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I think both the articles posted by Michael K. and Louis P. from the Washington post and NYTs, respectively, are utterly fascinating. The implications of both articles, on very distinct subjects, are profound. Everyone on this list has their own 'take' on "what China is". I consider it "State capitalist" in the most instrinsic meaning of that term as well as it's historical, mostly Trotskyist, defintinion of state capitalism. The larger, maybe, overiding question, especially from the Wash. Post article, is whether China is developing, quickly, into some sort of "State Imperialist" power that combines aspects of national developmental goals (scrounging for resources to develop it's economy) and typical Finance Capital machination of seeking ever greater returns on foreign investment...investement motivated *beyond* national capitalist development of the Bonapartist type, or more of the Imperialist type. At any rate, I think the implications of this articles ought to be discussed here. Secondly, is coal use in China. I believe from reading a variety of literature in the energy field, that the sitation is more complex than even this very detainled NYT article implies. For example, it correctly states that half of all rail traffic in China is for coal. We discussed this the other day with our resident expert. S. Artesian, chiming in to give some details. To show how dependent China is on coal and how it has screwed up it's railroads, China is now expanding it's intercoastal fleet of coal haulters to "export" coal to itself by shipping coal by boat to southern China instead of by rail as rails has become unreliable, especially in winter time and during the rainy season. The huge rail conjestion is actually what is motivating the importation of coal into China, not only, or even mostly, it's rapid increase in consumption of the stuff. But China has also started to close it's older, dirtier (amazing that some coal plants can 'less dirtier' than others) plants (literally by the hundreds), albeit these are mostly smaller, less-than-100MWs type units. The article is prone to exageration. For example, it describes a new 200MW dam as a "behemoth". ??? This is *small* by any standards. It's about 2% the size of the really "behemoth" 3 Gorges Dam (20,000 MWs) and a spate of other plus-6000 MW dams that exist in China or are being planned or under construction right now. Despite the very real envirornmental damage and human dislocation these dams cause, they do on fact mean far less carbon emissions. The several hundred million tons of coal *not* burned is a signficant benefit to society. I know, however, that it causes it's own huge social dislocation when dams this big are built not to mention flooding of valuable farm land and a host of other problems. But one can be assured that every MW of power produced by hydro power is not one produced by burning coal. China believes its actually addressing this huge amount of coal burning by trying more efficient forms of coal boiler designs, more hydro, and nuclear, which, per the 'plans' will supposely provide 1/3 of all of China's 1500 GW load by the year 2050. Even assuming every plant gets built, and every dam, and every efficiency and consveration pan gets going, China will still be burning or have available and online, the same amount of coal it uses now...in another 40 years with no net change downward. And THIS is truly staggering problem. Lastly, India is rapidly catching up, as the article points out, in the energy usage catagory. I've mainained that these country's capitalists and state planners, not without a large amount of support from masses of people, are *going* to develop in this manner. And...more and more 'intermetidate' developed countries are going to follow their lead. Indonesia, Vietnam (from where Michael reports from), Malaysia and Thailand are countries in S.E. Asia that look to China, not anywhere else, as models for large economic and development growth spurts. Fueling it all is one of the big questions facing the planet. David ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
