Posted on 06/29/2011 5:49:01 AM PDT by Past Your Eyes
At a sprawling manufacturing complex here, hundreds of Chinese laborers are now completing work on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Next month, the last four of more than two dozen giant steel modules — each with a roadbed segment about half the size of a football field — will be loaded onto a huge ship and transported 6,500 miles to Oakland. There, they will be assembled to fit into the eastern span of the new Bay Bridge.
The project is part of China’s continual move up the global economic value chain — from cheap toys to Apple iPads to commercial jetliners — as it aims to become the world’s civil engineer.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Not sure if they call the Chinese workers “Coulees.” But they do call them EMPLOYED, unlike many of my friends and MILLIONS of fellow Americans!
Gee, I was under the impression that the San Francisco-Oakland was big on Unions and made in the USA.
So now they don't even have to get here....Amazing
My thoughts are aimed at the system...not the people.
It’s called Nation Building...How stupid we are!!
We could always put a tariff on imports, and level the playing field. But we know that’ll go over like a fart in church.
Dry wall for American homes, found to be emit gases that corrode electrical wiring... from China.
Screws, bolts, circuits, etc, for American military equipment, found to be defective... from China.
Now steel modules for an American bridge... from China!
Can anyone NOT see how this will eventually end?
It’s why I don’t go to church...I’m old...Uncontrollable!!
Look at those lights for your Christmas Trees “Made In China”....Guarantee you they have lead...Even says to wash your hands.
California decided not to apply for federal funding for the project because the “Buy America” provisos would probably have required purchasing more expensive steel and fabrication from United States manufacturers.
Built with high quality Chinese steel, no doubt. Note to self: use another bridge into town.
This is not simply, jobs Americans won't do or not enough skilled Americans to fill positions or Americans want cheaper goods.
These are lies that were continually pumped out to make palatable the notion of free trade.
Americans unknowingly, until recently it seems, have witnessed the greatest shift in global wealth in history.
We find it difficult as a nation to pull out of a recessionary cycle due in part to the lack of domestic manufacturing and export.
At my corp., fortune 100 tech, we've hired so many H1B visa holding Chinese, Taiwanese, Brazilians and Indians it'll make a mans head swim.
Lower wages on our soil. Go figure.
Next election cycle, folks ought to be bringing to the forefront the issue of REAL American manufacturing jobs.
How would this happen? Chime in guys.
My uncle owned a machine shop. He was buying steel from China in the ‘60s. US STEEL was a steal...Union I think.
The 60s? During the last years of Great Leap Forward - when Mao forced peasants off the farms to make "steel" in backyard shanties due to lack of production?
Or during the Cultural Revolution when those with higher education, including engineers, were herded out to work the fields?
In either case, how was that possible during years when the Cold War, national security and increasingly the Vietnam conflict (and then war) were taken seriously?
Didn't trade with China have to wait for Nixon-Kissenger in 1972 to open diplomatic relations and trade?
Even with allied countries, were not tariffs the norm during the 60s? Was not steel one of the industries then considered vital to national security and protected from foreign competition?
Re: Not sure if they call the Chinese workers “Coulees.” But they do call them EMPLOYED, unlike many of my friends and MILLIONS of fellow Americans!
That’s an old [Fumanchu era term] going back — going way back — to the old lumber jack gold rush days settler days of America... Now days, just like Wal-Mart-employees.cn, these steel-workers.cn most probably too are unionized and proud of their field of expertise. Hey, let’s look at it this way: It beats being a coal miner in this vast God forshaken community.
Re: any potential defects of this bridge can only be blamed on the on-site American who are monitoring the progress of the project, after all you only need to make the product as good as your clients demand...............
Hey! It’s probably well protected by Stakefarm & ShunLife and likes so if any of you ever go overboard unexpectedly while crossing this [ new .cn span http://www.people.com.cn/mediafile/pic/20110630/53/8779382310373900917.jpg http://www.people.com.cn/mediafile/pic/20110630/87/691753872027630591.jpg (Bridge building is an art. It’s not an annual LEGO’s competition) ] then you have every rights to call in a claim for whatever damages you may have incurred as a result of whatever mishap you may have went through.
Re: My uncle owned a machine shop. He was buying steel from China in the ‘60s. US STEEL was a steal...Union I think.
You telling me you are [the ChiCom guys of Mao’s days] who had [illegally ripped the steel bars, the steel gates, off of a my former [darling of a Chinese girl friend’s] folks home in .CN? I mean there were no mining others than coal and gold in .CN those days I was told. Therefore even the wok they cook with is precious commodity intended for the ambitious programs at the time. Now days however, they have rare earth to boot around. I mean what a difference a day makes.
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