There was a time when you went to the US to see the most advanced or biggest things. Now China seems to be determined to play that role.
I was pretty blown away by the scale and ambition of the Belt and Road Initiative
You can wait for the debt crisis to blow up in the next five years.
The US and Europe also don’t have inferiority complexes where they feel like they have to build the tallest or biggest anymore. Look at skyscraper competitions — generally 2nd tier countries trying to outdo each other for bragging rights but for no real other reason. It’s like the Soviet Olympic team — they had to win to make the political statement trunpeting a triumph of communism. The US did the same thing once upon a time, but then we grew up (and not necessarily for the better.. it’s a lot of fun to be “first, bigger, best.”) 1990s Korea, modern China, 1950s USA, the Soviet Union — those places and eras were representative of a national need to foster patriotism to create unity against real or perceived competitors on the world stage as well as remind the proles of the power and achievements of their benevolent state.
Wasn't the whole space-race and moon landing a, excuse the language, rocket-waving contest?
As you point out, it is easy to not have "inferiority complexes" or "grow up" as you put it, when you have once established credibility. Don't dismiss achievements just because it is by others.
More substantively, my understanding is that while the space race turned into a PR exercise, it started out as a serious military exercise in demonstrating ICBM capabilities; "we can put a man on the moon" is more politically acceptable than "we can put a big bomb in Moscow" but it is understood just the same.
Indeed, fixed.
It's also important to remember that "space race == moon shot" was US PR. The USSR had the first satellite, man (and woman) in space, the first space walks, etc. Lunar landings were singled out by the US as something they could beat the Soviets to; once that was achieved, the US declared victory and mostly lost interest.
The USSR kept going, ratcheting up capabilities, which carried on all the way until their collapse. The ISS is basically a continuation of their space program (funded largely to keep soviet space/rocket/ICBM experts busy and off the open market). Whilst PR and politics undoubtedly drove the USSR's space budgets and spectacles, there did seem to some long-term thinking, both for science/engineering and more politically (e.g. outposts, potentially colonies, etc.).
In fact, trying to compete directly with the US seems to have mostly hindred the USSR's space program (e.g. the N1 moon rocket was a spectacular failure and the Buran shuttle only flew once). They got some decent engines out of it though.
I'll bet that those failed projects would not have been called a failure in China.
Germany and much of the West as a whole has largely stopped investing in anything but tax cuts and entirely pointless military spending. The neoliberal gamble is that private actors can produce growth if government just gets out the way. At this point, given the last forty years of so-so growth and massive inequality, it's not looking too good.
It's probably for the best since Germany is only going to get older and older [2]. They can use all the savings to build hospital beds etc while economic growth continues in Asia and Africa.
[1] https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/06/17/germanys-low-inv...
[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/germany-will-hit-a-si...
I don't understand this claim; Germany and many EU countries top the lists of tax-to-GDP and effective tax rates in the world, while its military expenditure (as % of GDP) is lower than China's.
And while it's now easy to say in hindsight 'Well, [insert new form of bigger, better, badder] is not particle physics.' This is true, but at time nobody knew where particle physics would take us. The idea of bomb the size of a small table that could destroy entire cities is something that would have seemed impossible before the US worked to to become 'bigger, better, badder' in what was at one time mostly theoretical particle research.
The worst part of this all is that while we don't know the future, we do have a very good idea of where it's headed. Space is likely where the nest greatest achievements and breakthroughs will come from. But predicting how or where is going to be all but impossible, which is why working to be the king of all pursuits is critical. China is headed straight in this direction. They have not matched our technical skills yet, but at the time when we were conquering the world through technology and taking the baby steps into the computer age -- China was a backwoods nation where people were literally starving to death by the tens of millions. That they're now the second most powerful nation in the world, pushing forward technology and development at an unprecedented rate, is way more than enough reason to believe that one should not underestimate their resolve and ability.
The real story here is that while China's strategy is risky -- there's no guarantee all this investment will pay off -- you could argue the neoliberal strategy is even riskier. Technology tends to be a winner take all affair and it's very often the first to market that wins.
Hanzho is 22 million people, Shanghai is 32 million people, Nanjing is 12 million people. That's just 3 of the over 100 cities larger than 1 million people. I'd expect their projects to be larger. I was blown away by the size of their bullet train stations. Japan's Tokyo station has like 4 bullet train tracks. Shanghai's has 30. Is that bragging or just planning ahead for a much larger population?
Me, I love the skyscrapers. I find it interesting that Tokyo no longer feels remotely "future modern" compared to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and I'm sure a bunch of other cities in Asia.
If you're counting like this, you're over-counting radius and doubling up. Sue the region is populous, about 80mn in that radius but including Nanjing means a 45 minute ride on high-speed rail (400km/h) from Shanghai.
BTW spelling : Hanzho -> Hangzhou
And missed Wuxi ;)