I thought of that article immediately. On the other hand, how many automobile fatalities might be avoided if the U.S. built a high-speed rail network with the speed and insouciance (and perhaps a little less graft and corruption*) of the Chinese?

*Ha!

I am constantly reminded of how the west was won, with similar levels of shoddy construction, graft, environmental destruction, and breakneck development. We shouldn't be so smug; this was us, once, and not all that long ago. In fact, the US has always operated on a "just barely good enough to get the job done without falling apart except when it does" system; it's one of the reasons we became an economic superpower in the last century.

And remember: for every horror story about ersatz milk in China, there's one for mold taint in a Massachusetts drug factory; for every story about crappy railroad construction in China, there's a freeway bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

Great article, I highly recommend reading it. And every BFWM shopper shares a tiny bit of complacency with the problem.

Fnarf, I would put up US building/manufacturing standards over China's ANY day of the week. Comparing China's breakneck building (with today's technology) to ours in the Wild West is an absolute straw man.

That article was definitely an interesting view inside their system. Compelling read. I had no idea of the bureaucratic "exodus".... 18,000+? interesting.

@3, right, because American engineering and buildings never fail.

It just never happens here.

http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub…

Our standards are just too high.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/24/nyregi…

We're not like those third-world countries.

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?Dis…

We're better than them.

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?dis…

Not like those heathen Chinee.

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/TNBhistory/

Bonus Canadian engineering superiority:

http://matdl.org/failurecases/Bridge_Col…

Although, these accidents tell us about a different perspective on efficiency, we are reminded of the trillions thrown at development on so many fronts at once. No wonder our capitalists aren't too interested in investing here. That should also 'terrify' us.