One area where the US still leads China
Some people worry about the Chinese construction bubble. What will happen when the overbuilding is finished and China’s population starts declining?
It looks like the Chinese have already come up with a solution. After they finish remodelling China to look like a set from the Jetsons, the next task will be to start making it look old:
Beijing will strive to become a world-class cultural center by the year 2020.
As the capital, the city has never lacked the capacity to erect symbolic structures, but buildings alone do not make a cultural center.
Yet what is particularly noteworthy about the proposal is the construction projects involved, such as the restoration of the ancient wall towers at the southeastern and southwestern corners of the old outer city wall. Dongcheng district government will also spend 800 million yuan ($126 million), starting next year, on either reconstructing some lost structures or renovating some streets to make them look old.
The US has lots of streets that look really old, maybe we could give some advice to the Chinese. Follow NYC’s path in diverting government spending from infrastructure to social services, and you too can have streets full of potholes.
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14. July 2012 at 09:29
‘Follow NYC’s path in diverting government spending from infrastructure to social services….’
It’s not just in NYC, and even the money spent on ‘infrastructure’ often just gets eaten up by unionized public employees who are rarely eager to do anything productive for their (over) pay.
14. July 2012 at 10:17
How could China ever have a underpopulation problem? If they did simply end the one child policy and there will be a population boom the likes never seen before just on “catch up” alone
14. July 2012 at 12:26
Old? Pfft… come to England, Stone Henge is 5000 years old and counting, even Monument down the road from me was erected at the end of the seventeenth century. In fact I own a map of where my local area that’s 150 years old, I can see the slums that were cleared before the slums that were cleared for where I used to live.
I find old stuff from America very twee. “Aww, built in the 1870s, how old! [/sarcasm]”
14. July 2012 at 15:13
Things like this won’t safe China from the housing bubble, I think it’s going to be brutal. For us too since we’re so intertwined.
14. July 2012 at 16:41
Oh snap!
15. July 2012 at 08:40
Patrick, Good point.
Mike, The Chinese population is forecast to peak soon, and then fall in half over the next 100 years. Even if the one child policy ends.
Left, It’s all relative.