onlooker wrote:umm, I do not really agree. First, money has been spent to build national road system and to produce and import all those cars China now has. All these resources could have been used instead to fund the national railway system. Second, I did a little research and in turns out that by looking at cars per capita China in only second to US in terms of cars on road. So they are already there in terms of a significant car culture with the concomitant need for oil. I provide this link to check on cars per capita of different countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... per_capita
Rank Country Motor vehicles per1000 people Notes
4 United States 809 2011[1][2]
106 China 113 2014[25]
Rail track length
Year km ±% p.a.
1949 21,800 —
1955 25,600 +2.71%
1960 33,900 +5.78%
1965 36,400 +1.43%
1970 41,000 +2.41%
1975 46,000 +2.33%
1980 53,300 +2.99%
1985 55,000 +0.63%
1990 57,800 +1.00%
1995 62,400 +1.54%
2000 68,700 +1.94%
2005 75,400 +1.88%
2006 77,100 +2.25%
2007 77,966 +1.12%
2008 79,687 +2.21%
2009 85,818 +7.69%
2010 90,504 +5.46%
2011 93,200 +2.98%
2012 97,600 +4.72%
2013 103,144 +5.68%
onlooker wrote:umm, interesting and now they seem to be really committed to much more railway. I have heard that the traffic jams are so huge now and that some Chinese are even reconsidering buying cars. So this may be the impetus for this new binge of railway building. Still, I wonder if the Chinese are not apprised of peak oil so why invest so heavily in cars particularly of the combustion engine type? Just wondering.
Tanada wrote:A couple of news reports have recently come out crowing about how China's economy just isn't growing much right now. Well I went and looked up China's car sales for the last several years and this is what I found, yes growth is a little slower than it was in the white hot days of the last decade. However the growth rate is still orange hot compared to the Western old line industrial powers.
Passenger car sales in China,
2008 6,76 Million, 1,69 Million per quarter average
2009 10,33 Million, 2,58 Million per quarter average
2010 13.76 Million, 3,44 Million per quarter average
2011 14.47 Million, 3,62 Million per quarter average
2012 15.50 Million, 3,88 Million per quarter average
2013 17.93 Million, 4,48 Million per quarter average
2014 19.71 Million, 4,93 Million per quarter average
2015 5.31 Million, 5,31 Million per quarter average
2015 numbers are for just the first quarter of the year but I challenge anyone to say with a straight face China is no longer interested in expanding their passenger vehicle fleet and competing for world oil supply. The facts are at their average monthly sale rate in the first quarter of 2015 they will have already purchased more passenger cars by April 30 2015 than they bought in the entire calendar year of 2008.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/2337 ... -in-china/
BEIJING - Auto sales in China, the world's biggest auto market, rose 4.7 percent year on year to 24.59 million units in 2015, data from an industry association showed Tuesday.
The growth marks the slowest pace in three years, following the 6.9-percent rise in 2014 and 13.9-percent gain in 2013, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
Last year, the country's vehicle output stood at 24.5 million units, the data showed.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
onlooker wrote:I still have to wonder why China did not go all into mass transit and instead seem to have it as a supplement to an already vast car culture? Whomever can give me a reasonable explanation I will salute haha.
ennui2 wrote:onlooker wrote:I still have to wonder why China did not go all into mass transit and instead seem to have it as a supplement to an already vast car culture? Whomever can give me a reasonable explanation I will salute haha.
China has plenty of mass transit. The country is too overpopulated and despite communism there's a desire among the people to attain symbols of wealth and success, like personal automobiles.
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