i doubt that is the true reason. From a historical point of view, china has been the center of migrations for uncountable times during the course of its existance. next to that there were hostile migrations from Mongolia, Manchoureja (or whatever it's spelled) and soforth. Mongolians and Manchous have assimiliated with the Chinese during particular dynasty periods.
Geographically spoken, there are immens densities in cities like Hebei, Beijing, Shanghai, and soforth because, in all, China might be huge, it itsn't entirely inhabitable either. This forces people to move to area's more to the north and north east, creating a large density of habitants while other area's are virtually deserted.
Then there is the demographical aspect which, indeed, has everything to do with "excessiev child-protection". But that phenomenon is not exclusive to China ...
in any case, if china runs out of coal, the first thing they'd do, imo, is approach the sovjet union through communist connections.
i don't know much about the Dam, but for all i know, that's quite a discussed "issue" in China. The incredible amount of people that have to be evacuated from the area and the destruction to nearby nature and all that.
Reputation: 677They will just ****ing import it (buy it duh), like everyone else does...
Every first world country satisfies a big portion of their coal need out of imports, because it is cheaper for them in many cases and solves many problems in flexibility issues, just like that one.
China just hops that train because of its inefficiency in technology.
As coal is basically a widespread resource that is nearly equally found everywhere, they would hardly oppose any but the smallest defenceless neighbour for a conflict, world-war scenarios make hardly any sense.
(However what sense would that make? They aren't able to satisfy their needs out of their own resources, how would they think that it might work better somewhere else?)
I wonder how this news is front-page worthy.
It's all just a question of efficiency, which is a problem that is going to outlive itself sooner or later and the gap is easily bridgeable, because a big portion (maybe the biggest) of the energy usage is payed by foreign money and the only domestic impact of the worst case scenario is that the economy might go down; As they keep the wages down forcefully just to hinder that, they might be able to actually more likely increase the general living standards, once they see that the golden cow has jumped out of the window again.
Anyone know the GPD share of energy in China, because I suspect that it's under-represented beforehand and things like this are just "the pain" of an economy in the healing, not dieing process.
Reputation: 24
Reputation: 677Hardly; First because they would initiate some kind of place-holding conflict, secondly because the vast unpopulated areas, in a direct confrontation, won't allow any of the parties to gain strategic control, whilst the winters will force them to a halt of some weary front in the nowhere.
Then they would call it quits and negotiate the same borders as before; a boring gambit.