United States about to get run over by a Chinese train

Those of us old enough to remember saying, “Ah, made in Japan,� implying something made cheaply and quickly, came to regret our lack of appreciation for the desire of Japan to become an engineering nation capable of making things better than we make them here. Anyone bought a U.S.-made electronic entertainment piece of equipment lately? Yes, RCA, Zenith and others were the best TVs in the world in 1960. Now they are as dead as the dodo.

How did Japan pull this off? By financing their renaissance off the back of U.S. buying power. In short, we bought the cheap goods because they were less expensive and, in the process, financed their economic boom. There is nothing unfair about that. Free trade, open markets, is all about allowing Americans to buy what they want, to make the decisions Americans want to make. Even if it is short-term thinking.

While we are all stuck with airport security slowing down air travel, while we subsidize airlines during difficult periods (for example, post-9/11), we never take the time to study what alternatives there should be for national security, the good of the U.S. economy and, never least, the environment. While we remain myopic, the Chinese, our current target for “Ah, made in China,� are moving ahead using the profits they make from Americans, once again, buying cheap over quality.

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First, a very short geography lesson: Look at maps of the United States and China, same scale (try Google maps). The countries are almost the same size.

Next, look at China’s expanding high-speed rail network. Trains criss-cross the country, traveling at 155 to 220 miles per hour. The schedule of this national (government) effort is for completion in 2020, just 10 years from now. In 10 years Americans won’t even have one train running this fast or far.

As a comparison, if these trains were ours, we’d have cheaper travel, going just as fast (when you add the time for travel to and from airports, airport security, delays, etc.), between New York and Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Washington, Atlanta, Houston, St. Louis, Boston, Denver, Dallas, New Orleans, Tampa, and on and on — oh, and Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. And we’d be making trains, not importing them.

So, which nation is the one planning toward the technological advances of the future?

Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.