China Archives | Page 114 of 114

Obama’s Transportation Secretary says we should be like Communist China

July 9, 2012/12 Comments/in Featured, News /by Amy Payne

China’s attempt at a high-speed rail network is fraught with corrupt officials, impossible costs, and deadly safety failures. But U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wishes America would follow it as a model.

LaHood told The Cable last week: “The Chinese are more successful [in building infrastructure] because in their country, only three people make the decision. In our country, 3,000 people do, 3 million. In a country where only three people make the decision, they can decide where to put their rail line, get the money, and do it. We don’t do it that way in America.”

His comments are stunning. Yes, that’s how Communists do it: A few people make decisions for the country and control the money, land, resources, and workers. And how has that worked out?

“Rather than demonstrating the advantages of centrally planned long-term investment, as its foreign admirers sometimes suggested, China’s bullet-train experience shows what can go wrong when an unelected elite, influenced by corrupt opportunists, gives orders that all must follow — without the robust public discussion we would have in the states.” That sounds like a direct rebuttal to LaHood, but Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane wrote that back in April 2011.

The Telegraph (U.K.) reported in February that 70 percent of China’s railway projects had been suspended, as its railways ministry attempted to continue deficit financing while facing slow ticket sales. Last year, a deadly train crash brought safety concerns and corruption at the highest levels of the railway to light.

The bottom line is that high-speed rail is like pouring money down a hole. China’s official institutions aren’t known for transparency, but according to the Voice of America, “Even the [Chinese] national research institution, the Academy of Science, reported last year that at current investment and estimated passenger numbers, the trains will never collect enough in fares to repay construction loans.”

Huge US Defense Contractor Illegally Helped China Produce Advanced Attack Helicopter

July 7, 2012/2 Comments/in Featured, Foreign Policy, News /by ZACH TOOMBS and R. JEFFREY SMITH

The Canadian arm of the aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt and Whitney closed a six-year U.S. government probe last week by admitting that it helped China produce its first modern attack helicopter, a serious violation of U.S. export laws that drew a multimillion dollar fine.

At the same time it was helping China, the company was separately earning huge fees from contracts with the Pentagon, including some in which it was building weapons meant to ensure that America can maintain decisive military superiority over China’s rising military might.

The Chinese helicopter that benefited from Pratt’s engines and related computer software, now in production, comes outfitted with 30 mm cannons, anti-tank guided missiles, air-to-air missiles and unguided rockets. “This case is a clear example of how the illegal export of sensitive technology reduces the advantages our military currently possesses,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said in a statement released on June 28.

The events are once again raising questions about the circumstances under which major defense contractors might be barred from government work. Independent watchdogs have long complained that few such firms have been barred or suspended, even for egregious lawbreaking, such as supplying armaments or related equipment to a hypothetical adversary.

Nothing in the settlement agreement, in which Pratt and Whitney and two related companies, United Technologies and Hamilton Sundstrand agreed to pay a total of $75 million for multiple violations of export rules, directly threatens Pratt’s existing or future government contracting.

China’s controversial Three Gorges dam now online, world’s largest hydro project

July 6, 2012/0 Comments/in Featured /by Reuters

The final turbine of China’s massive Three Gorges dam has been connected to the power grid, marking the completion of a controversial hydropower project that cost the country more than £38bn and displaced at least 1.3 million people.

The installation of the project’s 32nd 700-megawatt unit on Wednesday brought total capacity up to 22.5 gigawatts (GW), accounting for 11% of the country’s total hydroelectric capacity. Britain’s largest power station, Drax, produces 4GW.

“The complete operation of all the generators makes the Three Gorges dam the world’s largest hydropower project, and the largest base for clean energy,” Zhang Cheng, general manager of the project’s operator, China Yangtze Power, told a ceremony.

The construction of the world’s biggest hydropower plant began in 1994 and its first generating unit was connected to the grid in July 2003.

The official state news agency Xinhua said the dam had already generated a total of 564.8bn kilowatt-hours, saving nearly 200m tonnes of coal a year.

U.S. military could be shut down by secret ‘back door’

July 13, 2011/3 Comments/in News /by newseditor

Sources have confirmed that the U.S. Department of Defense over recent months purchased 59,000 microchips to use in Navy equipment that control everything from missiles to transponders, according to report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

But all of the chips turned out to be cheap knock-offs from China, and they ultimately were not installed, according to sources.

Besides being subject to failure, the chips also were designed with a “back door” which would have allowed the chip, and the device it controlled, to be shut down remotely at any time, sources report.

Had the flaw not been detected, the chips could have shut down U.S. warships, aircraft, advanced weapons systems and encoded transponders that distinguish friendly aircraft from hostile attackers.

The revelation is only the latest in a series of incidents that have sent off alarm bells in the Pentagon. China previously was found to have been actively pursuing placing back doors in computer equipment. Several cases have been uncovered in which Internet-capable devices have had Chinese chips in them which also provided a back door into the networks the devices were supposed to protect. The devices were attached not only to industrial and commercial networks but also to networks that were defined as part of the nation’s “critical infrastructure.”

Posts