The blind leading the blind into the ditch. China is not our friend.
HE ASSOCIATED PRESS September 27, 2010, 1:08PM ET text size: TT
GE enters venture to make wind turbines in China
DETROIT
General Electric Co. said Monday it will team with Harbin Electric Machinery Co. to make electricity-generating wind turbines for Chinese customers.
The deal will help GE compete in China’s $13 billion wind-generated power market, which is the world’s largest and is expected to grow 500 percent by 2020, GE said in a statement.
China’s electricity demand is growing at 12 percent a year, and the government is supporting renewable energy policies, GE’s statement said. The support played an important role in GE’s decision to invest in the joint venture, it said.
GE will own 49 percent of the venture, while Harbin Electric Machinery will hold 51 percent. The new venture will make GE-designed wind turbines for near shore and offshore use in China, the statement said. Other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Harbin Electric Machinery is a subsidiary of Harbin Power Equipment Co. The companies have been partners since 2004 on gas turbines in China. Harbin Electric was the first power equipment company in China in 1949, the statement said.
Shares of GE fell 16 cents, or 1 percent, to $16.50 in midday trading.
But Obama is China's friend. The rumor is that the Chinese will seek to purchase a very large stake in the revamped GM when it goes public, at bargain basement prices, sometime after the November elections.
when the chinese copy ge tech they’ll shunt ge aside.
“The blind leading the blind into the ditch. China is not our friend.”
You just don’t understand FRiend. Doesn’t matter if China is our friend or not. Doesn’t matter if we screw American workers to move factories to China. Doesn’t matter if our security is compromised by allowing China to be the sole supplier of critical goods.
What matters is that a business will make more money in China because they can pollute without restriction, not worry about worker safety at all, and pay 30 cents an hour.
Bottom line is the bottom line.
(Ok, so the national security thing can be an issue, and wrecking the world’s largest consumer market has been problematic. And trying to recover from a recession with a much reduced manufacturing base is kind of tough. Product quality can be horrible at times. But none of that matters... trust me. It’s a global market).
There are some problems ~ some of them are simply the metalic residue of the radioactive decay of the element thorium. Some of them are found with thorium (which is still radioactive). Others are tightly bound in electrochemical bonds with other stuff.
They use both magnetic and gravity processes to separate rare-earths from ore.
So, anyway, the stuff is everywhere, it's cheap as dirt (it is dirt), and it's DIFFICULT to extract ~ either due to the chemistry involved or the radioactivity!
Plans are afoot to use the rare-earth extraction process debris in thorium reactors.
The Chinese are cutting back on production because of the radioactivity ~ time to clean it up and start over.
They'll probably be off-line for a decade or so. In the meantime we have cleaned up a mine in the US and it will reopen in 2011. There are others out there in various stages of preparation.
I see many of my fellow Freepers lining up for these rare-earth mining ventures, right?!? Hey, guys ~ jus' a little radioactivity among friends ~ ain't no thang!