China's American Dream ~ Growth Infographics!

As part of the China Rules series, Javier Hernandez and Quoctrung Bui write in the NYTimes that The American Dream Is Alive. In China...

"In a country still haunted by the Cultural Revolution, where politics are tightly circumscribed by an authoritarian state, the Chinese are now among the most optimistic people in the world -- much more so than Americans and Europeans, according to public opinion surveys. What has changed? Most of all, an economic expansion without precedent in modern history. Eight hundred million people have risen out of poverty. That’s two and a half times the population of the United States. [...] China used to make up much of the world’s poor. Now it makes up much of the world’s middle class."

Pearl Supercity ~ River Delta Conurbation!

The recent opening of world's longest (55km) sea-crossing bridge between Hong Kong + Macao + Zhuhai completes the southern connection linking a half-dozen Chinese megacities into a ~70M+ inhabitant supercity as Visual Capitalist shows...

R.I.P. Hans Rosling ~ Edutainer Extraordinaire

Pancreatic cancer has laid low Hans Rosling, the Gapminder co-founder and my favorite public health statistician and data edutainer extraordinaire.  He has many remarkable TED talks and other videos online, but I personally favor his appearance at TEDIndia speaking on Asia's Rise where he compares global growth over 200 years and predicts exactly when India and China converge with the rich!

Shenzhen ~ The Silicon Valley of Hardware

WIRED's Future Cities series spotlights Shenzhen ~ The Silicon Valley of hardware...

Rethinking the Map ~ Emergent US Megaregions

NYTimes piece by Parag Khanna on A New Map for America spotlights how the lower 48 could be realigned into seven megaregions...

"America is increasingly divided not between red states and blue states, but between connected hubs and disconnected backwaters. [...] Federal policy should refocus on helping these nascent archipelagos prosper, and helping others emerge, in places like Minneapolis and Memphis, collectively forming a lattice of productive metro-regions efficiently connected through better highways, railways and fiber-optic cables: a United City-States of America.  Similar shifts can be found around the world. Despite millenniums of cultivated cultural and linguistic provinces, China is transcending its traditional internal boundaries to become an empire of 26 megacity clusters with populations of up to 100 million each, centered around hubs such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing-Chengdu. Over time these clusters, whose borders fluctuate based on population and economic growth..."

Endless City ~ SURE's London Greenscraper...

Julian Robinson in the DailyMail spots SURE's Endless City...

"A giant skyscraper as tall as The Shard in London, built with its own complete ecosystem featuring offices, shops and 'huge' parks. London is the proposed city for the mixed-use tower, which would include interlinking ramps connecting different sections of the structure to create a 'vertical city' housing thousands. [...] different areas of the building would be linked by a series of bridges and walkways helping to 'increase exchanges, communications and interactions. It would include a raft of public spaces, entertainment zones and shopping areas to create a 'vertical city'. Residents would be able to walk up a series of interlinked ramps through vibrant streets, plazas, technological spaces and 'huge' parks in a 'complex and rich system like a real city'."

Phoenix Towers ~ Wuhan China's 1-Klick Ultratalls

NextBigFuture spotlights the Phoenix Towers...

"Designed by London-based Chetwoods Architects in partnership with HuaYan Group. The project will consist of two buildings, representing the male and female dualistic aspects of Chinese culture. The taller tower, Feng will have about 100 floors for residential living, offices and retail space. The slightly smaller Huang tower will contain "the World's tallest garden". The towers will be constructed on an island in a lake, covering a 7-hectare (17-acre) site. The buildings will be constructed on a steel superstructure with concrete cores and buttresses. The exterior will be covered in photovoltaic panels. The towers will incorporate green energy technologies including wind, solar, thermal, biomass boilers and hydrogen fuel cells [and] the world’s tallest garden."

FastCoDesign has in-depth piece looking Inside China's Plans For The World's Tallest (And Pinkest) Towers...

"In China there’s a lot of competition between cities trying to out-‘spectactularize’ the next city,” [...] Chetwood and his team embraced the mandate to design something grand while layering in symbols that speak to China’s cultural heritage and future aspirations. "They were looking to put Wuhan on the map," he says, and the original design for the mixed-use commercial and tourist hub "wasn't spectacular enough."

Big Steel Box ~ How Ship'n Containers Are Made!

Anish at MarineInsight answers How Are Shipping Containers Made? by pointing out this great video by the folks at Big Steel Box...

1M/km2 ~ HK's KWC Superdense Vertical Village!

VICE Motherboard takes A New Look at Kowloon Walled City, the Internet's Favorite Cyberpunk Slum...

"Borne out of longstanding tensions between the British and Chinese governments. It was spawned by the agreement, completed in 1898, to lease Hong Kong to the British for 99 years, which didn't include the Walled City [...] The result was a heavily isolated, ramshackle city-state. [...] The lack of outside support meant the Walled City was built on itself largely by itself, with commerce and industry mixed into itself as produced by a self-sufficient population. [...] Ingenuity was spawned by the city's isolation. There was little in the way of public services, meaning sanitation, public safety, and crime prevention were all the purview of locals. [...] The Kowloon Walled City continues to captivate people because of those problems, and its ills are also what make it such powerful inspiration for fictional portrayals of what's to come."

See WSJ's City of Imagination: Kowloon Walled City 20 Years Later... Plus definitely check out -- and please support financially -- the ambitious and timely City of Darkness Revisited book publishing project on Kickstarter by co-authors Ian Lambot and Greg Girard...

"We are working together again to produce City of Darkness Revisited, an all-new edition that will combine the best of the original book with several new sections that will fill in some of the gaps and bring the story up to date. We will explore the City’s dramatic architectural evolution from a near bare site in 1945 to a 17-storey megalith housing over 33,000 people at the time of its clearance. And we will explain the City’s unique legal and political status -- under two jurisdictions but effectively managed by neither -- and how this coloured every aspect of life there. A third theme will delve into the myths and realities of the Triads’ activities within the City and how these might -- or might not -- have been effectively policed. And finally we will describe how the influence of the Walled City has spread into popular culture worldwide, and how this has allowed interest in the City -- either as myth or physical reality -- to flourish."

And as extra bonus, Ian and Greg and friend Lisa point out Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, Urban Fabric -- Historic project prepared by Lia Tramontini, Haneen Dalla-Ali, Mona Dai, and Christopher Glebe...

Daredevil Photos ~ Skyscraper Climber Vistas...

Inhabitat spotlights daredevil Russian duo Raskalov Vitaliy and Vadim Makhorov and their photos of the under construction Shanghai Tower, the world's second tallest skyscraper...

Out Of Paper ~ Master Li Hungbo's Layered Art!

UD spots Paper Master Li Hungbo...

East African Railway ~ Kenya Starts Building...

The BBC writes Kenya launches new railway to reach South Sudan and Burundi...

"Kenya has formally launched a new, Chinese-financed railway which should extend across East Africa to reach South Sudan, DR Congo and Burundi. The first section will link the Kenyan port of Mombasa to the capital, Nairobi, reducing the journey time from 15 hours to about four. It is said to be the country's biggest infrastructure project since independence 50 years ago. The cost of the railway will be $5.2bn (£3.2bn) -- mostly funded by China. Some Kenyans have complained that the contract was given to the Chinese state-owned China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) without going to tender."

Subversive Currents ~ China Fears Seven Perils...

Chris Buckley in the NYTimes reveals that China's unelected and dictatorial Communist Party leadership fear that...

"...power could escape their grip [...] unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing through Chinese society."

These seven perils include...

• “Western constitutional democracy,” 
• Promoting “universal values” of human rights,
• Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation,
• Ardently pro-market “neo-liberalism,” 
•  “Nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past. 

Surely, however, any truly strong and legitimate authority fears no criticism, embraces shared values, and benefits from active citizen participation? Or do the so-called "leaders" of China fear the light of freedom and the true voice of the people?

New Routes ~ Asia-to-Europe Translogistics...

Costas Paris writes in the WSJournal that Ship Travels Arctic From China to Europe ~ Northern Passage Shaves Two Weeks of Travel Time Off Journey...

"China's Yong Sheng is an unremarkable ship that is about to make history. It is the first container-transporting vessel to sail to Europe from China through the Arctic rather than taking the usual southerly route through the Suez Canal, shaving two weeks off the regular travel time in the process. The 19,000-ton Yong Sheng, operated by China's state-controlled Cosco Group, left the port of Dalian Aug. 8 and is scheduled to reach Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, via the Bering Strait Sept. 11. The travel time of about 35 days compares with the average of 48 days it would normally take to journey through the Suez Canal and Mediterranean Sea."

Of course, things get even more interesting when you throw in the prospects of trans-Siberian railway links...

"So which routes have been tested? [...]

• Shanghai China to Duisburg Germany (18 Days) 
• Chongqing to Duisburg (16 Days) 
• Xiangtang, China, to Hamburg (17 Days) 

The freight lead times are very good in comparison to sea freight where the usual shipping time can be 36 days or more depending on the end location in Europe. The scale of the railway is immense as it crosses 11 time zones and more than 11,000 km."

Aspirant Nations ~ Mapping Separatists Regions...

China separatists... European separatists... Worldmap of separatists...

Murderous Mao ~ China's Evil Founder-Dictator...

So-called "Modern" China still worships their founder, the absolutely vile and evil mass-murder Mao Zedong. In addition to raping young virgins, this pedophilic verminous swine and his killer Communist Party regime have slaughtered at least 50 Million of his own Chinese people directly and millions more in Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, Taiwan, and other neighboring regions. And on this 60th Anniversary of the "end" of the Korean War, let's not forget that it was the illegitimate and vicious surprise Chinese assault against authorized UN forces which gave us the current "Lil Kim" idiot in-charge of North Korea. But most PRC Chinese citizen don't know this because their history has been whitewashed by the fearful, revisionist, and criminal Communist Party leadership -- Mao's minions -- still currently in control. Today's PRC is a corrupt evil dictatorship that doesn't deserve to be considered as a legitimate state -- indeed, their entire leadership starting from the top should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Hearken to the massive evidence...

City of Anarchy ~ Old Kowloon Infographic!

Mapporn spots Old Kowloon Walled City infographic! See also Kowloon Cross-Section!

Art of War ~ History.com on Sun Tzu's Strategies

History Channel spotlight's Sun Tzu's timeless Art of War...

Orient Excess? ~ AJ on China's People & Power

AlJazeera's People & Power channel shares Orient Excess about China's contradictions...

PICA ~ 2nd Language Learning on Kickstarter...

Video game entrepreneur Vicky Wu Davis shares the word of her PICA project on Kickstarter!

"PICA is a 2nd language learning tool for 3-6 year olds, teaching Chinese, French, Spanish and ESL through immersive play."