INDIA BUYS ARMS WHILE CHINA PLANS RAIL ROAD FROM BEIJING TO LONDON

[President Obama has flown this afternoon from here for  a visit to India. This is going to be an important visit for both the US and India. Mr. Obama will sign in two separate deals: a 5.5 billion dollars arms deal and 11.2 billion dollars aircraft deal. These deals will create thousands of jobs for  American people here at home. He will discuss  other issues like  terrorism ( but not specifically Pakistan or Afghanistan. Pakistan rejects any Indian involvement in Afghan issue),  strengthening democracies in the neighbouring countries, nuclear issues  that is NPT (Nuclear Non-plorifiration Treaty) and  possibly Kashmir issue  also. The  Indian people  feel nervous   about China’s  performance in recent years as the former has already made the ‘Himalayan Blunder’ in 1962.  Hunger persists in entire South Asia including India also. A large chunk of India's population, 40 % of the total, is under poverty line. Half of top 25 Asian billionaires are Indians who could give millions of  dollars  to charity abroad. Last month, India's Tata Group donated $50 million to Harvard Business School, the largest gift ever received by the institution from an international donor. The gift came days after another wealthy industrialist - Anand Mahindra, a Harvard alumnus - gave $10 million to the Humanities Center at Harvard.There has been loud criticism against these gifts.

Now, India  needs to buy arms and arsenal for her security.  Sounds not bad. China is showing off its might to the world. It is  building ports in Srilanka and Pakistan  also which, India can’t stop. But India has been successful in doing so with Nepal. A decade or  so ago, China had proposed to construct  Pokhara- Surkhet highway among the mid-hills of Nepal  but it couldn’t materialize against India’s security concerns.  Now, India is buying arms which might eventually trigger arms-race and jeopardize security  in the region.  But would China invade any neighbouring countries for no reason at all ?  The country is out for business and trade for prosperity of her people. She has  no time to go into fighting for her borders. She is planning to  build high speed rail road from Beijing to London also. She will sell her products in Europe by building such rail roads. Below posted is a material that shows China’s ambition. China  has everything. Only she doesn’t have democracy and open society  where this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, has been publicized as a criminal. It is, however, understandable that the Nobel Peace Prize has mostly remained controversial ! Editor]

LONDON TO BEIJING BY RAIL: CHINA'S NEW HIGH SPEED RAIL PLANS

The Chinese are famous for their outrageous infrastructure projects - you don't build something like the Great Wall without being ever-so-slightly ambitious. And if you are to believe the latest whispers to come out of the People's Republic, nothing has changed.

Passengers could soon travel from London to Beijing in a little over a day on trains travelling almost as fast as airplanes. China is in negotiations to build a 2000 mile high-speed rail network to India and Europe with trains capable of travelling at over 200mph within the next ten years. Trains would also travel to Singapore, India and Pakistan - and this is just the first phase.

A second line would head to Germany via Russia (exact routes are currently undecided), and a third line would extend south from China to connect Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia.

Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a senior consultant on China's domestic high-speed railways, said this month that work on the Southeast Asia line was "underway".

"Opening up Central, East and South East Asia"

"We have also already carried out the prospecting and survey work for the European network, and central and eastern European countries are keen for us to start," Mr. Wang said.

Mr. Wang said that China was already in negotiations with 17 countries over the rail lines, which will draw together and open up the whole of Central, East and South East Asia.

He added that the network would also allow China to transport valuable cargoes of raw materials more efficiently.

"It was not China that pushed the idea to start with," said Mr. Wang. "It was the other countries that came to us, especially India. These countries cannot fully implement the construction of a high-speed rail network and they hoped to draw on our experience and technology."

Government funding

However others remain cautious, "I understand we want to improve our rail networks, potentially as far as Europe, but whether they will be high-speed or not is yet to be determined," said one Chinese official based in Brussels.

Financing would come from government cash and bank loans but private sector funding would also be needed, according to Mr. Wang.

Business Week reports how European experts say the current low maritime transport costs make it harder to justify an EU-China rail line on commercial grounds however. With global trade seemingly unstoppable in early 2007, ship builders were receiving record orders. But the subsequent financial crisis and global economic slump led to a 12 percent fall in world trade flows last year, according to WTO figures.

China is currently investing in its own high-speed railway expansion project. When completed in the next five years nearly 30,500 kilometres of new railways will be built, connecting all its major cities with high-speed lines.


@ EU Infrastructure

Comment(s)

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 7:28 PM, R. Singh Rajput wrote:

We should wish the Chinese WELL. We, too, would have been a super power but not now, for some of our treacherous and destructive people in the country. The Chinese are healthy people both in body and mind, free from any influence of such destructive forces and did not get occupied and enslaved so long and so often as we did.

If the Indians in India can deal with the separatist  like the Chinese,  then surely Bharat, too, can do wonders on the earth.

Corrupt  Congress Party and rulers of India are the major problem, I think.

Thank you for sharing the news. It is a STIMULUS.

R. Singh Rajput,

India

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