A look at the future (it’s already here, but it’s not in the USA)

Summary:  Compare and contract this key difference between China and America.  Between future prosperity and failure.

(1)  Infrastructure in America

From the executive summary of “The 2009 Report Card for American Infrastructure”, published by the the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE):

The 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure grades 15 categories of infrastructure, including a new category: levees. For the second time, America’s infrastructure rates a cumulative grade of D. While not all categories fare as badly or are plagued by the same problems, delayed maintenance and chronic underfunding are contributors to the low grades in nearly every category. 

Update:  “Third world America“, Macleans, 14 September 2010 — “Collapsing bridges, street lights turned off, cuts to basic services: the decline of a superpower.”

(2)  Infrastructure in China

From “China: A future on track“, Financial Times, 23 September 2010 — Photo of the new railroad station in Wuhan (central China):

Other posts about China

1. Power shifts from West to East: the end of the post-WWII regime in the news, 20 December 2007
2. What you probably do not know about China’s food crisis, 21 April 2008
3. China becomes a super-power (geopolitical analysis need not be war-mongering), 9 July 2008
4. Words to fear in the 21st century: Lǎo hǔ, lǎo hǔ, Lǎo hǔ, 14 July 2008
5. A different perspective on the US and China, seen by an American living in Russia, 23 March 2009
6. China – the mysterious other pole of the world economy, 22 July 2009
7. Another big step for China on its road to becoming a great power, 27 July 2009
8. Will China collapse?, 5 August 2009
9. A revolution is not a dinner party. Thoughts about the future of China, 19 August 2009
10. Today’s hot rumor: Fisk’s story about a conspiracy to wreck the US dollar, 6 October 2009
11. Update about China: a new center of the world, 13 December 2009
12. Fertilizer overuse destroying Chinese soil, 18 February 2010
13. Rare earths – a hidden but strategic battleground between the US and China, 5 May 2010
14. Today’s example of the inscrutable mystery of China’s economic statistics, 13 May 2010
15. How China builds its commercial empire, 12 July 2010