http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/cracks-show-in-chinas-dodgy-infrastructure/story-e6frg6so-1226127588709 Cracks show in China's dodgy infrastructure Leo Lewis, Hangzhou From: The Australian September 02, 2011 12:00AM Chinese tourists run as a tidal bore, an annual attraction in Zhejiang province, breaks through the dam by the Qiantang River in Haining. Picture: AFP Source: AFP
IN heavy, driving rain, Friday rush hour and forced contraflow, traffic on the approach ramp to the mighty No 3 Qiantang Bridge in Hangzhou slows to a near-stagnant creep: plenty of time to take in the view. There is the 10m gash left after the side wall abruptly fell off last month. Nearby is the 7m crack in the road, which a heavily laden lorry was swerving to avoid when it flew off the edge. All along the bridge are 10cm scars where joints have slipped out of alignment and the shoddy concrete edges have eroded away. Finally, there is the 50-strong team of construction workers carrying-out the $9 million emergency repair work that the whole debacle has triggered. This, along with tens of thousands of other grand infrastructure projects across the country, is how the new China is being built. Not visible on the bridge are the various national engineering prizes won by the creator of this crumbling catastrophe: they sit proudly in the head offices of the Hunan Road and Bridge Construction Group. The July accident was not the company's first: in 2007, two of its other bridges collapsed, one at the cost of 64 lives. But what is starting to worry both the Chinese authorities and the general public is that the trouble is not restricted to HRBC and its flawed creations: bridge collapses are starting to have the feel of a pandemic. Between July 11 and July 19 this year, four bridges crumpled in China - all of them, in common with thousands of other bridges across the country, opened between 1997 and 1999. Behind the accidents, say analysts, are features of the Chinese economy that could eventually become its undoing: huge corruption, praise of construction speed over build quality, and the failure to realise the gnawing, long-term cost of both these issues. Explanations for the various bridge collapses tend to focus on the way in which the contracts to build them are distributed. Via virtually non-existent tender processes, local governments hand out projects to companies they themselves own. The work itself, however, is sub-contracted down an often bafflingly long chain of smaller companies, with bribes paid at each level and successive layers of cash creamed from each strata. By the time the first shovel of cement enters the mixer, the actual budget that remains allows for only the cheapest labour and often inferior materials. In many cases, wrote Victor Shih, a professor of political science at Northwestern University in a recent article, the "parasitic" chain" of companies can involve several doing no work, but receiving a "rent" for their connections. Suggestions of corruption relating to the No 3 bridge are not new. Chinese media openly reported its failure to pass safety checks in 1997, with prominent engineers flatly refusing to have their names associated with any sign-off. A year later, a quality standard was granted, without any discernible changes being made to the bridge. Looming over the whole scene is the increasingly troubling question of local government debt in China: economists are exercised about how far dangerously high levels of indebtedness have been masked, how many of the estimated 14.2 trillion yuan of loans to local government entities will turn bad even if the global economy limps back to health, and how the world's second-biggest economy will react if the brakes are suddenly applied to fixed-asset investment, accounting for about 70 per cent of gross domestic product. The concern is that in the country's unprecedented spree of infrastructure construction and other spending local governments have already taken themselves close to the danger zone on debt: that line will inevitably be crossed if decades of shoddy work now require billions of yuan to put right. And, unlike the money that can cheerfully be borrowed to finance projects such as bridges, stadiums, and high-speed rail lines in whose glorious light local party bosses can bask, raising the money to fix pre-existing venality and sloppiness holds zero appeal. The potentially colossal bill for repairing what China did not build right in the first place, say economists, could be the fault line on which the local debt problem starts to totter. In many cases, that scenario is well under way. Last week, a report suggested that more than a quarter of Chinese cities are at risk of flooding because 40,000 reservoirs are nearing the end of their functional life. Repairs have been ordered, but banking sources are already warning that local governments could find themselves badly short of funding when it comes to financing the "boring" side of construction. Officially documented corruption on China's cherished high-speed rail network has already been linked - at least in the public's mind - with the fatal crash in Wenzhou this northern summer. The entire network may be forced to make punishingly expensive repairs just to convince the public that the lines are safe. And, even then, many of the lines are unlikely ever to pay for themselves. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! 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