At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
It’s not like the Chinese aren’t listening when President Obama and Mitt Romney accuse them of stealing American jobs, subsidizing exports to the U.S., and cheating on the real value of the yuan. They hear the critique and they’re annoyed for good reasons. But if the president and Romney really want to address China as a threat to the U.S., they ought to be talking about a different set of issues, like the resource-wasting, pollution …
Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist, yesterday described the confrontation between population growth and water in China, arguing that a nation developing as fast as that one is bound to hit big economic and ecological impediments. For readers of Circle of Blue, where I serve as senior editor and a global correspondent, this is not a new thought. In fact, in recent months we’re seeing lots of fresh evidence that the groundbreaking reporting we’ve …
Urumqi, the largest city in the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region, last year opened a 42-kilometer bus rapid transit network, fueled by natural gas and composed of three lines and 55 station stops. It’s a beautiful thing in a traffic-jammed city with risky levels of air pollution. Photo/Keith Schneider URUMQI — The first time we boarded the bright orange articulated Line 3 buses of this desert city’s year-old Bus Rapid Transit network, we got lost. As an …
On a still Aoshawei Bay, lines of marine shellfish bouys stretch shore to shore. Photo/J. Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue QINGDAO — At dawn the surface of Aoshawei Bay is a grid of black spots, line after line, straight as the rays of the rising sun, from one shoreline to the other. The spots are bouys that support the submerged platforms and thick netting that grow scallops and clams, oysters and mussels, and enclose immense …
China plans a 16,000-kilometer high-speed rail network. Already, 13,500 kilometers have been built, including the line between Beijing and Qingdao. Photo/J.Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue QINGDAO — It’s 670 kilometers, about 420 miles, between Beijing and this Pacific coast city of glass towers, 10-lane boulevards, sandy beaches, and 8 million metropolitan residents. On China’s high-speed white and blue bullet train, the trip takes four hours and 20 minutes. Whoosh! In the United States, meanwhile, the …
Though no longer a New York Knick, Jeremy Lin is a brand in China as big as this building sign in Qingdao. Photo/Keith Schneider QINGDAO — Granted I’ve spent decades loving the New York Knicks, even though they’ve been hapless for over a decade. Plus, I’m convinced the NBA is the most exciting sports league in the world. Yet even with such personal predilections, it’s easy to argue that the best story in America this …
China’s steady growth relies, in part, on its capacity to build new rail lines, a transportation option available here in Beijing and throughout the country. Photo\Keith Schneider BEIJING — The Bureau of Labor Statistics, one of the U.S. government’s marvelous data gathering groups, has spents months making public facts about job and business growth that tell an unexpected story about the American economy. Two of the biggest generators of new jobs and rising incomes in …
Bravo to Aaron Dennis, Jacob Wheeler, and all the rest of the Run Across Palestine crew for producing an event and a piece of courageous journalism that matters to the world. In The People & The Olive, a 70-minute documentary that received its premiere Monday night in Traverse City’s downtown State Theatre, Aaron and Jacob join camera, reporting, and story-making skills to explore the dangerous irony of a native people, Palestinian olive farmers, walled off …
Luke Patterson, the 31-year-old pilot of the towboat Mike Weisend. Photo © Keith Schneider PADUCAH, KY. – On a mile-wide reach of the Ohio River, just upstream from where it converges with the Mississippi, Ray McKinney, the 54-year-old first mate aboard the Mike Weisend, a year-old towboat, pounds the slack out of steel cables that lash 15 barges together in a long tow headed upriver. The heavy pipe in his hands, and the tangle of …
The farm fields and rolling hills near Ludington, Michigan, sport new decoration now: big wind turbines that take advantage of the gales of nearby Lake Michigan. Consumers Energy, Michigan’s statewide utility, is constructing the $235 million, 56-turbine, 100-megawatt Lake Winds Energy Park with Danish-designed Vestas equipment, some of which arrives in Mason County by rail. The winter white towers and turbine blades soar above orchards, forest, and cropland, powerful sentinels of Michigan’s capacity to reckon …
