Shenzhen, Communist China’s poster-city planned to take over Hong Kong as a financial hub for the command economy has a BIG problem… And it is not just the cost of housing in China.
Bloomberg is reporting the cost of an apartment in Shenzhen is equal to 43.5 times a resident’s average annual salary. However, they are not reporting the size of the apartment (you can bet it’s not large).
David Bowie speaks to Jeremy Paxman on BBC Newsnight (1999)
Pop icon David Bowie, 11 years ago speaking about the internet as the biggest opportunity, and the worst imaginable nightmare, in the 21st century.
Continue reading “What the 21st Century is Going to Be All About”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland called the post-Covid recovery ‘Our Moment to Change the Future for the Better.’ The West Coast Charrette explores 4 shelf-ready actions that will transform Canada’s metropolitan regions.
Fourteen professionals, educators, community activists and editors contributed to this response to rising house prices, and the Covid shut-down of the economy.
The second post in the series about ending the 25-year+ Housing Affordability Crisis in Greater Vancouver. Discussion here led to completing the West Coast Charrette.
[T]he Surrey-Langley Skytrain business plan depends on increased ridership along the route, and ridership depends on greater residential development, which in turn is dependent on population growth, which in Metro Vancouver is fuelled largely by immigration.
It is hard to decide what is more ‘improbable’, the quote above suggesting that immigration is fuelling Skytrain ridership, or the photo at the top showing Skytrain as the right technology choice for a Regional Transportation System.
Continue reading “Ending the Vancouver Housing Crisis: A Farewell to Skytrain-and-Towers”
If there is one take-away from the 2009 Financial Crisis, and the 2020 Covid-19 Crisis, it is that when the appellation ‘crisis’ attaches to an event, it is a signal for government to act. The Vancouver Housing Crisis demands action. Council: End the Housing Crisis!
Vancouver Council voted on 27 May 2020 to take a new look at the population growth assumptions behind a plan to over-build Stats Canada projections by 250%. Watch my video presentation to Council.
Continue reading “Ending the Housing Crisis: Recalibrating the Vancouver Housing Strategy”
The ‘Usual Suspects’ have lined up to deliver Subway-and-Towers along what they call the ‘Broadway Corridor.’ Yet, what is really needed is a Regional Transit System capable of delivering a rapid supply response putting houses-on-lots in sufficient numbers to End the HOUSING CRISIS.
There is an affordable, sustainable—and immediately available—option for a Regional Transit System linking the North Shore, Vancouver, Surrey, Chilliwack and places in between that must be considered as a first priority in the Metro Vancouver-Fraser Valley regions (shown as a Blue Line in the map above).
On 30 October 2019 Secretary Of State Mike Pompeo laid out the full agenda of concerns the U.S. has with Communist China
The CCP and PRC—the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China—are not to be regarded as one and the same as the freedom loving people of China and people of Chinese origin living in communities throughout the world.
We’ve seen governments with ideologies like this before. The CCP is a Marxist-Lenninist regime that has been practicing for too long a win-lose approach in engaging the West. More often than not the relationships have been lopsided in China’s favor. The reach and the methods China brought when it was invited to joint the international community have created grave problems that can no longer go unheeded.
“Collectively, all of us, need to confront these challenges from the PRC.”
Speaking just 21 days after Mike Pompeo presented what amounts to The Trump China Doctrine at a gala in New.York. Henry Kissinger cautioned against too much bravura.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, age 96
The architect of Detente between the U.S. and China in 1972, warned that the two sides had escalated a trade war into ‘the foothills of a Cold War’ speaking to Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum. Three weeks prior Kissinger had been seated at the head table at the Hudson Foundation Awards Gala where Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had delivered what many consider to be a reply to China’s President Xi speech celebrating the 70th anniversary of Communist rule in China.
Continue reading “On the Foothills of a Cold War with China”
‘Rocketman’ continues to play the part of Beijing’s Bad Boy.
Two years to the date when North Korea tested an ICBM that could reach all civilian and military targets in the continental United States, Kim fired two short-range ballistic missiles from its east coast. Japan reported the missiles traveled 250 miles reaching altitudes of as much as 60 miles. Since May, North Korea has fired about two dozen short-range ballistic missiles.
70% of eligible voters turned out from the early morning hours in Hong Kong to elect Democratic candidates in 16 of 17 elections.
The resounding defeat of Communist ideology delivered in Hong Kong’s local elections is said to have taken Xi and his government in Beijing completely by surprise. Hong Kong Administrator Lam, likewise, was left alternating between conciliatory and strong talk. The official media in Communist China failed to report the results, and in some cases even side-stepped mentioning the Hong Kong elections at all. The 16 of 17 result means that fully 94% of the elections tipped in favour of the second of the two systems ruling China: democracy and freedom. Also worthy of note is that the elections achieved what the Communist regime could not: it stopped the rioting in the streets.
Continue reading “Hong Kong Elections Leave Little in Doubt”
