Recently, technology giant Musk has frequently expressed his views, giving advice to cross-strait relations and guiding the way for the Russian-Ukrainian war, and the limelight is unparalleled. As an opinion leader, yesterday, he became popular again for telling the "truth". Someone commented that "compared with China, the construction speed of California is 100 times slower." He echoed and said, "That's right."
Tesla Shanghai Super Factory
Musk has a deeper understanding of China and foreign infrastructure capabilities than others, just because he is a personal experience. It took only 11 months from the start of construction to the first car being put into production and delivery, and it showed the "Tesla speed". It took about five months from Tesla's announcement of the construction plan for the Berlin factory in November 2019 to the start of leveling the land. Later, due to economic forest problems, water use problems, animal protection problems, license problems, etc., the work was suspended again and again, and it was delayed until March 22, 2022.
slow is the main theme of Western infrastructure.
1. How slow is it?
Some people believe that the Western infrastructure is slow, it depends on who it compares with. The speed of China is slow in the whole world. It’s not that I want to deliberately slap this in the face. Some countries’ efficiency in doing business is really unbearable for Western netizens.
Netizens summarized it well: the project is discussed for a while, the people's relocation will be disputed for a while, lobbying will delay for a while, and the meetings will be allocated for a while, and the assessment and testing in various aspects will be held for a while. After a while, the construction has been easy, and some people objected, and repeated the above. It's really "repeated and repeated, stooling and peeing for half an hour."
talks about how slow it is, and there are two examples that can best illustrate the problem. The first one is about the new Berlin airport. For this purpose, I also specially made an engineering diurnal diagram.
In 2006, the new Berlin airport finally started construction and is scheduled to be opened on October 30, 2011. In 2010, the planning company went bankrupt, resulting in repeated changes in the planning plan, which seriously affected the construction progress. In 2011, during the trial operation of the new airport, volunteers and media discovered problems such as the door numbering, incorrect cable installation, and the escalator was too short, and were forced to postpone the activation time until 2012. In 2015, a German subsidiary of Imtech, one of the construction companies on the site, announced bankruptcy, delaying the progress of the project. In September 2019, 250 "small problems" were found in the completed Terminal 2, and some walls and ground had to be demolished and rebuilt.
The new Berlin Airport fell into a vicious circle of discovering problems - solving problems - discovering problems, which eventually delayed for 9 years.
Gradually, the new Berlin airport became a joke among the local people, and even postcard was printed with "from the former Soviet Union to last week" as a self-deprecating, and was nicknamed "Germany's largest unfinished project."
Soviet era poster
Another slow model is the California high-speed rail project in the United States conceived by Lao Wa. If the German airport was postponed for various objective reasons, then the California high-speed rail project is a real victim of the American political system.
The ill-fated California high-speed rail project
California high-speed rail project was officially launched in 2008 and was proposed by then Governor Schwarzenegger . It has been three presidents and three governors. In 2009, then-President Obama 2 promoted the allocation of $3.5 billion to the project. Schwarzenegger's successor Brown is also an active supporter of the high-speed rail. He has visited China twice.
Things changed in 2014: Republican gained control of Congress, and their obstruction caused the project to face a serious funding shortage. Although Brown held a construction ceremony in 2015, the opening time was announced to be postponed to 2029 just one year later. In 2017, Republican President Trump 's coming to power increased the resistance to the project.
In 2019, California New Governor Newsom announced that only the Central Valley section of California was retained, and the project completion date was delayed again. Trump even directly canceled the project's $929 million federal grant in May. It was not until March 2021 that the funding withdrawn by Trump was restored.
A national-level infrastructure project is like duckweed in the wind and rain, swaying left and right. Its prospects are sometimes bright and sometimes dim, and the progress of the project is just stopping and stopping in this swing.
2. It has not always been so slow. The United States was also an infrastructure maniac.
was slow. It is not just compared to China. Compared with the United States more than 90 years ago, the current infrastructure speed in the United States will be instantly slag. Empire State Building was completed on April 11, 1931, with a height of 381 meters and a total of 102 floors. In 1951, the total height reached 443.7 meters after adding an antenna of 62 meters in length in 1951.
929, the concept design of the Empire State Building began, and on March 17, 1930, the construction of the Empire State Building began. Construction companies lead a huge number of workers to build the building at an astonishing rate, setting a record of 4 and a half floors per week to complete construction speeds. This speed was unheard of in the 1930s.
Construction workers of Empire State Building
Empire State Building
During the 37 months from November 1982 to December 1985, when China Construction Third Bureau Construction Engineering Co., Ltd. set a speed of building one floor in three days when Shenzhen International Trade Center Building (referred to as the Guomao Building), refreshed and created a new "Shenzhen speed".
Think about what we were doing in 1930? The Red Army is still in , the Long March 2, and the country is still in a civil war. Under the conditions of technology and equipment at that time, the United States created more than one infrastructure miracle.
1960s Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam started construction in April 1931, completed in March 1936, and the first unit officially generated power in October 1936. It is an arched gravity artificial concrete dam. The dam is 220 meters high, the bottom is 200 meters wide, the top is 14 meters wide, and the dike is 377 meters long. Even today, the Hoover Dam can rank among the top ten dams in the world.
San Francisco entrance bridge
There is also an Hollywood Movie regular - Golden Gate Bridge . It only took 4 and a half years from construction to opening to operation. The Kinmen Bridge is an outstanding representative of the suspension bridge industry. It not only has always played a leading role in large-scale suspension bridge projects, but also is a benchmark for the construction and operation management of all major projects. (Commentary on "Engineering Research - Engineering from Interdisciplinary Vision") The Golden Gate Bridge was once the longest and highest suspension bridge in the world. To this day, although these records have long been broken one by one, its status as a "modern engineering miracle" is still unbreakable.
According to incomplete statistics, the federal government's total expenditure on various projects at that time was about 18 billion US dollars, and it built about 7.4 million acres of park green space, 664,000 miles of highways, 122,000 houses, 77,000 bridges, 12,000 sports fields and hundreds of airports, school buildings, and hospitals...
At that time, the United States was completely worthy of the title of infrastructure madman.
3. Why did it slow down? Where is the slowness?
We think that the speed of infrastructure in the United States has slowed down, but in fact, it is the result of the United States' own choice of economic development method.
1. Economic structure transformation and capital and talent loss.
infrastructure is really terrible. The overall score of the US infrastructure in the American Society of Civil Engineers 021 report was C-, among which the aviation industry was rated D+ due to delays and insufficient capacity; dams and levees were D; and aging public transportation was D-. The aviation industry ranking cited by the "Business Roundtable" shows that only four airports in the United States are among the top 50 in the world.
On the one hand, the infrastructure is "to be rebuilt" and on the other hand, the huge loss of industrial talents.
International industrial transfer and financial market changes affect the development of the US manufacturing industry. The traditional manufacturing industry represented by heavy industry in the United States and some emerging manufacturing industries that rose before the 1980s have transferred to other countries through international industries. This means that some of the United States' own industries have disappeared locally, that is, the phenomenon of industrial "hollowing". The emergence of this phenomenon is related to the trend of international industrial transfer and changes in the competitive landscape after the development of other countries.Of course, there are other reasons for the decline in the importance of manufacturing to U.S. economic growth. For example, the rapid development of the financial services industry in the United States.
US manufacturing industry accounts for GDP trend chart
China manufacturing industry accounts for GDP trend chart
Compared with China's data in the same period, to become an infrastructure maniac, the proportion of manufacturing industry must account for at least more than 25% of GDP.
Since the 1980s, the United States has been outsourcing production overseas for decades, resulting in a shortage of skilled talents in manufacturing and a lack of a generation of engineers and industrial workers.
The number of American manufacturing employees fell from 19 million in 1980 to 16.78 million in 2019. During this period, the total population increased by 30%; the proportion of non-agricultural positions decreased from nearly 33% to 10%, and most of the lost positions were replaced by finance, hotels, medical care, media, accounting, etc.
Don’t have money, don’t have people, how can you get faster?
2. Partisan disputes lead to a lack of long-term planning for economic policies
Those who are familiar with history should understand one truth: party disputes harm the country. In the late Ming Dynasty, the dispute between the Donglin Party and the Autocratic Party and the Zhejiang Party made the government a mess, and the entire Ming Dynasty was dying. It is a bit exaggerated to say that the government in the United States is a party struggle, but since Trump took office, consensus between the Republican and Democratic parties has become increasingly rare, party disputes have become increasingly fierce, and party conflicts have become increasingly direct and unconcealed. Even Harvard Business School , which has always been ignorant of politics, has called for the political polarization of the two parties that have shrouded the whole of the United States, which has affected companies and investors with expensive consequences. When executives’ political stances are inconsistent with most executives, they will not only feel uneasy, but they will also have financial impacts on the business.
The battle between the two parties in the United States
In the West, one of the biggest obstacles to implementing long-term planning may be that the opposition party proposes another vision to the ruling party, which may lead to a reversal of direction, to the point of "taking two steps and taking one step back." Some industries are privatized just to re-nationalize, and some economic activities are prohibited by legislation and then deregulated. As the well-known Western economist Keynes said, in the long run, we are all dead. In the West, short-term planning occupies a dominant position.
It is true that various congresses come together in order to make long-term plans, such as the signing of the " Paris Agreement " during the Obama administration of the United States. However, the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the agreement, and Biden decided to rejoin it after taking office. The long-term agreement between Western countries varies in terms of respect among member states.
The United States has announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
You have been on stage for four years, I have been on stage for four years, and you have finished singing and I have appeared. Economic policies are diverse, but they cannot be completed. But how many large-scale infrastructure construction can be completed within four years? my country's "Sky Road" project - Qinghai-Tibet Railway , took 31 years and is the world's highest altitude and longest plateau railway. The project investment is huge, the profit is hopeless, the cycle is very long, and the maintenance is difficult. Various considerations are superimposed, which is unimaginable for the politicians of European and American countries.
It is undeniable that the country is still strong. We must have a clear understanding.
It is not without manufacturing, but the manufacturing industry is more inclined toward high-tech industries such as computers, chemistry and mechanical manufacturing.
It is not without paying attention to infrastructure. Although the two parties have disputes and differences on many issues, it is only the common proposition of the two parties to increase infrastructure construction.
It is not without attention to manufacturing. President Obama proposed a policy of returning to manufacturing, Trump claimed to return to the industrial chain, and Biden was determined to engage in "Made in America".
slow, just a temporary appearance. When manufacturing returns to the United States and when manufacturing returns to Europe, can we still make fun of it like we are now?
Reference
US high-speed rail failure Market value observation
Foreign experts: China's long-term plan is worth learning from the West China Youth Network
090s What are the core factors in the changes in the structure of the US manufacturing industry and international competitiveness?
