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China’s Plan to Build the World’s Biggest Supergrid
- odess0 8y agoHmm...Capitalists and Billionaires need to explain this one.
- mparlane 8y agoWhy? You created an account just to post this?
- marnett 8y agoI believe GP is mostly talking about the standard American propaganda that without Capitalism no great things can be accomplished.
- vxNsr 8y agoIs still true. If china hadn't moved to a quasi capitalist society they would still be making rice and no one outside of a few chinese political dissidents would know anything about shenzhen
- hexane360 8y agoI'm not sure China can be described as "quasi-capitalist". There's very close cooperation between industry and government in a way that's antithetical to capitalism. Sure, at the lower levels it functions as a market economy, but the corporations themselves are heavily influenced if not controlled by the state.
- Theodores 8y agoI think that you are conflating 'capitalism' with 'market economy'. Moving away from a 'centrally planned' economy doesn't imply 'capitalism', you can have a 'market economy'. The original definition of a 'free market' was different to how 'the capitalists' use the words today. Originally a 'free market' was free from rent seekers, usury and monopolies. You put your work in and you got your pay and your profits. This was the definition of a free and fair economy. Nowadays the interpretation of 'free market' in the West implies freedom for the rent-seeking class to exploit people with freedom for them to move their capital to tax havens. Centrally planned economies had a problem with corrupt officials. The corrupt officials would take the role of the rent-seeking parasites we know in Western capitalist societies. Modern China has a leadership that does not tolerate corrupt officials. If you are a corrupt official then you can expect the gallows in China, it is as harsh as that. There is also Confucius and a deeper cultural work ethic that makes the Communist experiment with Mao a mere blip in the bigger canvas of Chinese history. The rise of China is not because they have gone 'quasi-capitalist' it is because they have moved to a 'market economy' instead of a fully centrally planned economy. They have not allowed or desired their empire to be run by the whims of finance capital. Chinese people have collectively worked a lot harder than people in America. It is easy for those left behind in America to trot out tired nonsense, e.g. about how the Chinese steal all of 'our' IP or Chinese political dissidents, without acknowledging that the Chinese people and leadership have worked really hard to transform the country out of poverty to be extremely educated and leading the world. This complacency only serves to leave America behind. Given your lack of punctuation and grammar I wonder if you might be stuck behind too.
- maxxxxx 8y agoA lot of people seem to confuse "capitalism" with "market economy". Once capitalists have established their position they hate market competition.
- Theodores 8y agoToo true and concisely put. The actual word 'competition' did not mean winner takes it all in the Ancient Greek flavour of the word, it has also been newspeaked by Capitalism. Originally there was some honour to competition. See also where the word 'agony' comes from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agon
- erik_seaberg 8y agoThe market decides how much to produce, capitalism scales up the best producers. Producers want monopolies but somehow we need to keep a flow of promising new producers launching so that doesn't happen, because it screws up the market (the monopolist produces less and takes more for it).
- nicoburns 8y agoOr we could regulate the market to not allow monopolies (and break up large businesses). We have laws for this, they're just not enforced.
- erik_seaberg 8y agoThe race is kind of pointless if we're just going to shoot the winners.
- sien 8y agoChina is pretty corrupt. It's still a pretty big problem there. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2018/03/15/corruption-in-china-gets-stuck-half-way-between-the-worlds-best-and-worst/#22516fe973d1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2018/03/15/corrup...
- Synaesthesia 8y agoThe fact is, as David Graeber observed, every country has a mix of capitalist and socialist aspects. Taking a loose definition of “socialism” as helping each other. (To each what he requires, from each what he can provide) Without such impulses society would quickly fall apart. China can be characterized as a state capitalist society with quite a high degree of control and abuses, but some degree responsibility to its citizens too.
- cronix 8y agoOk. They have a dictator for life and can have long term goals, "good" and "bad." They have a single party system with basically no rights, human or environmental. They can do what they want, whenever they want, however they want. If you don't like it, you go to prison without a fair trial and are forced to conform through reeducation, hard labor and torture. There is no opposition to contend with. If there is, you just kill them or toss them in prison. Does that help you a bit? Now, maybe you can explain how that is a better or more desirable way? https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/666287509/ex-detainee-describes-torture-in-chinas-xinjiang-re-education-camp https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/666287509/ex-detainee-describ... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/04/xi-jinping-from-president-to-china-new-dictator https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/04/xi-jinping-fro... https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/china-and-tibet https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/china...
- im3w1l 8y agoIs there are a way to get the good parts without the bad parts?
- cronix 8y agoThe last 150 years or so of history kind of says no, but people keep trying because the last person "didn't implement it quite right" and "they," somehow, "know how to do it better." Maybe people need to see another 150M+ deaths to prove a failed philosophy/ideology is somehow what we need. It's the underlying philosophy that is the failure, no matter how you dress it up or try to implement it. The individual is sovereign.
- im3w1l 8y agoI meant more along the lines of "what if we give eminent domain just a bit more bite?"
- seniorivn 8y agoYes, competitive democratic political system with minimalist federal government that is used only to solve issues that need a monopoly to be solved, everything else can and should be done by free unregulated market. But if you want people to have some sort of safety net, it's a separate issue. And government can be used for that, as a middleman to help organize financing of those safety net. But government is never tho most efficient player on the market, so it should not be a part of the solution. And US and most western countries don't have all of this at the same time. Some countries have competitive democracies(US not one of them) some have kind of minimal/efficient governments. Some not that regulated markets. But no one has all at the same time.
- jcoffland 8y agoI must say, as an American reading this, I've got a bit of infrastructure envy. In the mid 20th century, the US was building out massive infrastructure. Now it seems we are no longer capable of such projects. It may be an oversimplification but I think the focus on running every organization like a corporation has led to an inability to handle projects that extend beyond the fiscal year effectively. Instead our largest infrastructure projects are collapsing before completion due to cascading delays, political turmoil and failed private contracts.
- whatshisface 8y agoWhat's the benefit in modernizing the US's grid faster than it is being done already? Nobody wants to pay more for electricity, and while the Chinese government is motivated by the economic stimulus effect the US doesn't share that goal. If they started tearing down and replacing power lines that today are good enough you would have to pay for it.
- the8472 8y agoThe benefit of modernizing the grid is reduction of carbon emissions. The ideal geographic locations for wind and solar are not necessarily close to the consumers. If you lack the transmission capacity the plants have to throttle down and waste potential energy production which has to be compensated by plants closer to the consumers.
- whatshisface 8y agoIn that case you wouldn't want to modernize the grid just for the sake of it, you would want to reduce carbon emissions. The places where you would build out new infrastructure would be different if the plan was to connect solar panels in Nevada versus if you just went around to the oldest wooden poles and replaced them with newer ones.
- maxxxxx 8y agoWhen I lived in Maryland we had multiple-day blackouts several times after hurricanes because power lines were down. There was also a huge blackout along the whole east coast which also took days. In California transformers are starting wildfires. I think there is a lot to improve.
- melling 8y agoThat will help with the maglevs, tens of millions of electric vehicles, and tens of thousands of miles of bullet trains. We don’t have any of that in the United States...
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoChina has a lot of clean energy capacity in the west, but needs it in the east to get away from coal, where a those transportation needs are as well.
- jaabe 8y agoNew public management and low taxation of the wealthy has been the bane of western society for almost 50 years.
- CryptoPunk 8y agoGovernment spending as a percentage of GDP has grown rapidly over the last 50 years. Most of that growth has been in social welfare spending. Meanwhile, the effective tax rate that the rich pay has decreased only slightly since 50 years, despite a very large decrease in the top income bracket tax rate, due to fewer loopholes and deductions available in the tax code. Their relative contribution to total tax revenue has increased on account of growth in their share of national income.
- Retric 8y agoDepends greatly on how you count. Is the Veterans Administration under Defense, Heathcare, or social welfare? At what point does a highly targeted tax break count as spending? How about loans? Do you count debt interest as it’s own thing or part of what caused the debt in the first place etc etc. The US tax code and spending is designed to allow politicians to tell very specific narratives, making this stuff very difficult to measure objectively.
- CryptoPunk 8y agoNo, the incease in social welfare spending has been overwhelming. The statistics on that are clear. It's a much more leftist/government-dependent society than it was in the 1950s. Just consider all of the social programs that exist today and didn't exist in the 1950s. The federal Department of Education didn't even exist then. Neither did the EPA or the OSHA.
- aaronblohowiak 8y agoThe big ones since the 50s are Medicare, Medicaid and COLA-adjusted Social Security.
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- appsonify 8y agoChina certainly has very challenging and unique problems when it comes to infrastructures. The sheer size of the population, land mass, the scale of it is staggering. If only they could open their eyes to democracy and freedom of human rights....then and only then will China be equipped to challenge the American/European hegemony, ushering in a new age of pan-east asian propserity. In other words, same words, different empire.
- nneonneo 8y agoThe average Chinese today would not agree with you. Tell them about American democracy: they see Trump and a mess of irrational, petty infighting. Tell them about European democracy: they see Brexit and a perpetual stall in economic development. Now look to China’s leadership: while they may lack the freedoms of Western societies, the trade off has been such an incredible increase in quality of life that people born in 1990 to abject poverty can be living in solidly middle-class conditions nowadays (I know many such folks personally!). The Chinese people as a whole are only going to agitate for democratic reform when (or if) their system of government stops serving them. Maybe a poor leader will emerge and shock the country into realizing they’ve centralized too much power; maybe the level of corruption will begin to significantly impede growth; maybe a rise in fortunes will make people yearn for freedoms they don’t have.
- est31 8y ago> maybe a rise in fortunes will make people yearn for freedoms they don’t have. Actually this is a big thing already now as rich chinese people invest in western properties that the Chinese government can't seize. If you are rich in an authoritarian country, all of your wealth can vanish quickly if you fall out of favour of the people who rule. This doesn't even have to be your own contribution, they can just say they take it. If you are rich in a western democracy, nothing much can happen to you.
- themacguffinman 8y agoThey may see it that way but I'd argue it's a pretty myopic view. The US and the EU do most things better despite their political issues. Only focusing on their flaws is like rejecting free cash because some of the notes are dirty.
- teslaberry 8y agochina builds infrastructure , while california electric utility borrows money to declare bankruptcy and speculative hedge funds cry bloody murder after a few stupid fires . nasseem taleb would call this. anti-fragile versus primed for collapse.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoAs I read the (excellent) article, I noticed that there's quite a bit of dissention regarding the overall design of what they're building out. "power engineers are struggling to master the resulting hybrid AC-DC transmission system.... What has blocked full implementation is an intense debate over the future of UHV ... State Grid’s monopolization ... the centralization of grid planning and operation that UHV requires.... unifying China’s grid would make it far more vulnerable to cascading blackouts..." Probably we, on a smaller scale, should have been doing something like this at least 10 years ago. OTOH, China is pushing the envelope ... and when we finally decide to get off the dime, we'll know better what works. So far (I think), we don't have any cities like Shanghai that run 'short of power for several weeks each summer'.
- jjcc 8y agoThe title doen'st highlight enough about UHV. It's probably one of the most underestimated game changer technology that US and Canada also should have.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoCan you expound on why?
- jjcc 8y agoThere were many coal burning power plants generate tons of dust and smog around increasingly electricity hungry developed areas in east and west coast of China. Those plants are gone because the powers are transfered from far away. Without UHV 's efficient long distance power transfer capability that could not happen.
- jjcc 8y agoYes, that's debatable. The party and its supporters could be wrong. But that's another topic on different premise. The real issue here is many people make verdict based on strong belief based on what they know from media which could be totally fabricated illusion and insist their version of reality is only correct one cause problem.
- jjcc 8y agofollowing is a reply in a wrong place
- rb808 8y agoIs it normal for grids to be segregated? I assumed the whole of North America was one grid, Even Europe & Asia I assumed it was all connected. Now after reading this I'm not sure.
- slashcom 8y agoInterestingly, we have 3 in North America: East, West and Texas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection
- snowwindwaves 8y agoAnd quebec
- igravious 8y agoThe article you linked to says: “The two major and three minor NERC Interconnections, and the nine NERC Regional Reliability Councils.” and it also says, “The Texas Interconnection is one of the three minor grids in the continental U.S. power transmission grid. The other two minor interconnections are the Quebec Interconnection and the Alaska Interconnection.”
- Taniwha 8y agoI flew over North West China about a year ago ... at one point there were windmills as far as the eye could see, 100s at a time ... many were clustered around what looked like open cast coal mines and coal powered thermal plants (likely some of the source for Beijing's pollution problems) - they're being really smart using the same grid infrastructure for the wind energy that they've built for coal
- rawmodz 8y agoWow. New York City only uses 11 megawatt/hours/day. "It’s like we’re all still pedaling our bicycles, while the Formula 1 race car goes flying by.” - Gregory Reed