For the lack of an effective transportation system some nations exist in near total isolation, without any rational means for transporting goods and food, except by dirt trail truck transports that are cost prohibitive for any large scale use.  There remains an immense amount of work that needs urgently to be done just to eradicate the worst poverty in the world.  To say that we don't need industrialization to create the needed infrastructures, is a scam.  It is a scam designed to enhance poverty and depopulation.

Efficient transportation infrastructures are urgently needed on a global basis as a backbone to support secondary economic development.  The validity of this statement is evident in the historic development of societies which first established themselves alongside of rivers that offered easy transport capability.  Much of Russia grew up alongside the Volga river, so it seems.  In today's world, the initial role of the river based transport system needs to be recreated, and this on a larger scale, by a world-wide high speed rail network that connects Africa, China, Asia, Europe, and the Americas into one single network.  To a small degree, this is already happening.  Two such projects are under active development, today.

One of these, which is nearly completed, is a rail and road link that will connect Norway and Sweden across Denmark to the transportation grid of central Europe.  The project is made up of two parts.  One part connects the Danish islands of Zealand and Fuenen across the 13 Km wide narrows of the Storebaelt.  This crossing includes an 8 Km long railway tunnel and the longest off-shore suspension bridge in the world with a span of over 1,600 meters.  The second part connects the Danish Capital of Copenhagen to the Swedish city of Malmoe across a 16 Km bridge tunnel combination which links the two cities into the largest integrated urban center in Scandinavia with a population of over 3 million people.

The second major infrastructure project that is also under active development and is partly completed, is the so-called Eurasian Land-Bridge development project.  It consists of a rail link infrastructure that, since 1992, connects China with western Europe across central Asia.  It gives many of the central Asian countries an economic access to the world which they never had before.  Presently, the railway technologies involved are in large parts still primitive, but they are being upgraded.  Two more of these Eurasian land links are presently in the planning stage: One on these is to stretch across the north of Asia and Russia, and another through the south across Indonesia, India, Pakistan, and Iran, connecting into Africa and Europe.

Another major rail connection is under consideration that would link China with North America.  It is presently on the long term drawing board.  A 85 Km railway tunnel would be dug under the waters of Bering Strait.*(According to an engineering study by Hal B. H. Cooper, Jr., Phd, P.E. - Planning Coordinator, Washington Association of Rail Passengers, Seattle, Washington)

Through the construction of both the Eurasian and the Bering Strait links, a development corridor would become established that no only provides fast long-distance transport, but more importantly, enables the economic development of the surrounding regions.  It becomes the driver for world-wide industrialization and development.

This is what will happen, because it has to happen for the development of the world.  This is not a choice.  Only the timing is left as a choice.

At the hub of this development network, which is going to be built sooner or later, sits China.  China is therefore of tremendous importance to the whole world.

China happens to be not only the most populous nation on earth, it is also in the midst of the most ambitious internal development effort ever undertaken by any nation on the planet earth.  As a modern-nation state, China has over 10,000 major infrastructure projects in progress and planned.  They include the creation of 200 brand new cities over the next 20 to 30 years.  In the short term, till about 2010, China plans to build 45,000 Km of new railway (doubling its present length to 90,000 Km).  It has plans to provide 14 cities with a subway system in this time-frame; to create 11,000 Km of new highways; to build 100 new airports and equally as many new sea and river ports.  In 2010 China will also complete its Three Gorges Dam project as the first phase of the largest water development project ever undertaken, anywhere.  When completed, the project will irrigate the dry north of the country and enable new agricultural development in an area that is equal in size to all of Germany.  Of course, the Three Gorges Dam also provides flood control.  The latest flood of the Yangtze river had devastated 33 million hectares of farmland, destroyed 800,000 houses, damaged an additional 2.8 million homes, and killed a thousand people.  The nation will be safe from this type of danger after 2010.  The Three Gorges project will also make the Yangtze river navigable for an additional 700 Km and provide electric power equal to that of 13 large nuclear power plants.

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Stories about  Love from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche