China builds infrastructure and allies while America destroys both

Chinese High Speed trains are going all over the world (image by Global Construction Review)

China realizes that countries that trade together, stay together, and it is putting its State Banks behind a worldwide effort to modernize countries that we've given up on, or even destroy the infrastructure of. This may cause a conflict between the U.S. bullies and the infrastructure-building China later on, but for now...

China is planning to put $46bn into energy and infrastructure projects in Pakistan over the next six years. Financing will come from the Chinese government and state-owned banks, and will allow the Chinese to form commercial companies.

Read the rest here: China to invest $46bn in Pakistan's infrastructure

And Pakistan's often hostile neighbor, India (also China's sometimes antagonistic neighbor), is not forgotten either:

Chinese president Xi Jinping is expected to offer up to $300bn in investment in India's manufacturing and infrastructure sectors -- including high-speed trains -- when he visits the country tomorrow, Indian media report.

Read the rest here: China ready to invest up to $300bn in India's infrastructure

But in this case, India will be as much a partner as a recipient of China's largesse:

China's plan to create an international financial institution to rival the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has received a boost as Indian officials have indicated that they are planning to join as the second largest shareholder.

Read the rest here: India poised to join China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

And even first-world countries like the United Kingdom are slated for China investment:

As we reported last week, a study by international law firm Pinsent Masons and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) predicts that China will invest $169bn ( -105bn) in UK property and infrastructure between now and 2025.

Is that a lot? For the UK, it certainly is. Its proposed new high-speed rail network, HS2, is considered a gargantuan expenditure at -50bn. In this context, the torrent of Chinese cash could be a "game-changer" for the entire British economy, say the report's authors.

And these are not piecemeal endeavors either. They are also part of a global plan to connect Asia by rail. The Moscow Times reports:

China is ready to invest 400 billion rubles ($10.7 billion) in the construction of a high-speed railway linking Moscow with Kazan, a top Russian rail official said Tuesday, as the Kremlin looks to further strengthen its economic ties with Beijing to offset the effects of its standoff with the West over Ukraine.

China Development Bank, which in April confirmed plans to invest $5 billion in Russia's Far East, is among the parties ready to stump up the funds for the 800-kilometer-long line, said Alexander Misharin, first deputy president of state-owned monopoly Russian Railways, according to Prime news agency.

Trains with a top speed of 400 kilometers per hour will service the line, cutting the journey time from about 14 hours on regular trains to just 3 1/2 hours. It was slated to be built by 2018 -- in time for the football World Cup, for which Kazan is one of the host cities. However, delays with design tenders and the diversion of state funds for the development of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in March, have hampered progress.

China plans to build out railways everywhere in Asia (image by Next Big Future)

Note the last sentence. It is Russia's diversion of funds into developing Crimea, reacting to a U.S. supported coup by 2 Nazi-led parties, that is stalling the project. Paul Craig Roberts and Eric Zuesse have provided excellent alternative in-depth coverage of the pro-Ukraine/anti-Russia American Administration efforts, here, and here, and there is much, much more on OpEdNews' Ukraine Page by other excellent journalists, so I won't rehash that here. But it is worth asking if the Administration's obvious anti-Russia policy is also intended to be a swipe at China's efforts to build allies and trade around the world.

In a choice between the world's bully, both at home (where the U.S. is the world's leading imprisoner*, and cyber-spy) and abroad (bombings and wars in at least 7 countries currently, and support of the most despotic regimes, like Saudi Arabia, which has beheaded more people than ISIS in the same time period), or the world's leading manufacturer and builder, who will come out on top? In the world's eyes, China is catching up fast, or has already passed the U.S. in popularity in places where the U.S. has been most aggressive.

In any case, the once-dominant U.S. will be unable to catch up to China's expertise in railway construction as long as it rewards the parasitic and de-industrializing rentier FIRE sector instead. Indeed, America is falling apart, says this recent unsurprising piece on 60 Minutes. In a comment to this story, I wrote:

I saw your piece on America's crumbling infrastructure and took special interest in your interview with former Congressman and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. In 1999, and again in 2002-2003, LaHood introduced HR1452, which would have produced $360 billion in interest-free money, which, as LaHood pointed out in the bill, could have cut highway infrastructure funding in half. Steve Kroft failed to take the opportunity to show how bank debt on projects we could finance ourselves is largely responsible for the crumbling mess we are in...and how LaHood's bill could have remedied much of that (debt-free money, modeled on the U.S. Note first created by president Lincoln, would have been even better). There is nothing less than the future of our country at stake from failure to retake our constitutional right to "coin Money" (the coinage clause: Art. 1, Sec. 8, clause 5). For shame, 60 Minutes.

Our mainstream media is no advocate for real change in this case, just lazy whiners of the status quo.

Some people believe there is no way to deal with hostile or disagreeable regimes other than through aggression, or through bypassing official channels altogether and hoping for a bottom-up approach (I have argued for that myself, with respect to Israel). But China shows even a huge bureaucracy can find another way, a way that does not involve killing and destruction and sowing more hatred in a whack-a-mole fashion. We need to get a clue.

Some policy, America....

* The U.S. is ranked second only to tiny Seychelles, in this survey of prison populations, but that doesn't count the high number of juvenile offenders locked up and counted outside the adult statistics, which other countries count together. China's stats are muddied by re-education camps and separate statistics for Hong Kong and Macau, but no matter how you add it up, China incarcerates fewer people per capita and for shorter periods, than the U.S.

The U.S. is the world's leading in imprisonment (image by Wikipedia)

Scott Baker is a Managing Editor & The Economics Editor at Opednews, and a blogger for Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Global Economic Intersection.

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