. A5's "takings" clause is now so narrowly interpreted as to make it almost a nullity.

[Pope Jimbo]

Here in Sunny Minnesota we were able to rebuild the I35W bridge in a year because we a) cut through red tape and b) gave huge bonuses to the construction company if they beat certain deadlines.

On the flip side, there is a local project that started prior to the 35W bridge project that is still going on today. That project was to simply create a cloverleaf intersection out of an old fashioned 4-way intersection. Of course that one had to go through all sorts of bureaucratic hoops and no one really cares when it gets done.

[Paul]

All this teaches us is that China is better at communism than we are.

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[Ben Wolf]

I would like the author of this post to state whether they have in fact actually seen this study. I can find no reference to it at the CAS website.

[Omri]

The day Reason does the math on how much highway maintenance is subsidized in the US is teh day I'll regain my respect for Reason.