So China has done something incredible. They seem to have copied Paris. All the famous parts of the city.
This is impressive. It’s also sort of a sign of why modern China seems to be working. You couldn’t make another copy of Paris in France. The government regulations and red tape would make it cost 10 times as much as it did the first time and make it take 50 years.
Sort of how New York City can’t expand their subway even a little bit without it being one of the most expensive civil infrastructure projects ever assembled.
Heck, how long did it take to build Paris the first time? It apparently took 77 years, between 1850 and 1927. It seems ittook 11 years. And the replica Eiffel Tower was up in a few months, versus 3 years for the original.
Culturally, the idea of just deciding to copy entire cities is weird. It’s also incredible that it’s even practical.
A big chunk of China’s economy is tied up in construction. Despite entire ghost cities being thrown up and using more concrete in three years (2011-2013) than the USA used in the entire 20th century, they just keep building and building because their economy depends on it. If they stop, they’re toast. Oh, slightly earlier than they’ll eventually be anyway, BUT TOAST NONETHELESS!
How does the economic cycle work here? Take the broken window fallacy. Somebody smashes windows in town, and a bunch of workers in town are now employed making replacement windows. But the economy as a whole doesn’t benefit, you have finite resources making windows that you don’t need. (or wouldn’t if that hoodlum wasn’t smashing them)
This seems like a variant on that. Click a mouse on some unused real-estate, and order buildings built that aren’t needed. So the economy is now employing people to build structures that will stand vacant.
Ok, but where did the money come from to build those structures? What needs are not being met because the workers are all building empty concrete boxes?
Is it all construction loans that won’t be paid back and the whole thing will collapse?
90 years ago, “we” finished building it. My point was really alluding to the fact that “we” could probably do a lot better. We could probably use our resources and build cities interconnected by high speed pods that route like internet packets. All skyscrapers and skybridges. Arcologies. Vast AI projects.
It just seems like we have the material resources to do a lot more than we have, and it doesn’t seem like we are anywhere close to the point that the laws of nature would be holding us back from further progress.
Or hell, in the USA, “we” could stop letting the wealthy loot our government and establish dynasties and repair all the public infrastructure back to AAA condition.
I strongly disagree. You would have to be an incredible painter to make a Picasso that others would accept as genuine. You can’t just copy one, either, you would have to create a new work that uses the same styles and themes, and then actually paint it brushstroke by brushstroke.
I do agree with you. That kind of forgery is an art in itself. But why did Tony Tetro never break out on his own?
It is well-remarked that “great artists steal.” It is also how you learn. But what real genius could ultimately bear the constraints of someone else’s lines?
You mean to say, “they just expanded it over the last 110 years, spending five times the money per mile as any comparable rapid transit system expansion in other major world cities, all while the rest of the system is left to rot and decay to the point of total breakdown and dysfunction.”
China’s insane building policy is unsustainable. It’s been unsustainable for two decades. When it blows up - and it will - it will cause an economic crisis the likes of which East Asia hasn’t seen since 1997.
But at least they know how to put a train line together.
Wow, some of the slides in that image gallery are reaching.
Aside from the obvious replica of the Eiffel Tower, there are a couple of buildings that are sorta-similar, some fountains that could be any bloody fountain in the world, some interior shots that are like “Wow! both of these things have curtains!”, and a load of stuff that looks no more than accidentally, superficially similar. Meh.
Because paintings from famous artists aren’t worth millions of dollars just because they’re good, the main reason is that they are both rare and unique. There are not very many paintings worldwide from A list famous deceased artists, making them rare, and every painting is a unique work.
So if you’re rich and pay millions of dollars for one, it’s not because it looks amazing on your wall, it’s so that your friends will be envious of you.
The fact that Tony Tetro could so convincingly fake these styles is because in the modern world, we probably have thousands of people who could paint just as well as any famous deceased artist. If not arguably better. But none of them have historical fame, and obviously their work isn’t unique, either.
I live in China, and I’m one of the resident China-defenders here
The construction boom is indeed a bubble, and it’s got to pop sooner or later.
However, put simply, the degree to which the construction boom is based on “ghost towns”, and the degree on which the chinese economy depends on construction, is massively exaggerated in the West.
Yes it’s a problem, but there is huge demand for housing so most ghost towns don’t stay ghostly for long. And the Chinese economy is huge in all kinds of ways, and the fundamentals in many other industries are sound. So it’s in no sense being propped up by ghost towns.
As for the OP, it’s a strange choice of thing to show off Chinese effiiciency. Wouldn’t three gorges dam, say, be a better example?
Or heck, just the number of people who’ve travelled to celebrate chinese new year on high-speed rail this week? I think it’s somewhere in the region of 350 million.
This has very little to do with China vs ‘The West’ and much more to do with modern techniques and materials (as well as the size, in the case of the Eiffel Tower comparisons),
If we wanted to build another full-sized Eiffel Tower really fast, we could - although it might still make more economic sense not to rush it - pipelining the materials and construction effort for a rapid build is disproportionally expensive.
I dunno, China has vast resources and they’re building knock-off cities instead of arcologies. Maybe slapping up pre-fab Paris counterfeits is easier than skybridges and vast AI projects.
