China Airborne (31 page)
Authors: James Fallows
1.
E. E. Bauer,
China Takes Off: Technology Transfer and Modernization
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986), p. 5. “Small clouds of vapor rose from each silent figure as we waited in the dimly lighted interior. In an all-saving society, there was no logic in heating the massive terminal building during the night.”
2.
Bauer,
China Takes Off
, p. 101.
3.
At the time, Boeing’s main competitors were other American companies, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas. By the early 2000s, after Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed merged with Martin Marietta and stopped making commercial aircraft, the main competition for large passenger airliners was, of course, the national-champion battle between Boeing and Europe’s Airbus. This is the battle that China aspired to join with its national champion, C919.
4.
Bauer,
China Takes Off
, p. 31.
5.
Ibid., p. 32.
6.
Ibid., p. 177. Bauer gave this example: “The deputy director of maintenance stood attentively on the ramp, watching. He took no notes and reported nothing; it was not his job. Also watching were at least twenty maintenance and ground personnel. Of course, none of them would report it, either. To report would put them in double jeopardy. First, they were supposed to be minding their own business, and, second, criticism of the planning unit would be taken unkindly. Our interpreter, watching with us, would never dare to utter a word. Most frustrating of all, the controllers would be reluctant
to criticize the planning orders. They could only laugh among themselves, passing the event off as a joke.”
7.
Randy Baseler, “China Rocks!”
Randy’s Journal
, April 20, 2006.
http://www.boeing.com/randy/archives/2006/
04china_rocks.html
. Also, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States, “President Hu Jintao Arrives in Seattle for US Visit,” April 25, 2006.
http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/zmgx/zmsbzyjw/c1/111/t248787.htm
; and Associated Press, “In Visit to Boeing, Hu Emphasizes Trade,”
Boston Globe
, April 20, 2006.
http://articles.boston.com/2006-04-20/news/
29246222_1_president-hu-jintao-china-trade-deficit
.
8.
With the quaint earnestness that would be recognizable to anyone who had listened to official Chinese rhetoric, he closed his remarks by expressing confidence that “beneficial cooperation and win-win outcome” between the United States and China would “fly further and higher, just like a Boeing plane.”
9.
For more information on this crash, see the online Air Disaster searchable database,
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=05081997®=B-2925&airline=China+Southern+Airlines
.
10.
For background on Yang’s career, see the ChinaVitae Web site,
http://www.chinavitae.com/biography/Yang_Yuanyuan%7c313
. The site is the most easily available English-language source on Chinese government officials.
1.
Tom Orlik, “China’s Ties That Bind,”
Wall Street Journal
, August 26, 2011.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904875
404576530361948603924.html
. “Diminishing returns from more roads and railways and continued efforts to constrain a real-estate bubble mean the scope for investment to step into the breach a second time if foreign demand disappoints is limited.… China’s real weakness is that the gap in GDP left by retreating exports has been filled not by a sustainable increase in domestic consumption but by more investment.”
2.
The energy business illustrates the phenomenal reliance on infrastructure construction. After the Japanese tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011, the world’s survey of nuclear plants showed that more new plants (nearly thirty) were under construction in China than in the rest of the world combined. A similar pattern prevails in coal-fired plants, solar- and wind-powered installations, and almost any other kind of heavy investment.
3.
Without getting too much into the details: China’s national savings rate has in recent years been about half of its GDP. That is different from saying that each Chinese family saves half of its earnings, although some of them may. Rather it reflects the share of “consumption” in the whole national economy,
which accounts for only half of what the Chinese economy produces. The rest is either exported for foreigners to buy, with the proceeds often turned into T-Note holdings in the United States, or devoted to capital projects inside China.
4.
Damien Ma, “Is Chinese Growth Sustainable?”
The Atlantic
, August 18, 2011.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/
08/is-chinese-growth-sustainable/243795/
.
5.
The transition from one Chinese leader to another takes a couple of years, because of the staggered schedule on which various power bases in the Communist Party, the Military Commission, and the government are transferred.
6.
Casey was the subject of a cover story I did in
The Atlantic:
James Fallows, “China Makes, the World Takes,”
The Atlantic
, July/August 2007.
7.
Andrew Batson, “Not Really Made in China,”
Wall Street Journal
, December 15, 2010.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870
4828104576021142902413796.html
.
8.
It is known in Chinese as
Hon Hai, or
Fushi Kang.
9.
Helen H. Wang, “Myth of China’s Manufacturing Prowess,” March 10, 2010.
http://helenhwang.net/2010/03/myth-of-manufacturing/
. Emphasis added.
10.
These accounts are from a foreign blogger who goes by the name Tom: “Four Jobs That Highlight China’s Ineffeciency,”
Seeing Red in China
, May 17, 2011.
http://seeingredinchina.com/2011/05/17/four-jobs-that-highlight-china%E2%80%99s-inefficiency/
. “Perhaps the most perplexing example of this I’ve seen was in Chengdu at the Sichuan Museum,” he wrote. “The museum was free to enter but it employed 3 people to hand out tickets, and two more to check them.”
11.
Here is one illustration, from an assessment early in 2011 of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan: “Goal #6. Create an innovation driven society by encouraging education and training of the workforce.
“The plan seeks to shift China from its role as the factory of the world to a new role as a technological innovator for the world. There are two components to this approach:
• China will need to become a domestic innovator in all areas of current modern technology, with an emphasis on practical industrial applications.
• Where China is not capable of domestic innovation, China will continue to import technology from advanced economies. However, China will seek to actively domesticate that technology through a program of ‘assimilate and re-invent.’ The recent program for production in engines for high speed rail is offered as an example of the ‘assimilate and re-invent’ approach.
Dan Harris, “China’s 12th Five Year Plan: A Preliminary Look,”
China Law Blog
, March 3, 2011.
http://www.chinalawblog.com/2011/03/
chinas_12th_five_year_plan_a_preliminary_look.html
.
12.
State Council of the People’s Republic of China, “China National Environmental Protection Plan in the Eleventh Five-Years (2006–2010).”
http://english.mep.gov.cn/down_load/Documents/200803/
P020080306440313293094.pdf
. The paper went on, “The quality of coastal marine environment is at risk.… The number of days with haze in some big and medium sized cities has some increase, and acid rain pollution is not alleviated.… The phenomena of no strict observation of laws, little punishment to lawbreakers, poor law enforcement and supervision are still very common.” And on through a very long list, with this stark conclusion: “China is facing [a] grim situation in addressing climate change.”
13.
The Chinese government’s major air-pollution measure is PM 10—that is, relatively large particulate matter, with a diameter of 10 microns or more. Particles this size can be visible, and they make the air look hazy. But PM 2.5, or particulate matter of 2.5 microns or more, is medically more dangerous, because the pollutants are fine enough to penetrate deep into the alveoli of the lungs. As of late 2011, the Chinese government was still “considering” including PM 2.5 measures. In a cable revealed by WikiLeaks in 2011, the U.S. embassy in Beijing sent back alarmed reports in 2006 about the dangerously high PM 2.5 measures its own sensors were detecting. By 2008 the embassy had put a PM 2.5 sensor on its roof, which sent hourly PM 2.5 readings out via Twitter. These were typically high enough that they would have caused school closings and public-health emergencies in most European or North American countries.
14.
Harris, “China’s 12th Five-Year Plan.” “Currently, for every 1% increase in GDP, China’s energy use increases by 1% or more,” Harris writes. “If this rate continues, China will need to increase its energy consumption by 2.5 times to achieve its 2020 economic goal. To put this into perspective, this would mean increasing the current consumption of coal from the current 3.6 billion tons per year to an astronomical 7.9 billion tons a year. No one in China thinks this can be done.… The new plan advocates an all out program in this area.”
15.
McKinsey Global Institute,
Preparing for China’s Urban Billion
(San Francisco: McKinsey Global Institute, 2009), p 18. “There will be unprecedented investment opportunities for business among a booming middle class and a stratum of affluent consumers,” the McKinsey study says. “The scale of urbanization will be large and migration will be its main driver.”
16.
On the problem of the phantom towns, see April Rabkin, “China’s Potemkin Cities,”
Mother Jones
, August 18, 2010.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/04/china-ghost-mall
: “Economists have raved about China’s double-digit
growth—which dropped to a still-impressive 9 percent in 2008 and 2009, even as much of the world slouched through the recession. But this turbocharged expansion is less about the invisible hand than the iron fist: the enormous engine of the state geared to drive GDP at the expense of everything else.… The country has entombed its new wealth in concrete and steel. You can see it in Dongguan, in Guangdong province, where the world’s largest mall stands empty, save for a few hamburger chains. And in Beijing’s tallest building, a year old and still unopened. It is evident in six-lane boulevards where most of the traffic is bicycle carts. And in cities like Erenhot, where the relentless construction continues, oblivious to a dearth of demand.”
17.
Sky Canaves, “Shanghai Building Collapses, Nearly Intact,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 29, 2009.
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/06/29/shanghai-building-collapses-nearly-intact/
.
18.
Two veteran analysts explained the connection between passenger and freight traffic on China’s rail lines: “China’s businesses—ranging from manufacturers to coal mines—have complained for years about the difficulty of securing space on freight trains, which forces them to move a lot of their cargo on more expensive and less efficient trucks. An increase in rail capacity will enable them to put their freight back on trains, generating huge savings. Ton for ton, freight carried by rail costs nearly 70% less than carriage by truck, uses 77% less energy and produces 91% less carbon dioxide emissions.” Will Freeman and Arthur Kroeber, “China’s Fast Track to Development,”
Wall Street Journal Asia
, June 4, 2010.
1.
I spoke by phone with a pilot originally from New Zealand who had decided to leave the Linyi school, even though it still owed him several months’ back pay. “I had to ask myself every time I strapped on the seat belt whether this is the flight I wouldn’t come back from, and my little boy in New Zealand would grow up without a dad,” he said.
2.
Christopher Jackson, “An Introduction to China Aviation,”
China Law Blog
, December 6, 2011.
http://www.chinalawblog.com/2011/12/
christopher_jackson_has_written_this.html
.
3.
As the ACP’s mission statement says, its Chinese counterparts “find it’s easier to coordinate with the US if our government and industry come together in one partnership for Sino-US cooperation developing Chinese aviation safety, capacity, and efficiency.” American Chamber of Commerce in China, Beijing, “Aviation Cooperation Project Mission Statement,” undated.
http://www.uschinaacp.com/news/163
.