Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Darvi]

DID SOMEBODY SAY COOKIELAND?

[Owlbread]

DID SOMEBODY SAY COOKIELAND?

Truly the greatest country.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Ukrainian Ranger]

PTW to not miss when China will invade Russia

[Owlbread]

PTW to not miss when China will invade Russia

To protect ethnic Chinese, no doubt.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

PTW to not miss when China will invade Russia

To protect ethnic Chinese, no doubt.

And Chinese speaking people

[RedKing]

The problem is that historically local governments in China are far worse than the central government. Corruption, embezzlement, bribery, just plain bureaucratic inertia.

Remember the time a local government in south china just killed off millions of dogs, including pets, after like 3 people died of rabies?

Ahh yes. That's another issue -- there's a certain amount of "There I Fixed It" in local government as well.

Spoiler: Sidebar about rabies and strays (click to show/hide)

Though to be fair, much of China is so goddamn densely populated that measures like that aren't that insane, given the potential for epidemic. Stray dog culls have happened on numerous occasions, and the stray population is so large in most cities that the numbers tend to be eye-popping (although i've never seen one anywhere close to "millions"). Highest I could find in a quick Google session is 37,000 in Hanzhong (in the north) in 2009.

You have to realize that Western attitudes about dogs and cats are a largely Western thing. In much of the rest of the world, they're a foodstuff and/or vermin. You wouldn't see that much outcry if New York City killed 37,000 rats.

Those attitudes are changing though, and there are animal welfare groups in China, but it's still a relatively new thing.

One of my favorite examples was an incident in Yunnan where the local Bureau of Agriculture and Forestry was told their county needed to be greener, especially a decommissioned quarry in the side of a mountain. They were given funds to "green" the mountain (presumably for the purchase of seedlings and cost of labor to plant them). Instead, they did this:

[Culise]

The problem is that historically local governments in China are far worse than the central government. Corruption, embezzlement, bribery, just plain bureaucratic inertia.

Remember the time a local government in south china just killed off millions of dogs, including pets, after like 3 people died of rabies?

Ahh yes. That's another issue -- there's a certain amount of "There I Fixed It" in local government as well.

Spoiler: Sidebar about rabies and strays (click to show/hide)

Though to be fair, much of China is so goddamn densely populated that measures like that aren't that insane, given the potential for epidemic. Stray dog culls have happened on numerous occasions, and the stray population is so large in most cities that the numbers tend to be eye-popping (although i've never seen one anywhere close to "millions"). Highest I could find in a quick Google session is 37,000 in Hanzhong (in the north) in 2009.

You have to realize that Western attitudes about dogs and cats are a largely Western thing. In much of the rest of the world, they're a foodstuff and/or vermin. You wouldn't see that much outcry if New York City killed 37,000 rats.

Those attitudes are changing though, and there are animal welfare groups in China, but it's still a relatively new thing.

One of my favorite examples was an incident in Yunnan where the local Bureau of Agriculture and Forestry was told their county needed to be greener, especially a decommissioned quarry in the side of a mountain. They were given funds to "green" the mountain (presumably for the purchase of seedlings and cost of labor to plant them). Instead, they did this:

~INVISIBLEIMGSNIP~

Your image was hotlinked, so it couldn't be seen without opening your post and copy-pasting the URL manually.  Though, that is rather amusing...

[smjjames]

So they, uh, painted it? Honestly, it looks more like a giant vomited something mint green. I wouldn't be surprised if their method of painting was to just dump green paint down there.

Theres also all those new cities (I don't know how many, but they exist) which are too expensive for 99.99% to even afford to move into.

I can understand them wanting to be able to house the ever growing amount of Chinese flocking to the cities, but complete cities that may as well be ghost towns? Kind of defeats the purpose. I'm pretty sure there are things that can be done that don't involve building entire cities just to do a 'what does nature do to abandoned modern cities' experiment.

[mainiac]

Theres also all those new cities (I don't know how many, but they exist) which are too expensive for 99.99% to even afford to move into.

I can understand them wanting to be able to house the ever growing amount of Chinese flocking to the cities, but complete cities that may as well be ghost towns? Kind of defeats the purpose. I'm pretty sure there are things that can be done that don't involve building entire cities just to do a 'what does nature do to abandoned modern cities' experiment.

That's not a government thing, that's a private real estate thing.  They need an investment for their oodles of money so they build a high end condo as a place to store value.  It's like people buying gold, they're just using it to store wealth (or as a foolish speculative bid.)

[nenjin]

Theres also all those new cities (I don't know how many, but they exist) which are too expensive for 99.99% to even afford to move into.

I can understand them wanting to be able to house the ever growing amount of Chinese flocking to the cities, but complete cities that may as well be ghost towns? Kind of defeats the purpose. I'm pretty sure there are things that can be done that don't involve building entire cities just to do a 'what does nature do to abandoned modern cities' experiment.

That's not a government thing, that's a private real estate thing.  They need an investment for their oodles of money so they build a high end condo as a place to store value.  It's like people buying gold, they're just using it to store wealth (or as a foolish speculative bid.)

I mean, is there no demand for housing that they can capitalize on? Building a high-end condo that remains abandoned does not seem like a sane way to invest your wealth, unless you're managing to make money by doing so. I'd suspect, illegally.

[ChairmanPoo]

AFAIK we've always been at war with Eastasia

[smjjames]

Theres also all those new cities (I don't know how many, but they exist) which are too expensive for 99.99% to even afford to move into.

I can understand them wanting to be able to house the ever growing amount of Chinese flocking to the cities, but complete cities that may as well be ghost towns? Kind of defeats the purpose. I'm pretty sure there are things that can be done that don't involve building entire cities just to do a 'what does nature do to abandoned modern cities' experiment.

That's not a government thing, that's a private real estate thing.  They need an investment for their oodles of money so they build a high end condo as a place to store value.  It's like people buying gold, they're just using it to store wealth (or as a foolish speculative bid.)

I mean, is there no demand for housing that they can capitalize on? Building a high-end condo that remains abandoned does not seem like a sane way to invest your wealth, unless you're managing to make money by doing so. I'd suspect, illegally.

There is demand, it's just that the prices are unaffordable by most people.

[RedKing]

Theres also all those new cities (I don't know how many, but they exist) which are too expensive for 99.99% to even afford to move into.

I can understand them wanting to be able to house the ever growing amount of Chinese flocking to the cities, but complete cities that may as well be ghost towns? Kind of defeats the purpose. I'm pretty sure there are things that can be done that don't involve building entire cities just to do a 'what does nature do to abandoned modern cities' experiment.

That's not a government thing, that's a private real estate thing.  They need an investment for their oodles of money so they build a high end condo as a place to store value.  It's like people buying gold, they're just using it to store wealth (or as a foolish speculative bid.)

It's a bit of both. There is a government urbanization plan which calls for 80% urban population by 2050, because 80% is still over 1 billion people. And rather than create metropolises all over China (in part because a not-insubstantial portion of China's land area isn't really habitable), they're trying to create three megacity complexes:

Bohai Bay (Beijing-Tianjin-numerous other cities)
Yellow River Delta (Shanghai-Hangzhou-Nanjing-Suzhou-numerous other cities)
Pearl River Delta (Guangzhou-Shenzhen-numerous other cities)

Each of these would house about 340 million. The idea is that rather than having to build roads, sewers, electricity, etc. across millions and millions of square miles of China, they'd just have to concentrate their efforts in three areas. Of course, you'll need roads with 52 lanes, nine-decker bridges, and sewer systems capable of handling the entire output of the US population in an area the size of the Northeast Corridor (Boston-New York-Philadelphia). These megacities seem destined to drown in their own filth and/or die from lack of sufficient infrastructure to handle things like food and water distribution.

But they're building them anyways. One thing that should be noted is that the vast majority of the population doesn't have freedom of movement the way Americans and Europeans are accustomed to. If you're Chinese, you are on a census list that has your home village (called the hukou system). You are not legally allowed to move somewhere else without government approval. Tens of millions do so every year anyhow (the liukou, or "floating people" -- internal illegal immigrants to the big cities). The few situations where you get more or less a free pass to move are:

1. University education.
2. Being given a job in another location.
2. Moving to live with family who are already legally in the other location.

This is a big part of why parents push their kids so damn hard to get accepted into a prestigious university like Beihua. Because it means the kid can move from Rice Paddy Village #763,819 to the smoky jewel of Beijing (or Nanjing or Shanghai or wherever). And then THEY can move there. Because even a shitty job in the cities pays more than being a farmer and means access to a lot more things like electricity, plumbing, TVs, etc.

So real estate speculation doesn't work quite so well in China. People can't just start migrating to another area because housing prices are attractive or the environment is cleaner, or what have you. Although, the hukou system is one of the areas targeted for reform. A considerable number of people are calling for it to be abolished altogether.

[nenjin]

A considerable number of people are calling for it to be abolished altogether.

Kinda doubt that will happen until the mega-cities are at least on the verge of habitable. Having several million people migrate at the same time under their own steam would be chaos. Rampant homelessness, even more overburdened services, crime.

[smjjames]

Is the Hukou system a product of Mao's revolution? It doesn't seem like that would have existed before then. It also seems like a communist thing to do.

Although, I don't know how much freedom of movement they had before Mao's revolution.