China’s largest film studio, state-owned China Film Group, has confirmed plans to list on the domestic stock market by year-end.
Box office business has been booming in China, hitting close to $1 billion in 2009, with China Film Group sharing revenues with much smaller domestic competitors and a limited number of foreign films allowed into the country.
The local movie industry also has been expanding, and China Film Group has become bolder, creating big-budget films such as the patriotic The Founding of a Republic and historical drama Confucius.
On Friday, deputy chief executive Shi Dongming told Western reporters that auditors have finished going over China Film Group holdings in preparation for listing on the Shanghai stock exchange.
He said China Film Group was “waiting for the right time to list” and did not say how much the company hoped to raise on the market. He projected plans would be in place by yearend.
This is the second time the studio has announced plans to list: a proposal for a Hong Kong listing in late 2004 was not approved by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.
Another Chinese studio — Huayi Brothers Media Corp. — is already listed in Shenzhen on the small companies market. And Beijing Polybona Film Distribution Co. has announced it will seek a listing in New York.
China Film Group’s move into the market, however, is likely to be have more impact. In addition to being China’s largest studio, it currently exercises control over who makes what pictures, has a huge distribution network controlling half of China’s screens, and it has a significant hand in foreign joint venture production.
Its net profits rose 566 per cent to 100 million yuan ($14.6 million) in 2009, and the company is predicting 40 per cent growth a year.
Of 11 Chinese films that made more than $15 million at the box office last year, China Film Group made six.
And the number of cinemas in the country is also increasing, with 600 screens, many of them digital and HD, added last year, bringing the total to 4,700. There is plenty of potential for more expansion as a new middle class emerges in previously underdeveloped parts of the country.
A major infusion of cash from China’s stock markets could mean significantly more production by China Film Group.
The Shanghai market is closed to foreigners, except for some institutions, but the Chinese are enthusiastic investors.
The listing could also help to loosen China’s rules about the import of foreign films. China has had a quota of 20 films a year, but the World Trade Organization has ordered it to stop that practice.
Shi pointed out that the number of foreign films admitted to China has in fact exceeded 20 in the past few years. Among the huge success stories are Avatar, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and 2012.
were Harvey Frank’s last words at the Harold County fair that ended Wednesday. he had just been awarded 1st place in Largest Cucumber contest, and when asked to share his secret, all he said was; “Well, I’m just a teapot!” the statement left the crowd stunned as he walked off stage, prize cucumber in tow. when people arrived at his door to question his enigmatic response, he was nowhere to be found. the police immediately took charge, and broke into his house, finding nothing but rubble and a scribbled note that read; “here is my handle, here is my spout.” shortly after reading the note, both police dropped dead when a massive china teapot came whistling down the hall at them. obviously they are no fans of raspberry tea.
The Washington Times is a newspaper that looks with favor upon the Bush/Cheney/Obama/neocon wars of aggression in the Middle East and favors making terrorists pay for 9/11. Therefore, I was surprised to learn on February 24 that the most popular story on the paper’s website for the past three days was the “Inside the Beltway” report, “Explosive News,” [By Jennifer Harper, February 22, 2010]about the 31 press conferences in cities in the US and abroad on February 19 held by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of professionals which now has 1,000 members.
I was even more surprised that the news report treated the press conference seriously.
How did three World Trade Center skyscrapers suddenly disintegrate into fine dust? How did massive steel beams in three skyscrapers suddenly fail as a result of short-lived, isolated, and low temperature fires? “A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7,” reports the Washington Times.
The paper reports that the architects and engineers have concluded that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology provided “insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction” and are “calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials.”
The newspaper reports that Richard Gage, the spokesperson for the architects and engineers said: “Government officials will be notified that ‘Misprision of Treason,’ U.S. Code 18 (Sec. 2382) is a serious federal offense, which requires those with evidence of treason to act. The implications are enormous and may have profound impact on the forthcoming Khalid Sheik Mohammed trial.”
There is now an organization, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. At the main press conference in San Francisco, Erik Lawyer, the head of that organization, announced the firefighters’ support for the architects and engineers’ demands. He reported that no forensic investigation was made of the fires that are alleged to have destroyed the three buildings and that this failure constitutes a crime.
Mandated procedures were not followed, and instead of being preserved and investigated, the crime scene was destroyed. He also reported that there are more than one hundred first responders who heard and experienced explosions and that there is radio, audio and video evidence of explosions.
Also at the press conference, physicist Steven Jones presented the evidence of nano-thermite in the residue of the WTC buildings found by an international panel of scientists led by University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Professor Niels Harrit. Nano-thermite is a high-tech explosive/pyrotechnic capable of instantly melting steel girders.
Before we yell “conspiracy theory,” we should be aware that the architects, engineers, firefighters, and scientists offer no theory. They provide evidence that challenges the official theory. This evidence is not going to go away.
If expressing doubts or reservations about the official story in the 9/11 Commission Report makes a person a conspiracy theory kook, then we have to include both co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission and the Commission’s legal counsel, all of whom have written books in which they clearly state that they were lied to by government officials when they conducted their investigation, or, rather, when they presided over the investigation conducted by executive director Philip Zelikow, a member of President George W. Bush’s transition team and Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a co-author of Bush Secretary of State Condi “Mushroom Cloud” Rice.
There will always be Americans who will believe whatever the government tells them no matter how many times they know the government has lied to them. Despite expensive wars that threaten Social Security and Medicare, wars based on non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, non-existent Saddam Hussein connections to al Qaida, non-existent Afghan participation in the 9/11 attacks, and the non-existent Iranian nukes that are being hyped as the reason for the next American war of aggression in the Middle East, more than half of the U.S. population still believes the fantastic story that the government has told them about 9/11, a Muslim conspiracy that outwitted the entire Western world.
Moreover, it doesn’t matter to these Americans how often the government changes its story. For example, Americans first heard of Osama bin Laden because the Bush regime pinned the 9/11 attacks on him. Over the years video after video was served up to the gullible American public of bin Laden’s pronouncements. Experts dismissed the videos as fakes, but Americans remained their gullible selves. Then suddenly last year a new 9/11 “mastermind” emerged to take bin Laden’s place, the captive Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the detainee waterboarded 183 times until he confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attack.
In the Middle Ages confessions extracted by torture constituted evidence, but self-incrimination has been a no-no in the U.S. legal system since our founding. But with the Bush regime and the Republican federal judges, whom we were assured would defend the U.S. Constitution, the self-incrimination of Sheik Mohammed stands today as the only evidence the U.S. government has that Muslim terrorists pulled off 9/11.
If a person considers the feats attributed to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, they are simply unbelievable. Sheik Mohammed is a more brilliant, capable superhero than V in the fantasy movie, “V for Vendetta.” Sheik Mohammed outwitted all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies along with those of all U.S. allies or puppets, including Israel’s Mossad. No intelligence service on earth or all of them combined was a match for Sheik Mohammed.
Sheik Mohammed outwitted the U.S. National Security Council, Dick Cheney, the Pentagon, the State Department, NORAD, the U.S. Air Force, and Air Traffic Control.
He caused Airport Security to fail four times in one morning. He caused the state-of-the-art air defenses of the Pentagon to fail, allowing a hijacked airliner, which was off course all morning while the U.S. Air Force, for the first time in history, was unable to get aloft interceptor aircraft, to crash into the Pentagon.
Sheik Mohammed was able to perform these feats with unqualified pilots.
Sheik Mohammed, even as a waterboarded detainee, has managed to prevent the FBI from releasing the many confiscated videos that would show, according to the official story, the hijacked airliner hitting the Pentagon.
How naive do you have to be to believe that any human, or for that matter Hollywood fantasy character, is this powerful and capable?
If Sheik Mohammed has these superhuman capabilities, how did the incompetent Americans catch him? This guy is a patsy tortured into confession in order to keep the American naifs believing the government’s conspiracy theory.
What is going on here is that the U.S. government has to bring the 9/11 mystery to an end. The government must put on trial and convict a culprit so that it can close the case before it explodes. Anyone waterboarded 183 times would confess to anything.
The U.S. government has responded to the evidence being arrayed against its outlandish 9/11 conspiracy theory by redefining the war on terror from external to internal enemies. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on February 21 that American extremists are now as big a concern as international terrorists. Extremists, of course, are people who get in the way of the government’s agenda, such as the 1,000 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The group used to be 100, now it is 1,000. What if it becomes 10,000?
Cass Sunstein, an Obama regime official, has a solution for the 9/11 skeptics: Infiltrate them and provoke them into statements and actions that can be used to discredit or to arrest them. But get rid of them at all cost.
Why employ such extreme measures against alleged kooks if they only provide entertainment and laughs? Is the government worried that they are on to something?
Instead, why doesn’t the U.S. government simply confront the evidence that is presented and answer it?
If the architects, engineers, firefighters, and scientists are merely kooks, it would be a simple matter to acknowledge their evidence and refute it. Why is it necessary to infiltrate them with police agents and to set them up?
Many Americans would reply that “their” government would never even dream of killing Americans by hijacking airliners and destroying buildings in order to advance a government agenda. But on February 3, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that the U.S. government can assassinate its own citizens when they are overseas. No arrest, trial, or conviction of a capital crime is necessary. Just straight out murder.
Obviously, if the U.S. government can murder its citizens abroad it can murder them at home, and has done so. For example, 100 Branch Davidians were murdered in Waco, Texas, by the Clinton administration for no legitimate reason. The government just decided to use its power knowing that it could get away with it, which it did.
Americans who think “their” government is some kind of morally pure operation would do well to familiarize themselves with Operation Northwoods. Operation Northwoods was a plot drawn up by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff for the CIA to commit acts of terrorism in American cities and fabricate evidence blaming Castro so that the U.S. could gain domestic and international support for regime change in Cuba. The secret plan was nixed by President John F. Kennedy and was declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. It is available online in the National Security Archive. There are numerous online accounts available, including Wikipedia. James Bamford’s book, Body of Secrets, also summarizes the plot:
“Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman [Gen. Lemnitzer] and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.”
Prior to 9/11 the American neoconservatives were explicit that the wars of aggression that they intended to launch in the Middle East required “a new Pearl Harbor.”
For their own good and that of the wider world, Americans need to pay attention to the growing body of experts who are telling them that the government’s account of 9/11 fails their investigation. 9/11 launched the neoconservative plan for U.S. world hegemony. As I write the U.S. government is purchasing the agreement of foreign governments that border Russia to accept U.S. missile interceptor bases. The U.S. intends to ring Russia with U.S. missile bases from Poland through central Europe and Kosovo to Georgia, Azerbaijan and central Asia. [See Impending Explosion: U.S. Intensifies Threats To Russia And Iran, by Rick Rozoff, Global Research, February 19, 2010] U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke declared on February 20 that al Qaida is moving into former central Asian constituent parts of the Soviet Union, such as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Holbrooke is soliciting U.S. bases in these former Soviet republics under the guise of the ever-expanding “war on terror.”
The U.S. has already encircled Iran with military bases. The U.S. government intends to neutralize China by seizing control over the Middle East and cutting China off from oil.
This plan assumes that Russia and China, nuclear armed states, will be intimidated by U.S. anti-missile defenses and acquiesce to U.S. hegemony and that China will lack oil for its industries and military.
The U.S. government is delusional. Russian military and political leaders have responded to the obvious threat by declaring NATO a direct threat to the security of Russia and by announcing a change in Russian war doctrine to the pre-emptive launch of nuclear weapons. The Chinese are too confident to be bullied by a washed up American “superpower.”
The morons in Washington are pushing the envelope of nuclear war. The insane drive for American hegemony threatens life on earth. The American people, by accepting the lies and deceptions of “their” government, are facilitating this outcome.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct. His latest book, How The Economy Was Lost, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.
Newt Gingrich hasn’t been US House Speaker in some time, but the Republican clearly still has a strong taste for policymaking and an outspoken nature. In a recent Atlanta speech (2/24/2010), he used “magic wand” to describe the political approach of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Gingrich, a “Reaganite” who represented Georgia during the Clinton administration but who now lives in Virginia, described the “Obamacare” health proposal as a “1970s liberal model in a world that has changed.” He feels that the president’s government-controlled approach to health care will collapse, and that states — who have Medicaid — can be innovators in a new model.
Gingrich is now involved with www.healthtransformation.net, a collaborative effort that offers an alternative approach to health care reform. This site will engage in live blogging on Feb. 25, during Obama’s health care summit. (Gingrich also is @newtgingrich on Twitter.) Polls by the Gingrich-backed group say that 52% of those who follow health care closely strongly oppose Obama’s health care proposal. Making health care more affordable rates as the top priority.
In other matters, he called government the latest “bubble” in America, after housing, technology and investments. He said that both at the federal and state levels, Americans have a government that they “can’t afford. … For 25 years, we’ve been lying.”
He also sees competing with China and India as a huge challenge, as well as educating a society for a world that will be far more dependent on science and technology. He compared the current economy in America with the “pain” of 1979-80, but he is “very optimistic” in the long run. “This is the most creative society … this country is so amazing.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich meets media after Atlanta speech.
Forgive me if I’m being cliche – yes, the dragon here refers to something about China. Specifically the cybersphere in China. It’s powerful, mighty, and full of mischievous funs, yet its strength is seriously limited. It’s barred, by one of the most notorious and paternalistic censorship in the world. Yet of course the dragon never gives up on fighting and finding its way out, and that comes the charm of China’s internet. You never lose the tension and excitement watching this two forces combating each other and making their moves. I would like to use the blog to record the fun happenings along the battles.
And why the dragon is in the wonderland? Well, the wonderland to me refers to China. Forgive me again that I could not settle for a better word to describe my feeling towards the country. China is a wonderland, because it’s a land full of energy, adventure, and miracles, and a land with strange figures, extravagant endeavors and bizarre rules. And to quote a saying about China popular among expats who are living there: its a land where nothing is permissible, yet everything is possible.
The stories of the barred dragon are set against the backdrop of this wonderland. I welcome you to join my explorations.
A prestigious Chinese university and a lesser-known vocational school have denied a report they were the source of recent cyber attacks on Internet giant Google and other U.S. corporations, Xinhua news agency said on Saturday. A representative of Shanghai Jiaotong University, considered one of China’s best, said the allegations in a New York Times report were baseless and even if the school’s computers appeared to be involved, it did not mean the hackers were based there. The Communist party boss at Lanxiang Vocational School, the other institution fingered in the report, also denied any role. Google announced in January that it had faced a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” in mid-December, allegedly from inside China, and declared that it was no longer willing to censor search results in the country as required by Beijing. The attacks have been a source of friction in Sino-U.S. relations at an already tense time
Growing Disasters, Shrinking World
Drought and Deluge Wreaking Havoc Globally
The Philippines
Philippines farmlands are drying up in the intense heat; there’s no rain in sight. The El Niño has affected about 160,000 hectares (ha) of farmland in the country, destroying more than 200,000 MT of crops including palay, rice and corn.
“Below normal rainfall is threatening some 42,000 hectares of rice paddies in the region, with 11,000 already beyond recovery and another 21,250 damaged. The dry spell has also affected corn crops in other areas.” FEWW said.
To ensure food security, for now at any rate, the Philippines National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) is buying 2.65 million MT of rice, mostly from Vietnam and Thailand.
Syria
Persistent Drought in eastern and northeastern Syria regions has driven about 300,000 families to urban areas in search of work, a worrying massive population displacements in Middle East in recent history. Some villages have lost about half of their population to overcrowding cities. More than 80 percent of livestock on small and medium-sized farms have died as a result of a 75-percent rise in the cost of animal feed.
A dense plume of dust [sand] swept from Syria into Iraq on February 22, 2010. This photo-like image of the dust storm [sand storm] was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite in the early afternoon (12:30 p.m. in Syria, 1:30 in Iraq). Distinct plumes rise from many point sources in the Syrian desert. Within a few kilometers, the plumes blend into a dense cloud that completely obscures eastern Syria and western Iraq. The veil of dust is thick enough that the ground beneath is not visible, which means that people on the ground are probably getting little light from the Sun. Image Credit: NASA/MODIS/Jeff Schmaltz: Caption: Holli Riebeek.
China
In China’s southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou, up to 4 million hectares of crops have been damaged by severe drought. Water shortages are affecting about 6 million people and 3.6 million livestock. Several of China’s northern provinces are also affected by the dry spell, with major signs of stress emerging in the farmlands after a 40-day drought.
Island of Madeira (Portuguese Territory)
At least 42 people were killed and 120 others injured when torrential rains ledt to massive mudslides on the Atlantic resort island of Madeira flooding the popular holiday destination and destroying about 240 homes and damaging many more. Roads and other public infrastructure were also damaged by the storm.
Spain
Heavy rains which triggered extensive flooding in the country’s southwest province cut off access to the city of Jerez, prompting the authorities to shut down the airport.
In Tenerife, Canary Islands (Spanish Territories), strong winds and violent downpour led to deluge across the island and left at leat ten thousand homes without electricity, according to the officials.
Seatown is Temask’s new toy: an absolute return fund. But with a reported US$3 billion available for playing in the pen:in the context of Temasek’s reported US$120 billion in assets, and the world’s biggest hedgies http://hedgefundblogman.blogspot.com/2009/08/top-100-largest-hedge-funds.html, US$3 billion is”Peanuts,” as Mrs Goh Chok Tong might say. Seatown doesn’t even make it to list of 100 biggest hedgies: the smallest of which manages US$4 billion +
So what is Seatown’s significance?
Since Ho Ching became its CEO, Temasek has done a series of big deals, taking controlling or strategic stakes in high profile companies like Shin, Merrill Lynch, Barclays, ABC Learning, Bank of China, China Construction Bank , Hana, ICICI Bank, NIB Bank, PT Bank Danamon Indonesia, and Standard Chartered.
Some were real dogs, others were good performers, and the balance were average performers.% of those still in its portfolio.
But whatever they were, the size of the investments meant that they could not be done discreetly. When things went badly, S’poreans knew, and knew whom they blamed.
It could be that Temasek will slow down Buffett-size deals, using Seatown to do lots of smallish deals that will not appear on the radar, and depending on rapid turnover (i.e trading) to make $. And if Seatown comes a cropper, US$3 billion is a rounding error. But if it does well, financial engineering will magnify its returns: supposing if Temasek funds Seatown from the proceeds of its recent bond issues, the cost of the capital could be “peanuts”, leading to great returns when calculated using the cost of these bonds. Or so I’ve been advised by the same people who tell me that SingTel should have taken an impairment charge (at least A$3 billion) for Optus and SIA for Virgin Atlantic (sum unknown but sure to be in billions whether in US$ or sterling). And no they are not members of SDP, they are accountants’ accountants.
Moral of the story: don’t do a Buffett, unless you got a brain to match. Scholars, SAF generals, or FTs from top biz schools do not a Buffett make.
Maybe Temasek thinks that a Soros or John Paulson can appear from one of these scholars, SAF generals, or FTs from top biz schools, though based on the exit from BoA (that bought ML), “Dream on baby”. John Paulson was buying as Temasek was selling.
And maybe the Chinese can teach Singapore Inc something. FT reports: ”China Investment Corp, Beijing’s sovereign wealth fund, has agreed to invest $1.5bn in the private equity secondary market through custom accounts with three of the biggest specialists in buying second-hand buy-out and venture capital fund interests.
‘Lexington Partners, Goldman Sachs and Pantheon Ventures have each agreed to manage $500m for CIC through special accounts, which are to be kept separate from their main funds … The move is the biggest injection of capital into the secondary market.”
“It underlines how CIC is using its size to win special terms from private equity groups, including lower fees and transfer of knowledge on specialist markets … The era of big public pension funds and sovereign wealth funds accepting the same terms as smaller investors is over,” David Rubenstein, founder of the Carlyle Group, said.”
Outsource to the best, using wagga to get good terms.
But then the S’pore govmin is as mercantilist as the French.
A Chinese school linked to cyberattacks on Google denied any involvement, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported on Saturday.
Li Zixiang from the Lanxiang Vocational School in Shandong province said “investigations . . . found no trace the attacks originated from our school.”
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the cyberattacks aimed at Google and dozens of other firms were reportedly traced to computers at two Chinese schools.
Citing unidentified anonymous sources, the newspaper said trails led to Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, which was created with military backing and trains some of its computer scientists.
But the school denied any relationship with the military and rejected links made in the New York Times report to a specific computer science class taught by a Ukrainian professor.
“There is no Ukrainian teacher in the school and we have never employed any foreign staff,” Li told Xinhua. “The report was unfounded. Please show the evidence.”
Lanxiang was founded in 1984 and has about 20,000 students who are currently on their winter vacation, Xinhua reported. The school teaches vocational skills such as cooking, auto repair and hairdressing, Xinhua reported. But the computer science class offers only basic courses.
The director of the school’s general office, Zhou Hui, said 38 students had been recruited by the military since 2006 “for their talent in auto repair, cooking and electric welding.”
Google vowed in January to stop bowing to Internet censors in China in the wake of sophisticated cyberattacks aimed at the U.S. firm’s source code and Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists around the world. The Internet giant continues to filter searches as per Chinese law while trying to negotiate a compromise with officials there.
But co-founder Sergey Brin said Friday he is hoping the Internet powerhouse will find a way to operate in China without censoring web search results.
“I’m optimistic,” Brin said during an onstage chat at the prestigious TED Conference in California.
After spending a night at the Hot Springs Resort – fabulous chinese dinner, buffet breakfast combination of east and western foods…. we hit the road towards Dongguan area, to a Tourist Theme Park called OCT East Theme Park
Our tour was a 3-day tour, with two days spent at this theme park, since it was pretty big.
I saw a lot of major infrastructure, mainly large highway construction though the countryside. Sometimes, it even went through and over peoples houses.
New Bridge piers.
Approach roads, and major earthworks.
Buried concrete pipeline…..
Precast Concrete Yard.
A billboard – presumably promising a brighter, better future…. in the city. That Pagoda and man-made lake we saw on our first day at Hui Zhou – Mainland China people want to be Westernized somewhat, or at least have first world living standards.. i.e – Live in an apartment, in a city, bright lights and entertainment…… The good life?
Pretty?
New Condos – not small either, and in the middle of relatively no where….
I think this is the start of another MEGA condo/living area development… and i think the NEW BIG HIGHWAY I keep seeing is in the background….
Lots of Land – in some ways, China could be the next US – since it has so much land, and just PUMP out urban infrastructure…. more strip malls, franchaise, same but same everywhere?
A house, right next to the highway…. and another motorbike.
The typical shop-front-come-residential-house-one-stop-shop. It’s not a house, it’s a home.
Same again….
Rubbish Collection?
The new concrete road built over the old one….
… and I’m presuming all the aggregate for the concrete came out of THAT mine site/quarry. Pretty awesome chunk taken out there! Great planning, having all your materials close by…….
…and all these concrete batching plants dotted alongside the road you are building. Go big brother!
Home-made incinerator.
..another batch plant, not that far down the road…
Pretty Big
Workers.
…and back to market gardens.
I think this plaque was for the highway.
Concrete Piers…..
Modernized Motorcycle.
Irrigation Ponds
Lovely Pastels….
Concrete Crew – oh yeah! Love the skirts boys.
The Shed.
Men running the errands. Hold on…. to your bags.
.. the landscape of future development.
The boarder between the factories, and the seemingly endless land available.
Here’s one they prepared earlier. Highway – Almost reminds me of the US Interstate Roads – lots of it!
Green Roof.
A factory
…. you’ve probably noticed that a lot of these photos are rather hazy, overcast, grey-washed and not the usual blue-bird, crisp and clear skys that I’m usually used to living in Vancouver and New Zealand.
Accommodation blocks – for factory workers…
..more grey-washed landscapes of factory sprawl.
These photos were taken on the outskirts of Dongguan…. a really prosperous area, stacked with factories.
Like everything else, I’m not sure what this place is, does etc!
US Interstate? Or Chinese Expressway…..
…. yep. Expressway.
Toll Booths. At least Big Brother is getting something back for building all this.
Damn – that is a long, long building…
…pumping out factory after factory. It’s a “wonderful” recipe. Build factories, fill them with cheap labour from the middle of nowhere, produce, export and supply goods to the WORLD – a bottomless pit of commercialism and consumption. Can-do attitude…. What can’t the Chinese do. Yes – they’ve been doing it all day Ref.
More developed areas.
..Laundry!….. All that order, wonderful.
How about these for some more pumped out condos? Where does the money come from? What sort of people live in here?
What I haven’t touched on is that there is a very apparent gap between the rich and poor. Some Mainland Chinese are becoming increasingly wealthy, not surprisingly since they are the manufacturers to the world.
These factory blocks impressed me – brand new, and EMPTY. Ready for some entrepreneur to pounce with the next big thing, or the next small piece of junk at the dollar store.
Nothing inside, but the potential to manufacture ’stuff’.
..over a bridge and down in the valley is a string of market gardens…. Very pretty.
Tunnels.
These shocked me a bit. Imagine being the rich property developer – “I want to build my big condos on that ridge line!!” – hell, go ahead build them wherever you want!! Awesome……
Some slope stability works – for my geotechnical friends…..
That’s one big slope!.. Check out the people half way up.
Drainage provisions, toe buttresses…. bridges, tunnels. This is right by the Yan Tian International Container Port.
This place was hard to find of Google Maps – Port and OCT East Theme Park
This was impressive….. so many container cranes!
I thought Oakland Bay (across from San Fran) was impressive…. but that is nothing compared to this.
This new roof was taken in Da Mei Sha (Dameisha) – a very touristy bay where OCT East Theme Park is located. Impressive.
Tourist City, Built for tourists – both international, and the Chinese Tourists!!…. The good life. The NEW life… for those that can afford it……
….and those that are living in the developing countryside….
