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INDICATIONS
OF CHINA’S SUDDEN ECONOMIC GROWTH
-- China has passed South Africa
as the world’s biggest gold-producer.
-- Imports of copper have gone up
80% in a year
-- The increase in China’s demand
for metals during the next two decades may be comparable to the total
demand from the industrialized world today.
-- The world’s longest sea-crossing bridge, 32km, was completed near Shanghai last year. A new record bridge, 36 km long, will
straddle Hangzhou Bay shortly. An expressway from Shanghai to Taiwan, 150kms
across the ocean, is now mooted by China.
-- Shanghai's
MagLev, a magnet levitation train travelling at nearly 500kph, is the world's fastest. In addition, China expects to
add 1,300kms of ‘Bullet train” lines at a cost of R220bn by 2013.
-- Construction of 120,000kms of new railway lines is due to be completed by 2015 – at a cost of
R1,500 billion.
-- Build 97 new airports by 2020
--Increase container ship volumes by 80% in a decade.
--
Build 70,000kms of expressways by 2020 to surpass the US’s interstate continental network.
-- Every day 1,000 more cars are
being launched onto Beijing’s streets.
-- Urbanisation has brought a
population greater than that of the US or EU into its cities.
--
Consumerism has pushed Chinese
imports above its massive exports.
But economists outside of China
say growth and imports are “stacking up thousands of social, economic,
political and pollution problems.”
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