China: The New World Leader in Technology

I suppose we should have seen it coming when China launched its own version of the Apollo spacecraft – three Chinese astronauts circling the Earth – a few years ago.  It was at a time when the U.S. space program was, at best, going sideways, partnering with Russia, making short trips to the Space Station with the Shuttle. Not a whole lot of new things have been done by NASA recently, and now NASA’s most recent brainstrom, a return to the Moon, has been canceled. But this Chinese high speed rail deal is different. We’re not talking about the Moon anymore.

It has just been announced that China is in negotiations to build a high speed rail network connecting Europe and Asia. The trains that China will build, the fastest in the world, will travel almost as fast as a jet plane. People will be able to take high speed rail, using Chinese technology, from London to Beijing. China is now in talks with seventeen countries, among them England, Russia, France, and India to build the system.

So, how did the U.S. do in the competition for the job? Let’s be serious. Nobody even asked us. And why should they? We don’t make high speed trains. Our so-called high speed train, the Amtrak Acela, doesn’t come close to the performance of Chinese trains. We don’t build real high speed trains because we can’t. We don’t have the knowledge or the manufacturing capability. We are simply not a player in high speed rail technology. China is the clear leader with Japan a fairly close second.

It’s interesting that the U.S. press, to my knowledge, hasn’t even covered this story. I found it in the Irish Independent. So, does that mean that this isn’t part of the news that is worthy of print in America? Or does it mean something else? Could it be that our news media is unaware of this development? Or, could it be that, for whatever reason, they would just rather not tell us about it? I know; it sounds kind of paranoid, but I just went through eight years of Bush/Cheney, so don’t we all have a right to be paranoid? In fact, it seems that at least half the country is paranoid now, debating things like whether health care for all of us is good or bad (does that question even make sense?).

Meanwhile, China quietly pushes ahead on all fronts.  China’s economy is booming. China is already the primary manufacturer of most of the consumer goods that are sold in America. Oh, but that’s OK we said. It’s just low tech stuff. We don’t need those jobs anymore.  We’re a high tech country now. OK. So what high tech stuff do we make? Airplanes? Sure, if you count military planes (we’re really good at making things that kill people). How about commercial planes? Well, we’re down to Boeing now. Everyone else – names like Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, Convair – not to mention Wright – they’re not in the business anymore. Most of the planes you see in the sky in America these days are built by the European company Airbus, or by the Canadian company Bombardier, or by the Brazilian company Embraer. Boeing is fading too. My guess is that the 787 will be its swan song for commercial aviation. The last of the American commercial airplane companies.

We need to understand the significance of this new announcement about a Chinese trans – Europe and Asia high speed rail system. The handwriting is on the wall. We have been eclipsed.  China is about to become the technological King of the World.  Under Bush we were obsessed with military attacks and military expenses and nothing else.  Not even Katrina could capture his attention for a microsecond. We have built the most efficient killing machines in the world, but we have an economy that is struggling to recover from banking disaster and a seriously decayed civilian technological manufacturing infrastructure that can’t begin to compete with China. Our only hope is that there will be a need for financing for this magnificent rail system. Our banks could make the loans and then package them as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and then, just in case the borrowers don’t pay back the loans our banks could buy credit default swaps from our insurance companies and, of course, then sell the swaps on the derivatives market. Or at least create an options market for the CDOs and swaps. We’re pretty good at that.  We just need to figure out how the average citizen makes money this way.