A China motivated by fear is sparing no effort to spend money to boost the ecopomy.
An NYTimes article reports that China is furiously pouring concrete and laying rails. A $17.6 billion passenger rail line across the deserts of northwest China, a $22 billion web of freight rail lines in Shanxi province in north-central China and a $24 billion high-speed passenger rail line from Beijing to Guangzhou in southeastern China. Extra spending is also slated for practically every town, city and county across the country.
The combined national, provincial and local spending for economic stimulus promises to change the face of China, giving the country a world-class infrastructure for moving goods and people quickly, cheaply and reliably across great distances.
Policy makers “are already in a mode of panic,” said Qu Hongbin, the chief China economist at HSBC, even before the new numbers were released. “They’re going to spend like there’s no tomorrow.”