Really, we think of China as big and we kind of know and recognize that in the back of our minds but it becomes like imagining a billion--we just can't wrap our minds around it.
A friend of mine pointed this out last month to me. China is beyond big. An article today reminded me I needed to put this up here.
The article, in part:
China's skyscraper boom buoys global industry
By Joe McDonald, AP Business Writer
Sun Dec 5, 6:02 am ET
BEIJING – The 121-story Shanghai Tower is more than China's next record-setting building: It's an economic lifeline for the elite club of skyscraper builders.
Financial gloom has derailed plans for new towers in Chicago, Moscow, Dubai and other cities. But in China, work on the 2,074-foot (632-meter) Shanghai Tower, due to be completed in 2014, and dozens of other tall buildings is rushing ahead, powered by a buoyant economy and providing a steady stream of work to architects and engineers.
The U.S. high-rise market is "pretty much dead," said Dan Winey, a managing director for Gensler, the Shanghai Tower's San Francisco-based architects. "For us, China in the next 10 to 15 years is going to be a huge market."
China has six of the world's 15 tallest buildings — compared with three in the United States, the skyscraper's birthplace — and is constructing more at a furious pace, defying worries about a possible real estate boom and bust. It is on track to pass the U.S. as the country with the most buildings among the 100 tallest by a wide margin.
"There are cities in China that most Western people have never heard of that have bigger populations and more tall buildings than half the prominent cities in the U.S.," said Antony Wood, executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
China is leading a wave of skyscraper building in developing countries that is shifting the field's center of gravity away from the United States and Europe.
The shift is so drastic that North America's share of the 100 tallest buildings will fall from 80 percent in 1990 to just 18 percent by 2012, according to Wood. He said by then, 45 of the tallest will be in Asia, with 34 of those in China alone.
"So 34 percent of the 100 tallest buildings will be in a single country. That has only happened once before, and that was with the USA," he said.
Okay, and that's one thing and perhaps that shows where China and the US are headed (up/down, respectively? Let's hope not but so it might seem) but it's in their population that you really get a sense of scope of the country and its people:
Ten cities in the US have a population of 1,000,000:
New York City 8.34m
Los Angeles 3.86m
Chicago 2.93m
Houston 2.31m
Phoenix 1.62m
Philadelphia 1.54m
San Antonio 1.42m
San Diego 1.35m
Dallas 1.33m
San Jose 1.01m
And that's easy enough to wrap one's mind around.
China, though? Read on:
According the People's Daily Newspaper, China had more than 660 cities by the end of 2002, of which 10 had populations of more than 4 million each in the urban area; 23, between 2 and 4 million; 138, between 1 and 2 million; 279, between 500,000 and 1 million; 171, between 200,000 and 500,000; and 39, less than 200,000.
So as of 2002, China had 171 cities with population over 1 million.
By now, 2010, that number is likely even larger.
That's pretty staggering.
Get the feeling we're dwarfed?
Enjoy your Sunday, y'all, regardless.
Links: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_china_skyscraper_empire
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_cities_in_the_US_have_a_population_over_1_million
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070504100112AAk3mPl
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They're having a lot of trouble over there because of their size.... well actually the inprecedented migration from the countryside to the population centers.
They can't keep up with the infrastructure, the transportation, et al. And of course they need us to pay for it which is the trouble we're in.
Amazing not that long ago the had virtually no hard foreign currency. And now they're awash in dollars and worry about their value.
Its' amazing how greed has caused the Republicans to screw the pooch. I think the chinese will do that too.
Rmemember how when you wanted a pleasant evening playing Monopoly with friends, you didn't work too hard to bankrupt the other players..because it would prematurely end the game?
That's what's happening now to the global economy. But clearly we've not got lily white hands... witness the State Department cables we've been seeing lately.
Hillary really is the ice queen, and the burocracy has gotten vastly too big for its britches.
Very bad noises coming out of TSA... they Chinese aren't the only ones who know about corrupted power!
And of course you're learning something very interesting, and surprising. You're learning how parochial Americans ARE, sitting over here by ourselves in the Western Hemisphere--all preoccupied with a hundred murders in a very troubled Country packed with guns. How can we possibly be surprised that people will use them? Rather than building their country.
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