30-story building built in 15 days in China Construction time lapse
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lor3nzo
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lor3nzo
A Solar Trade War Could Put Us All in the Dark
Solar technology is the result of decades of global competition and collaboration—a trade war would undermine its future.http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/39330/
The brewing solar trade war between the United States and China sullies what should be a triumphant moment in the global photovoltaic (PV) industry: the arrival of affordable solar electricity.
After decades of global competition and collaboration, many solar markets around the world have reached grid parity—the point at which generating solar electricity, without subsidies, costs less than the electricity purchased from the grid. In other words, solar technology is ready to be a major contributor to solving our planet’s energy and environmental crisis.However, trade protectionism threatens to inhibit the solar industry at the very time when it is breaking through to a new level of global interdependence, collaboration, and maturity.
On October 18, the U.S. government was asked to impose tariffs on imports of Chinese solar cells and modules, based on the argument that China-based producers have been heavily subsidized and are selling solar products at unfairly low prices. Perhaps not surprisingly, some Chinese companies have now asked the Chinese government to impose tariffs on imports of American solar products, arguing that U.S.-based producers have been heavily subsidized, too. And just like that, the production of affordable and competitive solar products has become a political liability in the world’s two largest producers and consumers of energy.
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lor3nzo
The Xinjiang Procedure
Beijing’s ‘New Frontier’ is ground zero for the organ harvesting of political prisoners.http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/xinjiang-procedure_610145.html
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lor3nzo
Will China Break?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/opinion/krugman-will-china-break.html
Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble. There was rapid growth in credit — with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking but rather through unregulated “shadow banking” neither subject to government supervision nor backed by government guarantees. Now the bubble is bursting — and there are real reasons to fear financial and economic crisis.
Am I describing Japan at the end of the 1980s? Or am I describing America in 2007? I could be. But right now I’m talking about China, which is emerging as another danger spot in a world economy that really, really doesn’t need this right now.I’ve been reluctant to weigh in on the Chinese situation, in part because it’s so hard to know what’s really happening. All economic statistics are best seen as a peculiarly boring form of science fiction, but China’s numbers are more fictional than most. I’d turn to real China experts for guidance, but no two experts seem to be telling the same story.
Still, even the official data are troubling — and recent news is sufficiently dramatic to ring alarm bells.
The most striking thing about the Chinese economy over the past decade was the way household consumption, although rising, lagged behind overall growth. At this point consumer spending is only about 35 percent of G.D.P., about half the level in the United States.
So who’s buying the goods and services China produces? Part of the answer is, well, we are: as the consumer share of the economy declined, China increasingly relied on trade surpluses to keep manufacturing afloat. But the bigger story from China’s point of view is investment spending, which has soared to almost half of G.D.P.
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lor3nzo
IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end
Commentary: China’s economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
And it’s a lot closer than you may think.According to the latest IMF official forecasts published two weeks ago, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
