This is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on traveling in China back in 2007, when he took the 250-miles-per-hour magnetic levitation (Maglev) train from Shanghai Pudong International Airport into the city:
"I had a full cup of coffee and I watched the coffee,'' the mayor said, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal. "It didn't vibrate once. It was really quite amazing. And other countries are trying to do the same thing, create other modes of transportation that are much more effcient, much more rapid and answer the needs in a global world.''
Every American who has traveled the world in the last decade or so has had a similar experience - often many of them. I, too, have marveled at the Maglev train on my visits to Shanghai, and been deeply impressed by new roads I've used in Malaysia, fast trains in Japan and France, new airport terminals in Barcelona, Beijing, Singapore, Madrid, Tokyo and Cairo, and new airports -not new terminals, new airports - in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and beyond. My home country, the United States - the nation that built the Panama Canal, the transcontinental railroad, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, a continent-spanning interstate highway system and more - has fallen well off the pace in creating and even just maintaining travel infrastructure.
To their credit, U.S. political leaders like Bloomberg and President Barack Obama recognize this and are trying to do something about it. Three hundred million Americans and millions of international visitors will benefit in tangible ways if their vision is realized. Just how soon - or even if - that happens remains to be seen, thanks to intransient and in some cases narrow-minded political opponents who are using federal and state deficits as reasons for doing nothing.
In last month's State of the Union speech, Obama made a case for building and upgrading travel infrastructure as an investment in the future:
"Our infrastructure used to be the best,'' Obama observed, "but our lead has slipped. South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation's infrastructure, they gave us a D.
"Over the last two years, we have begun rebuilding for the 21st century, a project that meant thousands of good jobs for the hard-hit construction industry. Tonight, I'm proposing that we redouble those efforts.
"We will put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We will make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment and pick projects based on what's best for the economy, not politicians.
"Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail, which would allow you to go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying ... As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway.''
Or are they? Politicians can't stop being politicians. Republican Party deficit hawks - notably silent when fellow Republicans George W. Bush and the unaccountably sainted Ronald Reagan were running up record-high deficits themselves - say the country can't afford it. Some travel-industry analysts and political pundits point out that Republican congressional districts - which tend to be rural and lightly populated - average just one-11th the population density of urban Democratic Party-held districts, thus accounting for hostility to mass transit.
Some of this hostility verges on the irrational, such as statements by Florida's Republican governor, Rick Scott, that he would return $2.4 billion in promised federal subsidies for high-speed rail to his state since he considers high-speed rail a boondoggle. Other conservative leaders, notably Rep. John L. Mica, also a Florida Republican, has said he isn't against high-speed rail but would prefer that the private sector develop it, as he thinks that would be more cost-effective than having government do it. He could be right, who knows? Simply dismissing the idea of building high-speed rail won't answer the question.
Oh, and did I mention Amtrak, the U.S.'s perennially beseiged federally subsidized passenger rail system, will be stripped of public funds if political opponents have their way? The notion that efficient public transport more than pays for itself in reducing transport times, pollution from motor vehicles and improving shipping times for cargo has simply been discounted.
It shouldn't be. Obama and Bloomberg are to be commended for thinking big and thinking smart. Travelers the world over, not just in the U.S., have got to hope that the roadblocks in their way are pushed aside by clear-thinking people of all political colorations.
Showing posts with label the United States. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the United States. Show all posts
Monday, February 7, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Hu the Man
The first time I visited China, in 1996, I went, like all traveling pilgrims, to Beijing's Tiananmen Square and gazed at the massive portrait of Mao Zedong at the entrance to the Forbidden City. More than anything, it was the sight that made me feel: I'm really here.
Current Chinese President Hu Jintao doesn't have anything like the cult of personality that surrounded Mao, and that is probably a good thing. Hu, presently on a state visit to the United States, is a different kind of leader: a technocrat, a hydraulic engineer by training, member of a post-revolutionary generation who worked his way up through the ranks of the Communist Party. He is not a dictator in the Mao mold, but Hu is very much the Man in Chinese politics. Hu has overseen the historic boom that followed the economic makeover put in motion by the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1978. Today, China has the world's second-largest economy, after the U.S. (though it has just one-10th the per capita GDP of the U.S.). That hyper-growth has put the Middle Kingdom on equal footing with the United States and cast it as the rising superpower of the 21st century.
One can't visit China and not be impressed or come away from China without feeling that you have seen the future. I have been to China a dozen times now, most recently last month when I visited Beijing and the Hong Kong SAR. In Beijing, I stayed in a hip boutique hotel called the Opposite House, in a fashion-forward district near the cluster of foreign embassies in the centeal city. I flew to the capital onboard the Chinese carrier Dragonair, deplaning in one of the world's biggest and newest passenger terminals, at Beijing Capital Airport. The city of 18 million - maybe more, who's counting? - was pancake flat when I first visited. Now, it is festooned with highrises and choked with cars. Modern shopping centers pulsate where traditional hutongs - back alleys - lined with courtyard houses once stood.
Progress has come at a cost: Chinese cities are among the most-polluted in the world. Cities like Beijing have bulldozed much of their heritage - even though such sites are, among other things, prized tourist attractions - in the rush to develop. Freedom of speech and religion are still tightly controlled. China's sway over Tibet is hugely unpopular around the world.
All this change comes courtesy of China's hybrid economy, a form of state capitalism that concentrates political clout among party leaders and gives the state power to own or otherwise control major home-grown corporations. China is expanding aggressively in both the economic and military spheres and it bargains hard to get what it wants - the U.S. agreement to let Chinese companies have access to more-sensitive American technology, announced today in Washington, is one result of China's leverage and hard bargaining.
Of course, Hu has granted concessions, too, to further at least the impression of international harmony between the two rival powers. The biggest deal in that regard is China's agreement to buy $19 billion worth of aircraft from the Boeing Co. Those airplanes will come in handy in helping China carry out a major expansion of its own airlines, which are struggling to keep up with the surge in air-passenger traffic as a newly empowered Chinese middle class discovers the joys of overseas tourism.
Count on this: As Sino-American relations evolve, travel and tourism will continue to play an important and emblematic role.
Current Chinese President Hu Jintao doesn't have anything like the cult of personality that surrounded Mao, and that is probably a good thing. Hu, presently on a state visit to the United States, is a different kind of leader: a technocrat, a hydraulic engineer by training, member of a post-revolutionary generation who worked his way up through the ranks of the Communist Party. He is not a dictator in the Mao mold, but Hu is very much the Man in Chinese politics. Hu has overseen the historic boom that followed the economic makeover put in motion by the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1978. Today, China has the world's second-largest economy, after the U.S. (though it has just one-10th the per capita GDP of the U.S.). That hyper-growth has put the Middle Kingdom on equal footing with the United States and cast it as the rising superpower of the 21st century.
One can't visit China and not be impressed or come away from China without feeling that you have seen the future. I have been to China a dozen times now, most recently last month when I visited Beijing and the Hong Kong SAR. In Beijing, I stayed in a hip boutique hotel called the Opposite House, in a fashion-forward district near the cluster of foreign embassies in the centeal city. I flew to the capital onboard the Chinese carrier Dragonair, deplaning in one of the world's biggest and newest passenger terminals, at Beijing Capital Airport. The city of 18 million - maybe more, who's counting? - was pancake flat when I first visited. Now, it is festooned with highrises and choked with cars. Modern shopping centers pulsate where traditional hutongs - back alleys - lined with courtyard houses once stood.
Progress has come at a cost: Chinese cities are among the most-polluted in the world. Cities like Beijing have bulldozed much of their heritage - even though such sites are, among other things, prized tourist attractions - in the rush to develop. Freedom of speech and religion are still tightly controlled. China's sway over Tibet is hugely unpopular around the world.
All this change comes courtesy of China's hybrid economy, a form of state capitalism that concentrates political clout among party leaders and gives the state power to own or otherwise control major home-grown corporations. China is expanding aggressively in both the economic and military spheres and it bargains hard to get what it wants - the U.S. agreement to let Chinese companies have access to more-sensitive American technology, announced today in Washington, is one result of China's leverage and hard bargaining.
Of course, Hu has granted concessions, too, to further at least the impression of international harmony between the two rival powers. The biggest deal in that regard is China's agreement to buy $19 billion worth of aircraft from the Boeing Co. Those airplanes will come in handy in helping China carry out a major expansion of its own airlines, which are struggling to keep up with the surge in air-passenger traffic as a newly empowered Chinese middle class discovers the joys of overseas tourism.
Count on this: As Sino-American relations evolve, travel and tourism will continue to play an important and emblematic role.
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