13. The Chinese government’s major air-pollution measure is PM 10—that is, relatively large particulate matter, with a diameter of 10 microns or more. Particles this size can be visible, and they make the air look hazy. But PM 2.5, or particulate matter of 2.5 microns or more, is medically more dangerous, because the pollutants are fine enough to penetrate deep into the alveoli of the lungs. As of late 2011, the Chinese government was still “considering” including PM 2.5 measures. In a cable revealed by WikiLeaks in 2011, the U.S. embassy in Beijing sent back alarmed reports in 2006 about the dangerously high PM 2.5 measures its own sensors were detecting. By 2008 the embassy had put a PM 2.5 sensor on its roof, which sent hourly PM 2.5 readings out via Twitter. These were typically high enough that they would have caused school closings and public-health emergencies in most European or North American countries.
14. Harris, “China’s 12th Five-Year Plan.” “Currently, for every 1% increase in GDP, China’s energy use increases by 1% or more,” Harris writes. “If this rate continues, China will need to increase its energy consumption by 2.5 times to achieve its 2020 economic goal. To put this into perspective, this would mean increasing the current consumption of coal from the current 3.6 billion tons per year to an astronomical 7.9 billion tons a year. No one in China thinks this can be done.… The new plan advocates an all out program in this area.”
15. McKinsey Global Institute, Preparing for China’s Urban Billion (San Francisco: McKinsey Global Institute, 2009), p 18. “There will be unprecedented investment opportunities for business among a booming middle class and a stratum of affluent consumers,” the McKinsey study says. “The scale of urbanization will be large and migration will be its main driver.”
16. On the problem of the phantom towns, see April Rabkin, “China’s Potemkin Cities,” Mother Jones, August 18, 2010. http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/04/china-ghost-mall: “Economists have raved about China’s double-digit growth—which dropped to a still-impressive 9 percent in 2008 and 2009, even as much of the world slouched through the recession. But this turbocharged expansion is less about the invisible hand than the iron fist: the enormous engine of the state geared to drive GDP at the expense of everything else.… The country has entombed its new wealth in concrete and steel. You can see it in Dongguan, in Guangdong province, where the world’s largest mall stands empty, save for a few hamburger chains. And in Beijing’s tallest building, a year old and still unopened. It is evident in six-lane boulevards where most of the traffic is bicycle carts. And in cities like Erenhot, where the relentless construction continues, oblivious to a dearth of demand.”
17. Sky Canaves, “Shanghai Building Collapses, Nearly Intact,” Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2009. http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/06/29/shanghai-building-collapses-nearly-intact/.
18. Two veteran analysts explained the connection between passenger and freight traffic on China’s rail lines: “China’s businesses—ranging from manufacturers to coal mines—have complained for years about the difficulty of securing space on freight trains, which forces them to move a lot of their cargo on more expensive and less efficient trucks. An increase in rail capacity will enable them to put their freight back on trains, generating huge savings. Ton for ton, freight carried by rail costs nearly 70% less than carriage by truck, uses 77% less energy and produces 91% less carbon dioxide emissions.” Will Freeman and Arthur Kroeber, “China’s Fast Track to Development,” Wall Street Journal Asia, June 4, 2010.
5: An Airport in the Wilderness
1. I spoke by phone with a pilot originally from New Zealand who had decided to leave the Linyi school, even though it still owed him several months’ back pay. “I had to ask myself every time I strapped on the seat belt whether this is the flight I wouldn’t come back from, and my little boy in New Zealand would grow up without a dad,” he said.
2. Christopher Jackson, “An Introduction to China Aviation,” China Law Blog, December 6, 2011. http://www.chinalawblog.com/2011/12/
christopher_jackson_has_written_this.html.
3. As the ACP’s mission statement says, its Chinese counterparts “find it’s easier to coordinate with the US if our government and industry come together in one partnership for Sino-US cooperation developing Chinese aviation safety, capacity, and efficiency.” American Chamber of Commerce in China, Beijing, “Aviation Cooperation Project Mission Statement,” undated. http://www.uschinaacp.com/news/163.
6: An American Dream, Turned Chinese
1. The body screening the sale is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, generally referred to by its acronym CFIUS, pronounced siff-ee-us.
2. “China’s Aviation Industry Soars onto the Global Stage,” The Link, March-April 2010, China Europe International Business School. http://www.ceibs.edu/link/latest/51104.shtml.
3. “China Completes Cirrus Merger,” by Dan Namowitz, AOPA Online, June 28, 2011. http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2011/
110628cirrus_completes_china_merger.html.
7: China’s Own Boeing
1. Cheung, “Remaking Cinderella,” p. 2. He also wrote: “Reform-minded technocrats took charge of the defense and aviation sectors and vigorously implemented far-reaching reforms, including slashing costs and laying off tens of thousands of workers. Funding for R&D activities was also revamped with more money going into viable high priority projects and the culling of lower priority and failing projects.”
2. For valuable background on the Chinese efforts, see Roger Cliff, Chad J. Ohlandt, and David Yang, Ready for Takeoff: China’s Advancing Aerospace Industry (Arlington, VA: Rand Corporation, 2011).
3. L. J. Hart-Smith, “Out-Sourced Profits: The Cornerstone of Successful Subcontracting,” paper presented at Boeing Third Annual Technical Excellence Symposium, February 14–15, 2001, p. 4. Paper is available at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/69746-hart-smith-on-outsourcing.html. “Suppliers are under just as great pressure as prime manufacturers to maximize their profits, maximize their return on minimized investment, and the like,” he wrote; “indeed their interest rates on borrowings are usually higher than for prime manufacturers. So they have no incentive to design assembly tools that permit minimized rework for derivative products, for example, particularly when they have no guarantee that derivatives may ever be made or that they would be awarded the work. Indeed, they may not even have the expertise to foresee such opportunities.”
4. Michael Hiltzik, “787 Dreamliner Teaches Boeing Costly Lesson on Outsourcing,” Los Angeles Times, February 15, 2011. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/15/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20110215.
5. “With adequate resources provided by an aggressive industrial policy, China’s aviation scientific and engineering talent has the potential to be among the best in the world (just like in the Soviet Union),” he wrote in his November, 2009 “Monthly Newsletter” for the Teal Group. “China also has a superb home market (just like the Soviet Union had). China has adequate capital (just like the Soviet Union’s aviation industry had). China wants to construct a broad array of jet families (just like the Soviet Union did). But without economic freedom, particularly the freedom to move away from an autarkic and vertical industrial policy, it means nothing. If China continues down this path, its aviation industry will be heading down the same Soviet dead end street.”
6. Aubrey Cohen, “Analyst: Don’t Fear Embraer, or Bombardier, Comac and Sukhoi,” Seattle PI, October 9, 2009. http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/2009/10/09/analyst-dont-fear-embraer-or-bombardier-comac-and-sukhoi/.
7. As Aboulafia said in a report for his clients, the ARJ21 “is disastrously heavier than its closest competitor, Embraer’s ERJ-170.… Given the razor-thin margins associated with regional airline operations, it is quite inconceivable that any airline would voluntarily operate this aircraft.” Richard Aboulafia, “China’s Commercial Aircraft Industry: The Limits of an Autarkic Industrial Policy,” Teal Group, private newsletter, 2010.
8. Cheung, “Remaking Cinderella,�
�� p. 3.
9. Clyde Prestowitz, “It Won’t Be on Immelt,” Foreign Policy, October 3, 2011. http://prestowitz.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/10/03/
it_wont_be_on_immelt.
10. Gabe Collins and Andrew Erickson, “Jet Engine Development in China: Indigenous High-Performance Turbofans Are a Final Step Toward Fully Independent Fighter Production,” China SignPost, June 26, 2011. From the same post: “Enough is left out so that the exporting companies can comply with the letter of the export control laws, but in reality, a rising military power is potentially being given relatively low-cost recipes for building the jet engines needed to power [both military and civilian aircraft].”
8: The Environmental Consequences of Aviation
1. Ma Xiangshan, “China’s Actions and Positions on Greenhouse Gas from International Civil Aviation,” address to the International Civil Aviation Organization colloquium on Aviation and Climate Change, May 11–14, 2010. http://legacy.icao.int/CLQ10/Docs/0_Ma_en.pdf. From his presentation: “Developed countries should assume their responsibility and take the lead in reducing emissions due to their own background of historic emissions growth. Full consideration should be given to the fact that developing countries are in their own growth stage and are facing a considerable shortage in terms of finance, technology and capability.”
2. “China Fires First Salvo in War Over EU Aviation Emissions Cap,” Clean-BizAsia, June 29, 2011. http://www.cleanbiz.asia/story/china-fires-first-salvo-war-over-eu-aviation-emissions-cap.
3. As carbon-dioxide levels continue to rise, the main uncertainties about future warming center on what will happen when “positive-feedback loops”—i.e., the hotter things get, the faster they will get even hotter—kick in. The main way this would happen would be through melting of the polar ice sheets, which would mean less white ice surface to reflect the sun’s heat, and more blue water surface to absorb it. Similarly, the vast Arctic permafrost areas could have a positive-feedback effect as they thaw. They are essentially frozen peat bogs, which contain huge amounts of methane. As they began to melt, they would release their methane, which in turn could trigger even faster melting and more methane release.
4. Shipping may have a smaller greenhouse effect than aviation because its emissions come at sea level—but it has a greater overall polluting effect, because the fuel is “dirtier” (with heavier sulfur concentrations) and maritime engines have been less subject to cleanup rules than those used on land or air.
5. From 2 percent of a world total of 37 billion tons—or, three quarters of a billion tons from airplane engines—the aviation share is expected to rise sharply by 2030, to 3 percent of a 50-billion-ton total. That would mean a billion and a half tons of CO2 just from airplanes, or twice as much as in 2010.
6. The 1950s-vintage VOR system is a network of beacons that send out a different signal for each of the 360 degrees of the compass, so that planes with the right equipment could fly the 90 degree “radial”—due east—from one of the stations, or the 270 radial—due west—from another. Most of the en route instrument charts in developed countries are still defined by these VOR beacons.
7. Another video of the approach and landing is available online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdSMk01l2wQ&feature=related.
8. David Hughes, “Air China’s First RNP Approach into Linzhi Airport, Tibet,” Aviation Week, September 26, 2006.
9: The Tensions Inside China
1. Associated Press, “Woman confessed to ‘terrorist’ hijack attempt, China says,” Taipei Times, March 28, 2008. http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/world/archives/208/
03/28/2003407384. Also B. Raman, “Foiled Attempt to Blow Up Plane from Urumqi,” International Terrorism Monitor, March 29, 2008. http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers27%5cpaper2654.html.
2. For more on these episodes, see Joshua Rosenzweig, “China Abandons the Law,” Wall Street Journal Asia, March 24, 2011.
3. One example from a large possible sample of such declarations: In late May, the official organ the People’s Daily published a lead editorial arguing that in a time of world ferment, the last thing the Party could do was tolerate dissent of any sort. It began (according to the paper’s official English translation), “The Party’s political discipline, as the most important discipline of the Party, is essential for safeguarding the Party’s political principles, political orientation and political lines as well as regulating political speech, political actions and the political stance of Party organizations and members. It is also the basis of all the Party’s disciplines.” Editorial, “Firmly Safeguard Party Political Discipline,” People’s Daily, May 27, 2011. http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/
7393262.html.
4. Zhang Jiawei, “Peking University Clamps Down on Radical Thought,” China Daily, March 25, 2011. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-03/25/
content_12228217.htm. After the plan was announced and attracted international ridicule, the university said that it really meant only to find students who were performing poorly in class. See He Dan, “Peking University’s Plan Stirs Questions,” China Daily, March 26, 2011. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-03/26/
content_12230681.htm.
5. Finally, in 2011, this manifestation of American permanent-emergency thinking was eliminated when Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security—a term that itself betokens permanent emergency—had the gumption to dismantle the system and replace it with a more fine-grained and localized warning system.
6. For more, see James Fallows, “The Connection Has Been Reset,” The Atlantic, March, 2008. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/-ldquo-the-connection-has-been-reset-rdquo/6650/.
7. Jessica Colwell, “Gmail now 45 times slower than QQ in China,” Shanghaiist, March 22, 2011. http://shanghaiist.com/2011/03/24/
gmail_now_44_times_slower_than_qq_i.php. My own experience confirmed those results.
8. Editorial, “The Internet Belongs to All of Us, Not Just the US,” Global Times, March 31, 2011. http://www.globaltimes.cn/opinion/editorial/
2011-02/623812.html.
9. Editorial, “China Is Definitely Not the Middle East,” People’s Daily, March 10, 2011. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/
91342/7314966.html.
10. Josh Gartner, host, “What Is Up with the Chinese GFW?” China Policy Pod, March, 2011.
11. Levin fleshed out this analysis in a magazine essay: Richard Levin, “Top of the Class,” Foreign Affairs, May–June 2010.
12. David Shukman, “China ‘to Overtake US on Science’ in Two Years,” BBC News, March 28, 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12885271. For the Royal Society finding, see “Knowledge, Networks, and Nations: Final Report,” the Royal Society, March 28, 2011. http://royalsociety.org/policy/reports/knowledge-networks-nations/.
13. It continued, “China’s Peking University is determined to become a seat of world-class learning to rival Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Yale.” Peter Foster, “China: The Ultimate Brain Drain?,” The Telegraph, October 23, 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/
8080644/China-The-Ultimate-Brain-Drain.html.
14. The United States accounted for 30 percent of all citations between 2004 and 2008, followed by the U.K. at 8 percent, Germany at 7 percent, and Japan, France, and Canada with 5 percent apiece. China came after that, with 4 percent of world citations with the rest of the world making up the difference. China’s total output of papers was nearly three times larger than the U.K.’s, but was cited only half as often.
15. Gillian Wong, “Rampant Cheating Hurts China’s Research Ambitions,” Associated Press, April 11, 2010.
16. Andrew Jacobs, “Rampant Fraud Threat to China’s Brisk Ascent,” New York Times, October 7, 2010.
17. This was not a question of a U.S. company’s failure to adapt its products to local tastes. Microsoft employs thousands of engineers and salespeople inside China and produces fully Chinese versions of all its products.
18. Gady Epstein, “Profiting from Piracy: Robin Li’s Problem Is China’s Problem,” Forbes, March 29, 2011. http://blogs.forbes.com/gadyepstein/2011/03/29/profiting-from-piracy-robin-lis-problem-is-chinas-problem/.
19. Rosenzweig, “China Abandons the Law.”
20. A list of those detained was compiled by C. Custer, “Perspective …” ChinaGeeks, March 29, 2011. http://chinageeks.org/2011/03/perspective/. On March 15, 2011, the New York City Bar Association sent a formal letter to China’s minister of justice, Wu Aiying, and other judicial officials to express, as the letter put it, “our grave concern with respect to reports over the past several weeks that lawyers in various parts of China have been harassed, beaten, and detained at the hands of agents of the government.” It included about a dozen examples, including this one: “Tang Jitian, a prominent rights defense lawyer in Beijing, was picked up by police on February 16. Tang’s home was also searched and some of his belongings were seized. Tang has faced much retaliation for his rights defense work and had his license to practice law permanently revoked in April 2010. Tang has not been heard from since his February 16 disappearance, but reports now indicate that a notice imposing ‘residential surveillance’ on his home indicates that he is suspected of inciting subversion of state power.” A few days later, in a much more remarkable man-bites-dog story, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, part of the United Nations Human Rights Council, formally demanded that the Chinese government release a well-known human rights lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, who had been held without trial for more than a year and said he had been tortured. And about the same time, one of the country’s most prominent writers, Ran Yunfei, was arrested and charged with incitement to commit subversion, the same charge on which the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo had been sentenced to eleven years in prison.
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