Siemens-Alstrom

Hawkeye10 said:

I follow truth where ever it goes, as should you.

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Cool story, bro!

:thumbs:

Hawkeye10 said:

Well lets start at the top....we now have secret courts and secret laws.

This was not part of the plan.

I never said ok.

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FISA courts are "secret" as a matter of security clearance, not in the sense that we don't know they exist or what specifically they do. Would you like a list of all the rules and regulations for a FISA court? It's available online, as are any and all declassified documents. Are you trying to construe FISA courts as dark, unknown and nefarious? Haha, pathetically ignorant.

There are no secret laws; that's crazy talk.

So, you haven't lost any freedom.

Hawkeye10 said:

I follow truth where ever it goes, as should you.

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I deeply distrust people who claim that they are the ones who know "the truth" in a discussion - see "Truthatallcost" ;o)

ecofarm said:

China is a paper tiger. When it institutes human, civil, labor and environmental rights, it will fracture and cease to exist as a unified nation.

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I dunno...
There's been lots of incarnations of China, and there's lots of ethnic rivalries and resentments, but I suspect China will always be unified when dealing with gwailo.

ecofarm said:

China is a paper tiger. When it institutes human, civil, labor and environmental rights, it will fracture and cease to exist as a unified nation.

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Grand Mal said:

I dunno...
There's been lots of incarnations of China, and there's lots of ethnic rivalries and resentments, but I suspect China will always be unified when dealing with gwailo.

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Current Chinese leadership certainly know and understand Chinese history and the rise, and downfalls of various past "unified" Chinese states, into warring factions. I expect one of the biggest fears is the devolution of the Chinese state into various warring states. Which is why the Chinese state does so very often promote movies that tend to promote a unified China. Going back into its history hundreds of years ago. At this point in time however, enough Chinese people still remember the poverty of China of 30+ years ago (still many areas that are in poverty) that they are rather happy with the current state of China. That said the current Chinese government is at most going to introduce local voting for local leadership. It is not going to give power to the people. This situation I can not see changing much over the next 20 years. Only when those who are about 20 or younger right now start to gain positions of power could the potential for dramatic change occur. IE those that did not see what China was like in the early to mid 90s but only grew up in times of prosperity. That said, I doubt the people of the east coasts of China, will want to share political power with the poorer western parts of China

german hick said:

I deeply distrust people who claim that they are the ones who know "the truth" in a discussion - see "Truthatallcost" ;o)

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I deeply distrust both those who claim that there is no truth and those who seem to make no effort to follow it.

I, OTH, distrust (deeply as well) those who start a thread on what they are clearly uninformed upon, present some hair-brained theory over the whys and whats of what they're spouting over, and then profess their confusion in holding their own truths to represent actually factual assessment.

To then (thus increasing general puzzlement on what reason might at all exist for this thread) wander off into pseudo-philosophical musings that have nothing to do with either Ahlstom (which they clearly can't spell properly, either) or Siemens, let alone the merger of the railway sector of both.

Seeing how this is not about building a new bullet train, one cannot even assume already demonstrated general spelling confusion to have led to thinking this is about a Zen railway issue.

Since the above train is spelled Shinkansen and not Shinkanzen.

What the fact that China's CRCC is currently the biggest (or at least second biggest) train builder in the world has to do with the PRC coming down on the West like a ton of bricks, is something the most meditative of Bhuddist monks will probably wonder over.

Or, more probably, prefer not to.

As much (or little) as over the purpose of this thread.

:roll:

I have not been on the European rail network but I have in the Chinese one a few years ago. The were very clean and comfortable with more space than flying economy. At that time the top speed was limited to 200 kph they have bumped up the speeds to 300 k.

Lord Tammerlain said:

I have not been on the European rail network but I have in the Chinese one a few years ago. The were very clean and comfortable with more space than flying economy. At that time the top speed was limited to 200 kph they have bumped up the speeds to 300 k.

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Only one I've ever been on in China was the "Maglev" (magnetic levitation) train that connect Shanghai airport to the city itself (although not its centre), taking around 8 minutes for the 30 km stretch. Tops speed is 430 kph but on that short stretch the speed is held for only around a minute before the slow down phase is entered again.

German development that never made it to the market and cost the taxpayer a bundle, the Germans were really glad to finally be able to flog it to someone else with China being the only taker.

Whether the Chinese simply bought it in order to get hold of the technology or wanted the prestige factor (possibly both), the whole thing is utter folly even where it is a hi-tech breakthru.

But the track needs to be completely dedicated, needs to be totally away from any other traffic (i.e. on stilts in cities) and needs to be cleared in winter from snow and ice and sandstorms like China boasts at all times of the year.

IOW too many hang-ups for high speed long distance and too inefficient for short stretches between stations.

Both France's TGV and Germany's ICE do 300 kph or more by now but only on dedicated tracks. The construction of those only making sense in say distances of 500 km upwards, preferably with no other stopping point en route.

And even then France's Paris - Marseille (around 800 kms) takes over 3 hours where Germany's conceivably longest stretch (Hamburg-Munich = abt. 1000 kms) is not "dedicated" all along the way.

The French had the good sense of working "parallel", i.e developing both train and tracks more or less at the same time.

Germany is still lagging in that respect.

Finally both will be definitively swallowed by Chinese, western industry has not any chance against Chinese giant. Not now, probably later, in ten or twenty years.