Quotulatiousness

June 11, 2011

China finally admits to (some) problems at the Three Gorges megadam

Filed under: China, Environment, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:47

It’s been “officially” a wonderful thing with absolutely no negative attributes for so long that it’s almost refreshing that the Chinese government is finally admitting it’s not all good news around the massive Three Gorges dam and reservoir:

In private, officials have worried about the project for some time and occasionally their doubts have surfaced in the official media. But the government itself has refused to acknowledge them. When the project was approved by the rubber-stamp parliament in 1992, debate was stifled by the oppressive political atmosphere of the time, following the Tiananmen Square massacre three years earlier. Last July, with the dam facing its biggest flood crest since completion in 2006, officials hinted that they might have overstated its ability to control flooding. On May 18th, with the dam again in the spotlight because of the drought, a cabinet meeting chaired by the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, went further in acknowledging drawbacks.

Having called the dam “hugely beneficial overall”, the cabinet’s statement said there were problems relating to the resettlement of 1.4m people, to the environment and to the “prevention of geological disasters” that urgently needed addressing. The dam, it said, had had “a certain impact” on navigation, irrigation and water-supply downstream. Some of these problems had been forecast at the design stage or spotted during construction. But they had been “difficult to resolve effectively because of limitations imposed by conditions at the time.” It did not elaborate.

June 10, 2011

Cold War thinking on Chinese-US relations

Filed under: China, Economics, History, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

Brad Glosserman asks if China is using its new-found economic muscle to bankrupt the United States.

One popular narrative credits the end of the Cold War to a US strategy to bankrupt the Soviet Union. Well aware of the advantage conferred by its superior economic performance, Washington pushed Moscow into a military competition that drained the USSR of its resources. In this narrative, US President Ronald Reagan’s push to create a missile defence system — realistic or not — was the straw that broke the Soviet back.

Are Chinese strategists pursuing a similar approach to the United States? Is Beijing pushing US buttons, forcing it to spend increasingly scarce resources on defence assets and diverting them from other more productive uses? Far-fetched though it may seem — and the reasons to be sceptical are pretty compelling — there is evidence that China is doing just that: ringing American alarm bells, forcing the US to respond, and compounding fiscal dilemmas within the United States. Call it Cold War redux.

If that is indeed China’s strategy, then they’re wasting their efforts: without strong action in the very near term, the US government is going to bankrupt the country with no additional help from overseas required. The “popular narrative” Glosserman refers to handily glosses over the fact that the Soviet economy had been on a downward slide for decades. The Reagan-era military build-up merely hastened the end for Soviet economics, it did not bring it on in the first place. As Adam Smith famously noted, there is a lot of ruin in a nation, but eventually it does go smash — especially if no efforts are made to avert that nasty ending.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.

June 9, 2011

Is the Shi Lang a naval “Potemkin Village”?

Filed under: China, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:30

David Axe is not losing any sleep over the soon-to-be commissioned Chinese carrier Shi Lang:

Leaving aside her modest size compared to American carriers, her incomplete air wing and escort force and the fact that she’ll sail without the company of allied flattops, Shi Lang could be even less of a threat than her striking appearance implies. Shi Lang’s greatest potential weakness could be under her skin, in her Ukrainian-supplied engines.

Powerplants — that is, jet engines for airplanes, turbines for ships — are some of the most complex, expensive and potentially troublesome components of any weapon system. Just ask the designers of the Pentagon’s F-35 stealth fighter and the U.S. Navy’s San Antonio-class amphibious ships. Both have been nearly sidelined by engine woes.

China has struggled for years to design and build adequate powerplants for its ships and aircraft. Although Chinese aerospace firms are increasingly adept at manufacturing airframes, they still have not mastered motors. That’s why the new WZ-10 attack helicopter was delayed nearly a decade, and why there appear to be two different prototypes for the J-20 stealth fighter. One flies with reliable Russian-made AL-31F engines; the other apparently uses a less trustworthy Chinese design, the WS-10A.

For Shi Lang, China reportedly purchased turbines from Ukraine. Though surely superior to any ship engines China could have produced on its own, the Ukrainian models might still be unreliable by Western standards. Russia’s Kuznetsov, also fitted with Ukrainian turbines, has long suffered propulsion problems that have forced her to spend most of her 30-year career tied to a pier for maintenance. When she does sail, a large tugboat usually tags along, just in case the carrier breaks down.

If Shi Lang is anything like her sister, she could turn out to be a naval version of the mythical “Potemkin village” — an impressive facade over a rickety interior.

H/T to Nicholas “Ghost of a Flea” Packwood for the link.

June 8, 2011

China admits it’s hard to hide 1000ft-long aircraft carrier

Filed under: China, Military, Pacific — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:44

China has finally gotten around to acknowledging that they’re rebuilding the former Soviet aircraft carrier for use by their navy:

Gen Chen Bingde refused to say when the carrier — a remodelled Soviet-era vessel, the Varyag — would be ready.

A member of his staff said the carrier would pose no threat to other nations.

The 300m (990ft) carrier, which is being built in the north-east port of Dalian, has been one of China’s worst-kept secrets, analysts say.

Gen Chen made his comments to the Chinese-language Hong Kong Commercial Daily newspaper.

Although the Chinese say that the ship, once ready for operations, won’t enter other countries’ territorial waters, keep in mind that China doesn’t have the same idea about maritime rights as others in the South China Sea region:

Earlier posts about the Shi Lang (nee Varyag) here.

Canadian troops complete last combat mission before withdrawal from Afghanistan

Filed under: Asia, Cancon, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:31

Susan Sachs reports on the conclusion of the last planned combat mission for Canadian troops ahead of withdrawal this summer:

More than five years after taking charge of security in one of the most violent regions in Afghanistan, Canadian troops wrapped up their final combat operation with a two-week sweep through a rural swath of Kandahar that was undisputed Taliban territory just a year ago.

The offensive, conducted with a bulked-up Afghan National Army brigade in the lead, marks Canada’s last days in the long and deadly war. All combat troops are set to withdraw this summer, 5½ years after the mission in Kandahar began.

Until the last soldier leaves, the danger that has stalked Canadian soldiers in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and still one of its strongholds, remains.

Members of the Royal 22nd Regiment will still be patrolling the volatile area, risking death by improvised explosive devices and operating isolated outposts up to the day they hand off their positions to U.S. soldiers.

“RAF’s new superfighter was thrashed in the very type of combat it is supposed to be best at by a 1970s-era plane”

Filed under: Asia, Britain, Middle East, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:24

Lewis Page talks about claims from a Pakistani Air Force fighter pilot that their F-16s had “shot down” Royal Air Force Typhoons in three separate air training exercises in Turkey.

The RAF Typhoon, formerly known as the Eurofighter, should nonetheless have been vastly superior in air-to-air combat whether BVR or close in within visual range (WVR). The cripplingly expensive, long-delayed Eurofighter was specifically designed to address the defects of its predecessor the Tornado F3 — famously almost useless in close-in, dogfighting-style air combat. The Typhoon was meant to see off such deadly in-close threats as Soviet “Fulcrums” and “Flankers” using short-range missiles fired using helmet-mounted sight systems: such planes were thought well able to beat not just Tornados but F-16s in close fighting, and this expectation was borne out after the Cold War when the Luftwaffe inherited some from the East German air force and tried them out in exercises.

Thus it is that huge emphasis was placed on manoeuvring capability and dogfighting in the design of the Eurofighter. The expensive Euro-jet was initially designed, in fact, as a pure fighter with no ground attack options at all — bomber capability has had to be retrofitted subsequently at still more expense. Despite lacking various modern technologies such as Stealth and thrust-vectoring the resulting Typhoon is generally touted as being one of the best air-to-air combat planes in the world right now. Certainly it is meant to be good in close fighting: it is armed with the Advanced Short Range Air to Air Missile (ASRAAM) which as its name suggests is intended for the close WVR fight.

Perhaps the account above is simply a lie, or anyway a bit of a fighter pilot tall story. But the pilot quoted will be easily identifiable inside his community if not to the outside world, and he could expect a lot of flak for telling a lie on such a matter in public. It seems likelier that the story is the truth as he perceived it: that the RAF’s new superfighter was thrashed in the very type of combat it is supposed to be best at by a 1970s-era plane, albeit much modernised.

June 5, 2011

India as seen by “a cool Bangalorean”

Filed under: Humour, India — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:32

India as seen by a cool Bangalorean

H/T to Gerard Vanderleun who posted it on his Tumblr site.

June 3, 2011

China’s first aircraft carrier edges closer to readiness

Filed under: China, Military, Russia, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:25

The Chinese navy is a bit closer to having an operational aircraft carrier, as the Shi Lang (formerly Varyag in Russian service) is being equipped with radar and weapons:

In the last month, the new Chinese aircraft carrier, the Shi Lang (formerly Varyag) has had several major electronic systems, and its first weapons, installed. The most notable electronic item to show up are the four AESA radar panels. This is a state-of-the-art radar similar to the one used in the American Aegis system. There were a lot of other electronic items being carried into the Shi Lang, indicating that the ship will be equipped with extensive networked computers and communications systems.

The two main weapons were also installed. One was a new version of the older, Type 730 seven barrel, 30mm close-in anti-missile automatic cannon. Operating like the American Phalanx, the new version of the Type 730 seen on the Shi Lang had ten barrels. The other weapon was the FL-3000N anti-missile systems. These are similar to the American RAM anti-missile missile system, except that they come in a 24 missile launcher and are less accurate. FL-3000N was only introduced three years ago, and uses smaller missiles than RAM. The two meter long FL-3000N missiles have a max range of nine kilometers (about half that for very fast incoming missiles). The 120mm, two meter long missiles now use a similar guidance system to RAM, but are not as agile in flight.

[. . .]

The Shi Lang/Varyag is one of the Kuznetsov class carriers that Russia began building in the 1980s. Originally the Kuznetsovs were to be 90,000 ton, nuclear powered ships, similar to American carriers (complete with steam catapults). Instead, because of the high cost, and the complexity of modern (American style) carriers, the Russians were forced to scale back their plans, and ended up with 65,000 ton (full load) ships that lacked steam catapults, and used a ski jump type flight deck instead. Nuclear power was dropped, but the Kuznetsov class was still a formidable design. The 323 meter (thousand foot) long ship normally carries a dozen navalized Su-27s (called Su-33s), 14 Ka-27PL anti-submarine helicopters, two electronic warfare helicopters and two search and rescue helicopters. But the ship was meant to regularly carry 36 Su-33s and sixteen helicopters. The ship carries 2,500 tons of aviation fuel, allowing it to generate 500-1,000 aircraft and helicopter sorties. Crew size is 2,500 (or 3,000 with a full aircraft load.) Only two ships of this class exist; the original Kuznetsov, which is in Russian service, and the Varyag. Like most modern carriers, the only weapons carried are anti-missile systems like Phalanx and FL-3000N, plus some heavy machine-guns (which are often kept inside the ship, and mounted outside only when needed.) However, Russian practice was been to sometimes install long range anti-ship missiles as well. China may also do this with Shi Lang.

June 1, 2011

New report from the Obviousness Bureau: TEPCO underestimated earthquake/tsunami risks

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Japan, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:55

Hands up, anyone who didn’t see this coming? Okay, put your hands down board members of TEPCO:

Japan underestimated the risk of a tsunami hitting a nuclear power plant, the UN nuclear energy agency has said.

However, the response to the nuclear crisis that followed the 11 March quake and tsunami was “exemplary”, it said.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was badly damaged by the tsunami, is still leaking radiation.

Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan is facing a no-confidence vote submitted by three opposition parties over his handling of the crisis.

They say he lacks the ability to lead rebuilding efforts and to end the crisis at the Fukushima plant, public broadcaster NHK reported.

Some politicians from Mr Kan’s governing Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), including former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, are backing the motion.

If it is passed in a vote expected on Thursday, Mr Kan would be forced to resign or call a snap election.

However, given the thousands of dead and missing from the earthquake and tsunami, the attention paid to Fukushima has been rather disproportional. As someone joked yesterday, radiation from Fukushima has killed fewer people (none) than e.coli tainted food in Germany (16 at last report).

Update: In case I’m being too obscure, the “this” I refer to in the initial paragraph is the with-the-benefit-of-hindsight conclusion that the Fukushima plant was inadequately prepared for the earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

May 31, 2011

How do you say “Doom!” in Chinese?

Filed under: China, Economics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:32

Remember that calm, reassuring phrase “don’t worry”? Okay, time’s up. You can forget it now:

Falling land prices may prompt Chinese property developers to write down the value of their assets, forcing a sober reassessment for those with vast land holdings, according to a survey released Monday by Credit Suisse.

Most at risk are those mainland Chinese and Hong Kong developers who added aggressively to their land banks in 2009 and 2010, the prices of which could come under pressure amid Beijing’s ongoing credit tightening, the investment bank said.

[. . .]

Prices for land sold at auction were down 20% so far this year, the report cited one industry expert as saying. Other data indicated price declines of up to 50% for the year to date, although the figures were affected by slumping transaction volumes in cities such as Beijing, possibly overstating the true rate of declines, the report said.

Meanwhile, the tighter credit conditions are having a “double impact” upon developers, Credit Suisse said.

On one hand, delays in mortgage approvals mean developers are having to wait longer to get paid than they did in earlier times. Today’s leaner environment has also resulted in a rise in buyers backing out of purchasing commitments on new projects because they can’t secure financing.

Remember that old joke about it being time to get out of the market when even the cab drivers have stock tips? It’s been time to get out of the Chinese real estate market since every small-time operator started buying up “choice” plots of land. It’s a classic sign of a bubble (when uninformed buyers are rushing in to get in on the “sure thing”), and those who can read the signs before they become ubiquitous are those who survive the collapse of the bubble in the best shape.

May 25, 2011

How to analyze bubbles and crashes

Filed under: Books, China, Economics, History, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:06

Warren C. Gibson reviews Boombustology by Vikram Mansharamani, which looks at the boom and bust pattern frequently seen in economics, with special emphasis on China:

The author’s macro lens includes Austrian business cycle theory. That theory says inflation of the money supply causes a drop in interest rates, which is misinterpreted as an increased aggregate preference for saving over consumption, leading to investments in more roundabout means of production. When it becomes clear that there has been no such preference shift, these undertakings are seen to be at least partial mistakes, requiring write-offs and retrenchment — a bust. The boom is the problem, not the bust, which is the market’s attempt to realign itself to the realities of time preference. Austrian business cycle theory has great merit but leaves some things unexplained.

Mansharamani’s micro lens includes the concept of reflexivity. Market participants don’t just observe prices but also influence them. Reflexive dynamics occasionally give rise to instabilities in which rising prices lead to increased demand. A simpler term would be a “bandwagon effect.” I recall an office party in 1980 where one of the secretaries asked about buying gold — precisely at the peak, as it turned out. All she knew about gold was that it was way up and therefore must be going higher. I should have realized that when you see financially unsophisticated people like her climbing on a bandwagon, you can be pretty sure there’s no one left to sell to and nowhere for prices to go but down, which is where gold and silver prices went in 1980, and in a big hurry.

From psychology Dr. M. borrows ideas and data about cognitive biases. For example, subjects asked to guess some bland statistic, like the number of African countries that belong to the UN, are influenced by the spin of a wheel of fortune: When the wheel lands on a high number, they guess higher. He translates this and a dozen other cognitive biases into irrational market behavior that can foster booms and busts.

He introduces his biology lens with an analogy to the spread of an infectious disease. When the prevalence of a disease reaches a high level, the infection rate necessarily slows and the disease begins to wane, just like the 1980 gold market. But it is devilishly difficult to “inoculate” oneself against infectious ideas. Individual investors who can do so have a decent chance to beat the market averages over time, I believe. (Those who would pursue these ideas in greater depth would do well to find James Dines’s quirky and expensive but worthwhile book, Mass Psychology.)

Governments don’t have the power to prevent booms and busts — but they sure do have the ability (and too often, the will) to extend booms as long as possible, which only makes the necessary correction that much more painful.

May 21, 2011

President of TEPCO falls on his sword a few months late

Filed under: Environment, Health, Japan, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:04

The president of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has resigned:

In a business practice that recalled the ritual seppuku suicides of samurai warriors, the president of Japan’s largest power company resigned Friday to assume responsibility for the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

At a nationally televised news conference, Masataka Shimizu bowed deeply in an exhibition of remorse and declared, “I am resigning for having shattered public trust about nuclear power and for having caused so many problems and fears for the people.

“I want to take managerial responsibility and bring a symbolic close.”

Whether it’s a hearkening-back to Samurai ethos or not, he should have resigned long ago, as soon as it became clear that the company he headed was doing everything it could to conceal the extent of the actual damage both from the media and from the government.

There is a widespread feeling the government and TEPCO officials did not disclose all they knew during the early days of the crisis and have been less than forthcoming since.

In the first weeks after the earthquake, TEPCO officials received 40,000 complaints a day about the lack of information. Police had to be assigned to guard the company’s offices from anti-nuclear protesters.

This week, TEPCO released documents showing it was dealing with three simultaneous nuclear meltdowns, while reassuring people the fuel rods were safely intact in all the reactors.

“Why did it take two months to get to this point?” demanded a Wednesday editorial in the Nikkei business newspaper.

“Even a rough calculation of conditions inside the reactors would have helped in choosing the best response.”

Public confidence was shaken further when it emerged engineers at Fukushima were so unprepared for the disaster, they had to scavenge flashlights from nearby homes and used car batteries to try to reactivate damaged reactor gauges.

Nobody with an ounce of sense is criticizing the workers at the plant for their reaction to an earthquake that was far in excess of the design for the reactors, or a tsunami that was much higher than anything the designers had foreseen. Shit happens, and it was the daily double of fantastically unlikely natural disasters that struck the plant.

The company, however, deserves more than just a light dusting of shame for the way they appear to have been actively preventing the real state of the plant becoming known to the international nuclear community and the national government. A nuclear disaster is everyone’s business, and there were resources available to TEPCO that they signally failed to draw upon. Saving face is not an acceptable reaction to this kind of catastrophe.

May 20, 2011

Only one high speed rail line in the world is profitable

Filed under: Economics, Government, Japan, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

Babbage looks at the economics of the various high speed railway lines both in service and planned:

Of all the high-speed train services around the world, only one really makes economic sense — the 550km (350-mile) Shinkansen route that connects the 30m people in greater Tokyo to the 20m residents of the Kansai cluster of cities comprising Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto and Nara. At peak times, up to 16 bullet trains an hour travel each way along the densely populated coastal plain that is home to over half of Japan’s 128m people.

Having worked for many years in Tokyo, with family in Osaka, your correspondent has made the two-and-a-half hour journey on the Tokaido bullet-train many times. It is clean, fast and highly civilised, though far from cheap. It beats flying, which is unbearably cramped by comparison, just as pricey, and dumps you an hour from downtown at either end.

The sole reason why Shinkansen plying the Tokaido route make money is the sheer density — and affluence — of the customers they serve. All the other Shinkansen routes in Japan lose cart-loads of cash, as high-speed trains do elsewhere in the world. Only indirect subsidies, creative accounting, political patronage and national chest-thumping keep them rolling.

California’s planned 800-mile high speed rail route cannot possibly earn a profit, for many reasons (not least of which is that the first segment of the network won’t even run high speed trains until the entire system is built). It’s going to cost an eye-watering amount of money even to build that first section:

Between them, the federal government, municipals along the proposed route and an assortment of private investors are being asked to chip in $30 billion. A further $10 billion is to be raised by a bond issue that Californian voters approved in 2008. Anything left unfunded will have to be met by taxpayers. They could be dunned for a lot. A study carried out in 2008 by the Reason Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association put the final cost of the complete 800-mile network at $81 billion.That is probably not far off the mark. Last week, the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office came out with a damning indictment of the project’s unrealistic cost estimates and poor management. The bill this legislative watchdog put on the first phase of the high-speed rail project alone is $67 billion — and higher still if the project runs into trouble gaining route approval in urban areas.

If the latter number is correct, then the first phase of the system is clocking in at nearly $1 billion per mile. And this is the “cheap” section running through mostly thinly populated farming areas. If, somehow, the more expensive sections of the planned network don’t cost much more, the total construction bill will top $800 billion. The original plan had the entire system costing $43 billion.

Cost overruns are an expected part of major government construction projects, but that’s insane.

May 18, 2011

China facing recession?

Filed under: China, Economics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:03

At risk of setting my hobby horse to full gallop, reports like this one are starting to sound a few mild alarms about the real state of China’s economy. But accepting official Chinese government statistics like this isn’t going to help:

The Chinese central bank has responded to overheating in its economy by raising interest rates four times since October 2010. Inflation has subsequently cooled, slowing to 5.3 percent in April, but the economy is still roaring with a 9.7 percent increase in gross domestic product for the first quarter.

The rate moves have raised questions about whether the government is going too far to slow things down, and whether the country can accomplish its desired transition from an export-driven economy to growth based more on internal consumption.

As I’ve said several times before, you can’t trust these kinds of numbers because they’re not independently generated from reliable data. They’re numbers that range from kinda-sorta in the same ballpark as reality all the way out to the lower stratosphere. The people providing the numbers are subject to rather more risk than just losing their jobs if they displease the government. Honesty is not a virtue when your life may depend on providing the “right” answer.

As Monty puts it:

I’ll keep hammering this point as long as I’m able: The Chinese “economic miracle” is mostly a sham. The Chinese are awash in cheap Western money, essentially, and when that money dries up (which it is doing right now), the Chinese don’t have much of a domestic market to fall back on. Plus, in case anyone forgot, they’re still run by Communists who don’t really believe in that whole “capitalism” thing.

I’ve ridden this hobby horse many times before. I don’t doubt that I’ll be riding it many times again in the future.

May 15, 2011

US had prepared to fight Pakistan over Bin Laden raid

Filed under: Asia, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:16

Strategy Page reports that the US military had made contingency plans to cover Pakistani military intervention in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden:

On May 2nd, the United States was prepared to go to war with Pakistan. The American raid on that day, which killed Osama bin Laden and seized a huge mass of al Qaeda data from his Pakistani hideout, was carried out without informing Pakistan beforehand. Although Pakistan had years earlier agreed that the U.S. could enter Pakistani territory in hot pursuit of terrorists fleeing Afghanistan, or to grab high ranking al Qaeda leaders, it was always assumed that the U.S. would let the Pakistani military know what was coming. But because the Pakistani government was full of bin Laden fans, the U.S. did not inform Pakistan about the raid until it was underway. Apparently, that message included a reminder that if the U.S. troops in the bin Laden compound were attacked by Pakistani forces, there would be instant, and far-reaching, consequences.

The extent of those consequences have since been pieced together, from unclassified information. By May 2nd, the U.S. had assembled a huge naval and air force in the region, that was pointed at Pakistan. This force would attack any Pakistani troops or warplanes that went after the U.S. forces in the bin Laden compound, or who might be able to do so. The U.S. had assembled three aircraft carriers, hundreds of air force aircraft in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, and dozens of helicopters, and thousands of troops, in Afghanistan. Most of these troops didn’t know what they were alerted for. Such alerts happen all the time, often for no reason (as far as the troops are concerned.) But this time, as word of the bin Laden raid got out, it became obvious (at least to those who know how these things work) that the alerts throughout the region were to prepare for the possible need to quickly get the American raiders out, and destroy any Pakistani forces that sought to interfere.

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