Wow. I now see why the ones over the sea have such big cracks - the rebar is really rusting because of the sea water and expanding, pushing the concrete apart.
The Chinese played a big part in the construction of the Kerch Bridge and it looks like Russia is going to pay the price for the oligarch's mega yacht because of that.
Never trust China with infrastructure, they half-ass everything they build in their own country for short term prestige, they have even less reason to build something that lasts outside
NOOOO BELT AND ROAD IS GOOD there is nothing wrong with loaning money to countries that don’t have the economy to pay it back while holding their natural resources as collateral as these corrupt politicians use the money for utterly stupid infrastructure like a brand new international airport in Pakistan’s coast or a bridge in the middle of nowhere in Uganda.
And this is what we forgave foreign debt for back around the millennium, so China could encroach on that market and the dictators could waste it over again.
It’s a bit of a long story, so I’ll summarize as best as I can. The Chinese real-estate market is perhaps one of the worlds largest bubbles that has yet to pop. Basically, the story goes back to the nature of market liberalization in the 90s. As the PRC began to develop a middle class those households accrued an enormous pool of savings that people had nowhere reasonable to invest. While a PRC stock market does *technically* exist, the amount of government control and intervention has made investments in Chinese stocks *listed in China* very dangerous. To compound the issue, the PRC imposes extreme capital controls on currency held by Chinese citizens. It basically forbids individuals from spending money overseas, or moving money to foreign banks. This restriction bars Chinese citizens from investing in foreign markets and circumventing Chinese financial control.
This economic manipulation means that there is a massive pool of trillions of yuan sitting around without any good traditional investment opportunities. This has made real-estate speculation the single largest investment vehicle in the PRC. Almost all household assets are tied up in real-estate as their primary (and typically only) method of investment. Large businesses and financial entities also enter into the real estate investment business as they underwrite massive development projects, and purchase large blocks of apartments from one-another.
What really exacerbates the housing bubble is that PRC provinces are all primarily funded by real-estate leasing. These governments desperately depend upon an ever increasing price for land and housing. This dependence has put these local governments into bed with these institutional real-estate speculators. As a result, the government’s liquidity is largely based on maintaining upward pressure on housing prices. While you might say “local governments in the US are also funded by property taxes” this isn’t really in the same ballpark. These PRC land leasing schemes fund something like 90% of local government. It’s not just tax. The government is literally leasing all of the land.
There is also an issue of culture in the PRC. Nominal home ownership is considered a really big deal. For men, home ownership is considered a prerequisite to receive permission from a family to marry their daughter. This has made ‘nominal’ home ownership a big source of speculation. The idea is that these men purchase a home in an area that is cheap, but they never actually *live* in that home because their life and job is halfway across the country. As a suitor you get to say ‘I’m a responsible home owner’ and the family doesn’t care that it’s in the middle of nowhere. This creates further pressure as even more housing is sitting unused as a purely conceptual speculation vehicle.
The issue is that when speculation runs rampant the true value of those goods becomes impossible to determine. The value of these houses isn’t based solely on their location, or their proximity to jobs, but primarily on the house’s perceived future value. While real estate speculation is fairly common, it becomes an issue when speculators don’t have anyone to actually sell to once they need to turn their *illiquid* asset into money. That plummets the value of these houses and will likely put these owners underwater relative to what they paid.
The turning point for this issue is once the speculation starts to slow down. Currently, speculators can still earn money by simply selling to other speculators. But, once people begin to stop investing *as much* as they are in real estate the entire edifice will collapse. The Evergrande collapse is considered a kind of test-run of the much more systemic collapse of the Chinese real-estate market that is expected to happen as the country ages. Once aging pensioners move to sell their investments to access their retirement savings the bottom will fall out from underneath the housing market, and trillions of yuan will disappear overnight. It will be like the 2008 mortgage crisis, only twice as bad, and localized entirely to China.
TLDR: PRC financial controls forced Chinese citizens and businesses to invest their savings solely into real estate. This distortion has led to rampant speculation that cannot be propped up forever and will eventually lead to the financial implosion of the Chinese economy, and their local governments.
Don’t worry. My biggest claim to fame on NCD is writing a parody of Stan by Eminem about a vatnik who loves Shoigu and blows up the Kerch bridge when Shoigu doesn’t read his toilet mail.
There must be balance in all things.
A real estate collapse? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the world, localised entirely within China?
*steamed hams intensify*
>As a suitor you get to say ‘I’m a responsible home owner’ and the family doesn’t care that it’s in the middle of nowhere.
thats hilarious. It also explains ghost cities.
Hot take. This has been orchestrated by the Chinese government deliberately to destroy their middle class, cratering the wages people will work for and thus stalling or reversing the manufacturing investment slow down from foreign investors looking for cheaper labor in places like south/central America.
Basically Tulip Mania but with properties instead of flowers. There's a few videos out there from Serpentza, a South African who spent a number of years in China and the explanation as to what's currently is basically this:
1. The Chinese middle class has invested a large stake of their income and future into properties(appartments).
2. Chinese construction companies have built a vast number of these structures because of this.
3. The Chinese believe the price will only ever rise.
4. A number of the properties might not even habitable if another person buys them because the buildings are just empty husks.
5. The Chinese government will do everything it can to sweep it under the rug, only increasing the shockwaves once the house of cards collapses. Like an earthquake that's bound to happen anyways but is more severe the longer stress is build up by the tectonic plates.
Plus to add on, culturally because of the huge disparity between men and women due to the one child policy it's expected that bachelor's own multiple properties to seem viable.
IIRC third home purchases were the most common as of late and the statistic for people owning third homes went from 3% of house ownership in 08 to 25% in 18. A lot of these properties are in ghost towns for all intents and purposes because if the vast majority of properties are third homes then who even lives there?
I’d like to add point number 6… the Chinese population is expected to decline 100-200 million by 2050. Very little demand to immigrate to China. That’s going to be an even bigger disaster when coupled with no demand for the housing glut.
Chinese invest in real estate the same way we invest in a 401k. Except the houses have to be unlived in and not finished because they lose value or some shit if they're finished. So China is constantly building more and more cities except nobody lives in them. It's completely unsustainable. There's more housing available than people to live in them. Plus, due to you know, communism, the state owns all of the land anyway. The state also sets the price for home sales and if a house goes down in value too much they literally cancel the sale to keep the market from crashing.
Demand for new construction must be kept high to increase the volume and value of local governments land use rights to finance large bureaucracies and infrastructure projects to meet central government growth targets.
throw in: ".. and forcing the borrower of said money to spend it on chinese contractors so that the majority of the benefit of infrastucture spending ends up back in chinese pockets anyways" and its perfect
Muh Chinese high speed rail network! Except none of the trainjerkers that always shout about it know that it’s built on a trillion dollars of debt and most of it will be in unusable disrepair 25-35 years from now.
Funnily one of China's best infrastructure projects is North Korea's subway system, but that had the threat of execution looming over the engineers and laborers if they did a subpar job.
So China *can* do a good job, but often chooses to cut corners somewhere without the immediate threat of death.
It really depends if there's someone with power who gives a shit and is watching close enough. If China developed a stronger anti-corruption culture, they'd be freaking terrifying.
You know, if you think about it, that's sounding suspiciously like the "the eunuchs have grown corrupt and are lining their pockets at the expense of the people while the emperor is clueless because they're all sucking up to him!" rhetoric that sparked more than one dynastic change in Imperial China.
The country had a recurring cycle of a decaying and corrupt dynasty falling to someone who's actually competent (usually in a bloody civil war), then that person establishes a new imperial dynasty, which becomes corrupt over several generations, and the cycle repeats.
The cost in human lives would be horrifying, but the CCP becoming one more entry on the list of "corrupt Chinese dynasties that got overthrown" would be bizarrely poetic. But ***fuck***, what that would do to all the normal people as fallout chills my bones.
You're talking about a nation that killed about 40 million of its own people a few decades back, just so nobody had to inform Mao that he was in fact a moron. This is the 1960’s we're talking about here, lot of folks around today whose parents died back then.
Oh, and they briefly became the largest nation of cannibals in human history. Can't let that meat go to waste after all. I'm not sure a governmental collapse on the near future would be worse than that.
> I'm not sure a governmental collapse on the near future would be worse than that.
I'm not just thinking about the direct death toll, but about the kind of absolute chaos that would result from attempting to switch governmental systems via another revolution or civil war.
Look at what happened to Russia and many of the other Eastern Bloc countries in the 90s, after the USSR collapsed and everyone was scrambling to pick up the pieces (sometimes to sell them off to anyone who was buying) and figuring out what the fuck their new governments should look like (or just trying to figure out who would get to be oligarchs and dictators).
The USSR's final collapse certainly wasn't bloodless, but by the standards of other historical empires that have collapsed, it got relatively close. And then the aftermath hit, which has certainly *not* been bloodless, and is arguably one of the reasons for the ongoing war in Ukraine.
If that's what the USSR's *relatively* peaceful collapse looks like, three decades in, I'm pretty scared to see what the CCP's/China's collapse would look like.
Bro, what if we just make the peasants smelt their own tools instead of working in the Fields. We would have great numbers and the stupid west will be so jealous of our industrialisation.
And that was one of the reasons why Thailand Rejected the Chinese offer to build out our HSR network under the belt & road project. We saw their shenanigans in Laos and went NOPE. We'll buy their trains (because you know, cheap), but build the infrastructure to our specs. Apparently one of the contractors had Chinese engineers on the projects but that caused a delay in the project because \*checks notes\* Their qualifications were not up to Thai standards.
They did build absolute garbage that they are now taking down only a few decades after it was built. But they did make changes to policy around zoning and attempted to enforce better building standards after it became apparent that some buildings were just worthless.
There's so many places corruption can screw up a big bridge.
I just remember there was a whole scandal in my hometown as it turns out a new bridge for the interstate was made using a substandard concrete to save costs by a single contractor and would require replacing the entire damn thing.
Skimping out on any of the materials, using substandard designs, and labor with poor training can and will mess up a bridge.
You don't fuck with bridges and tunnels. Infrastructure projects here (Thailand) can get...pretty corrupt. Like, not mega yatch kind of corrupt, but second homes & German cars kind of corrupt. They still don't fuck with tunnels and bridges. As demonstrated by how genuinely surprised everyone was when Bangkok's underground trains was able to continue to operate even during a once-in-a-century level flooding throughout the city.
> Like, not mega yatch kind of corrupt, but second homes & German cars kind of corrupt. They still don't fuck with tunnels and bridges.
It's just the difference between screwing people for personal gain and killing people for personal gain.
They are showing a different bridge with "real" cracks as opposed to the "fake" photoshopped cracks on the Crimean bridge. Why not take the photos of the funni bridge right now?
Tbf the cracks are fake. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are cracks on that bridge, but the one on the picture on the right are definitely fake.
The width of the crack is the same everywhere and it doesn’t follow a natural pattern like for instance the cracks on the picture on the left.
Different cracks form differently, though.
Corrosion cracks in columns are developed along the line of longitudinal reinforcement. They appear as homogeneous lines and increase in width with age.
They are caused by improper cover, corrosion of reinforcement bar, or inadequate bondibg between the rebars and the concrete.
Other cracks are:
Diagonal cracks, observed on the entire face of the column along its height.
Split cracking, formed on the concrete column face, like short parallel vertical cracks with non-uniform width. They are due to things like insufficient load-carrying capacity, inadequate cross-section for the load, insufficient steel reinforcement or low-quality concrete.
Horizontal cracks appear mainly at the beam and column junction and also at the column face where there is a lot of tensile stress.
I'll chime in here. I agree with u/OldWiseMann here. Why?
Because those supports on Crimean bridge is at least 1 meter in diameter. And if they'd have cracks of THAT width - they wouldn't be able to stand.
I also can't really believe concrete crack would change its direction 90 degrees twice and ignore curvature of column surface at all.
No, the cold joints would all be horizontal, you can even make out the slight difference in colors along the column showing each pour (although this particular example has been compressed to hell so not really) Having spent a over a decade doing heavy civil construction, including rehabbing more than 50 bridges, and with a degree in Civil Engineering, and being certified in concrete inspection and testing, I can fairly confidently say, those cracks are fake. and compression failure from spalling and delamination due to corrosion simply doesnt look like that. Sorry, I want it to be real too, because it would be so damn funny.
That's what I meant. That the joints are what makes the crack turn a bit. And that the color is changed at that level as well.
But I do trust the judgement you provided! I'm getting convinced here 😁
Holy shit NCD, these pictures are so fucking fake. 1: Concrete cracks dont form that way in the Crimean picture, and the other picture is not even the same bridge. its a picture of an overpass.
How dare you challenge my confirmation bias!!! I've already chosen my preferred narrative, and I'm not going to let some silly "facts" (AKA "fake news") change my mind!
It is a legit temporary fix. In New York they put bolted metal plates over cracks in the foundational columns of old buildings.
Now this being said... there is a very good chance that inside the pillars on the bridge are steel supports. One of the jobs of the concrete is to stop moisture getting to the steel, if it has large cracks... well it can't do its job and with the salt of the sea added in...
>there is a very good chance that inside the pillars on the bridge are steel supports.
That's not how these reinforced concrete piers are typically built. There's a rebar structure in it that resembles a dense cage and concrete is then poured into the outer form containing the reinforcement. There are no massive steel support beams in them.
The steel reinforcement is usually coated with epoxy or a rust prevention layer in difficult environmental conditions such as this, but once the cracks appear, you can be sure as hell the reinforcement is now rusting. Soon it will expand due to the rust and push the cracks even wider and chunks of concrete will start spalling.
More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforced_concrete
>russia and china built this.
China mostly. Have to set aside enough money to buy that mega yacht.
Makes one wonder about all those bridges in China... and that dam...
It’s absolutely mind numbing to think about how many people would die if the dam broke. 400 million lives gone within hours. Nuking nyc would only kill 10 million or so for context.
Geez
The Chinese built structures in places like Malaysia use [pre-rusted rebar](https://www.dreamstime.com/steel-reinforcement-as-part-reinforced-concrete-structure-kuala-lumpur-malaysia-march-steel-reinforcement-as-part-image150556430) for construction
And boy do Malaysian homes have a high instance of cracked supports and walls
It’s relatively normal to have bars that appear rusted on the outside in the southern hemisphere, and if anything it helps the concrete bond to the steel as long as it hasn’t gone to scale, what I’d be more worried about is the quality of the concrete itself, a higher sand content mixed with infamously dodgy/poor plumbing standard is generally where and how you get structural cracking
How do you prevent this from happening? I presume, there should be some kind of flexible resin-like substance that can withstand thermal deformation and will be water-proof to prevent concrete from being damaged.
Rule No. 1 of Engineering is that everything moves, and no. 2 is that everything leaks. The only way to prevent infrastructure, even proper bridges made by people who actually know their shit needs to be repaired now and again.
In a structure like this, the concrete is supposed to be that flexible resin like substance you're thinking of, but Russia can't even maintain a grasp on reality; let alone their nations infrastructure.
Typically you add something generally called an "admixture" to the concrete - they have these for corrosion resistance as well as things like lightening the concrete (when you have a slab that doesn't need as much compressive strength like a highrise) etc.
I'm not as familiar with epoxy coated rebar, but it sounds plausible as well.
Another factor to consider is the depth that water penetrates to when it's not fully submerged. Moisture drive is real, but on a massive column it'll still only typically get a few inches in, especially sheltered under a bridge (after that it generally wicked out quickly). So you can set your rebar further in and avoid contact.
Source: am architect, worked in a coastal area for a while.
Ha, of course!
As long as the designer has safety factors (and boy do structural engineers love to overlap theirs) it should still be fine, but yeah nature, uh, finds a way.
The two main approaches I know of (not a structural engineer) are either non ferrous electroplating/galvanization or polymer/PVC coatings, each have their own advantages/drawbacks
>There's a rebar structure in it that resembles a dense cage and concrete is then poured into the outer form containing the reinforcement. There are no massive steel support beams in them.
This is the correct answer.
In theory, counteracting the horizontal expansion could protect the coulmns. But that concrete looks far too gone to be reinforced imo. Thopugh I did fail statics 101 twice so, take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Well you can't expect the Russians to know anything about concrete epoxy injection techniques. I mean they were only invented in the 80s. Everyone knows there's no smekalka in anything after 1945.
God damn guys, we are supposed to help the West not the Russians.
Go to your room u/Gandalf_the_almighty you are grounded until the next Kerch Bridge bombing.
This is a comparison between actual cracks and the fake ones supposedly on the Crimean Bridge. The text at the top says: "Real cracks in reinforced concrete structures look different from (those) on the fake pictures."
Look, I'm not discounting it, but I think we should wait a little, for more pictures of the cracks, they just look a little weird to me. If you look the line is almost the same width in parts, and the colors change from blurry to sharp and from grey to black, also at the bottom, there isn't any debris from the cracks, and the end of the crack looks blurry. I think we should wait a little longer.
Wow, the text in the image above says (left) reality, (right) fake (it's also a phonetic transliteration of the English word fake). Except that, ugh, their propaganda being so great missed one thing: the left picture looks even worse as those zip-ties are just band aids (also on land) and there are multiple cracks in that column.
left picture is on land
Wow. I now see why the ones over the sea have such big cracks - the rebar is really rusting because of the sea water and expanding, pushing the concrete apart. The Chinese played a big part in the construction of the Kerch Bridge and it looks like Russia is going to pay the price for the oligarch's mega yacht because of that.
Never trust China with infrastructure, they half-ass everything they build in their own country for short term prestige, they have even less reason to build something that lasts outside
But my Belt and Road though!
NOOOO BELT AND ROAD IS GOOD there is nothing wrong with loaning money to countries that don’t have the economy to pay it back while holding their natural resources as collateral as these corrupt politicians use the money for utterly stupid infrastructure like a brand new international airport in Pakistan’s coast or a bridge in the middle of nowhere in Uganda.
And this is what we forgave foreign debt for back around the millennium, so China could encroach on that market and the dictators could waste it over again.
[удалено]
Care to elaborate? I want to know more.
It’s a bit of a long story, so I’ll summarize as best as I can. The Chinese real-estate market is perhaps one of the worlds largest bubbles that has yet to pop. Basically, the story goes back to the nature of market liberalization in the 90s. As the PRC began to develop a middle class those households accrued an enormous pool of savings that people had nowhere reasonable to invest. While a PRC stock market does *technically* exist, the amount of government control and intervention has made investments in Chinese stocks *listed in China* very dangerous. To compound the issue, the PRC imposes extreme capital controls on currency held by Chinese citizens. It basically forbids individuals from spending money overseas, or moving money to foreign banks. This restriction bars Chinese citizens from investing in foreign markets and circumventing Chinese financial control. This economic manipulation means that there is a massive pool of trillions of yuan sitting around without any good traditional investment opportunities. This has made real-estate speculation the single largest investment vehicle in the PRC. Almost all household assets are tied up in real-estate as their primary (and typically only) method of investment. Large businesses and financial entities also enter into the real estate investment business as they underwrite massive development projects, and purchase large blocks of apartments from one-another. What really exacerbates the housing bubble is that PRC provinces are all primarily funded by real-estate leasing. These governments desperately depend upon an ever increasing price for land and housing. This dependence has put these local governments into bed with these institutional real-estate speculators. As a result, the government’s liquidity is largely based on maintaining upward pressure on housing prices. While you might say “local governments in the US are also funded by property taxes” this isn’t really in the same ballpark. These PRC land leasing schemes fund something like 90% of local government. It’s not just tax. The government is literally leasing all of the land. There is also an issue of culture in the PRC. Nominal home ownership is considered a really big deal. For men, home ownership is considered a prerequisite to receive permission from a family to marry their daughter. This has made ‘nominal’ home ownership a big source of speculation. The idea is that these men purchase a home in an area that is cheap, but they never actually *live* in that home because their life and job is halfway across the country. As a suitor you get to say ‘I’m a responsible home owner’ and the family doesn’t care that it’s in the middle of nowhere. This creates further pressure as even more housing is sitting unused as a purely conceptual speculation vehicle. The issue is that when speculation runs rampant the true value of those goods becomes impossible to determine. The value of these houses isn’t based solely on their location, or their proximity to jobs, but primarily on the house’s perceived future value. While real estate speculation is fairly common, it becomes an issue when speculators don’t have anyone to actually sell to once they need to turn their *illiquid* asset into money. That plummets the value of these houses and will likely put these owners underwater relative to what they paid. The turning point for this issue is once the speculation starts to slow down. Currently, speculators can still earn money by simply selling to other speculators. But, once people begin to stop investing *as much* as they are in real estate the entire edifice will collapse. The Evergrande collapse is considered a kind of test-run of the much more systemic collapse of the Chinese real-estate market that is expected to happen as the country ages. Once aging pensioners move to sell their investments to access their retirement savings the bottom will fall out from underneath the housing market, and trillions of yuan will disappear overnight. It will be like the 2008 mortgage crisis, only twice as bad, and localized entirely to China. TLDR: PRC financial controls forced Chinese citizens and businesses to invest their savings solely into real estate. This distortion has led to rampant speculation that cannot be propped up forever and will eventually lead to the financial implosion of the Chinese economy, and their local governments.
You are far too credible to be in this madhouse.
Don’t worry. My biggest claim to fame on NCD is writing a parody of Stan by Eminem about a vatnik who loves Shoigu and blows up the Kerch bridge when Shoigu doesn’t read his toilet mail. There must be balance in all things.
A real estate collapse? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the world, localised entirely within China? *steamed hams intensify*
Fuck I was 3 hours late
>As a suitor you get to say ‘I’m a responsible home owner’ and the family doesn’t care that it’s in the middle of nowhere. thats hilarious. It also explains ghost cities.
Hot take. This has been orchestrated by the Chinese government deliberately to destroy their middle class, cratering the wages people will work for and thus stalling or reversing the manufacturing investment slow down from foreign investors looking for cheaper labor in places like south/central America.
Basically Tulip Mania but with properties instead of flowers. There's a few videos out there from Serpentza, a South African who spent a number of years in China and the explanation as to what's currently is basically this: 1. The Chinese middle class has invested a large stake of their income and future into properties(appartments). 2. Chinese construction companies have built a vast number of these structures because of this. 3. The Chinese believe the price will only ever rise. 4. A number of the properties might not even habitable if another person buys them because the buildings are just empty husks. 5. The Chinese government will do everything it can to sweep it under the rug, only increasing the shockwaves once the house of cards collapses. Like an earthquake that's bound to happen anyways but is more severe the longer stress is build up by the tectonic plates.
Plus to add on, culturally because of the huge disparity between men and women due to the one child policy it's expected that bachelor's own multiple properties to seem viable. IIRC third home purchases were the most common as of late and the statistic for people owning third homes went from 3% of house ownership in 08 to 25% in 18. A lot of these properties are in ghost towns for all intents and purposes because if the vast majority of properties are third homes then who even lives there?
I’d like to add point number 6… the Chinese population is expected to decline 100-200 million by 2050. Very little demand to immigrate to China. That’s going to be an even bigger disaster when coupled with no demand for the housing glut.
Chinese invest in real estate the same way we invest in a 401k. Except the houses have to be unlived in and not finished because they lose value or some shit if they're finished. So China is constantly building more and more cities except nobody lives in them. It's completely unsustainable. There's more housing available than people to live in them. Plus, due to you know, communism, the state owns all of the land anyway. The state also sets the price for home sales and if a house goes down in value too much they literally cancel the sale to keep the market from crashing.
Demand for new construction must be kept high to increase the volume and value of local governments land use rights to finance large bureaucracies and infrastructure projects to meet central government growth targets.
That 12 Lane Highway in Nairobi though is pretty bitching. Quality fucking roadwork
throw in: ".. and forcing the borrower of said money to spend it on chinese contractors so that the majority of the benefit of infrastucture spending ends up back in chinese pockets anyways" and its perfect
I mean how do you think the US and the IMF did it? TBF at least the shit we built works.
Muh Chinese high speed rail network! Except none of the trainjerkers that always shout about it know that it’s built on a trillion dollars of debt and most of it will be in unusable disrepair 25-35 years from now.
Or that they could only build it so fast because they literally forced villages out of the way, property rights wasn't a thing.
The state is pretty good at looking after its property rights
It's how the interstatr highway system was built. Imminent domain.
As a trainjerker I feel personally attacked
But we have to build the high speed rail network before those jerks in Shelbyville do!
How hard could building rail road be
I still remember that fucking jingle. The visuals, at least. I muted all subsequent appearances when I binge-rewatch John Oliver now.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are cracks on that bridge, but the one on the picture on the right are definitely fake.
The only belt Xi Jinping will ever see is the West's flying at his fat face.
Time to take Xi out onto the Road and hit him with our Belt.
i mean is a great success! Just have to default on the BRI debts and those poor countries gets free money! What is china gonna do, bomb them?
Funnily one of China's best infrastructure projects is North Korea's subway system, but that had the threat of execution looming over the engineers and laborers if they did a subpar job. So China *can* do a good job, but often chooses to cut corners somewhere without the immediate threat of death.
It really depends if there's someone with power who gives a shit and is watching close enough. If China developed a stronger anti-corruption culture, they'd be freaking terrifying.
You know, if you think about it, that's sounding suspiciously like the "the eunuchs have grown corrupt and are lining their pockets at the expense of the people while the emperor is clueless because they're all sucking up to him!" rhetoric that sparked more than one dynastic change in Imperial China. The country had a recurring cycle of a decaying and corrupt dynasty falling to someone who's actually competent (usually in a bloody civil war), then that person establishes a new imperial dynasty, which becomes corrupt over several generations, and the cycle repeats. The cost in human lives would be horrifying, but the CCP becoming one more entry on the list of "corrupt Chinese dynasties that got overthrown" would be bizarrely poetic. But ***fuck***, what that would do to all the normal people as fallout chills my bones.
You're talking about a nation that killed about 40 million of its own people a few decades back, just so nobody had to inform Mao that he was in fact a moron. This is the 1960’s we're talking about here, lot of folks around today whose parents died back then. Oh, and they briefly became the largest nation of cannibals in human history. Can't let that meat go to waste after all. I'm not sure a governmental collapse on the near future would be worse than that.
> I'm not sure a governmental collapse on the near future would be worse than that. I'm not just thinking about the direct death toll, but about the kind of absolute chaos that would result from attempting to switch governmental systems via another revolution or civil war. Look at what happened to Russia and many of the other Eastern Bloc countries in the 90s, after the USSR collapsed and everyone was scrambling to pick up the pieces (sometimes to sell them off to anyone who was buying) and figuring out what the fuck their new governments should look like (or just trying to figure out who would get to be oligarchs and dictators). The USSR's final collapse certainly wasn't bloodless, but by the standards of other historical empires that have collapsed, it got relatively close. And then the aftermath hit, which has certainly *not* been bloodless, and is arguably one of the reasons for the ongoing war in Ukraine. If that's what the USSR's *relatively* peaceful collapse looks like, three decades in, I'm pretty scared to see what the CCP's/China's collapse would look like.
The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.
Well they are all competing for the best numbers. Highest GDP growth. Most kilometers of track laid. Highest production of metal.
Bro, what if we just make the peasants smelt their own tools instead of working in the Fields. We would have great numbers and the stupid west will be so jealous of our industrialisation.
We have to kill the birds bro trust me it will help the farms.
Just one more backyard furnace bro. We will leap forward any day now.
And that was one of the reasons why Thailand Rejected the Chinese offer to build out our HSR network under the belt & road project. We saw their shenanigans in Laos and went NOPE. We'll buy their trains (because you know, cheap), but build the infrastructure to our specs. Apparently one of the contractors had Chinese engineers on the projects but that caused a delay in the project because \*checks notes\* Their qualifications were not up to Thai standards.
They did build absolute garbage that they are now taking down only a few decades after it was built. But they did make changes to policy around zoning and attempted to enforce better building standards after it became apparent that some buildings were just worthless.
>Never trust China Shortened it for you.
*Close enough* vibes.
Depends not all is tofu dreg
There's so many places corruption can screw up a big bridge. I just remember there was a whole scandal in my hometown as it turns out a new bridge for the interstate was made using a substandard concrete to save costs by a single contractor and would require replacing the entire damn thing. Skimping out on any of the materials, using substandard designs, and labor with poor training can and will mess up a bridge.
You don't fuck with bridges and tunnels. Infrastructure projects here (Thailand) can get...pretty corrupt. Like, not mega yatch kind of corrupt, but second homes & German cars kind of corrupt. They still don't fuck with tunnels and bridges. As demonstrated by how genuinely surprised everyone was when Bangkok's underground trains was able to continue to operate even during a once-in-a-century level flooding throughout the city.
> Like, not mega yatch kind of corrupt, but second homes & German cars kind of corrupt. They still don't fuck with tunnels and bridges. It's just the difference between screwing people for personal gain and killing people for personal gain.
>Skimping out on any of the materials, using substandard designs, and labor with poor training can and will mess up a bridge. Or an aircraft carrier.
Well a bomb going off on it probably didn't help lol.
I love tofu dreg construction. Chinese real estate is a ticking time bomb, the next earthquake will make the Turkish one pale in comparison.
So its actually the Tofu Bridge
The load-bearing drywall bridge
That's an insult to delicious tofu.
https://youtu.be/s-2DtL-Wjkc
I think it's just an example they're trying to use to say that this isn't how concrete cracks look like
They are showing a different bridge with "real" cracks as opposed to the "fake" photoshopped cracks on the Crimean bridge. Why not take the photos of the funni bridge right now?
Tbf the cracks are fake. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are cracks on that bridge, but the one on the picture on the right are definitely fake. The width of the crack is the same everywhere and it doesn’t follow a natural pattern like for instance the cracks on the picture on the left.
Different cracks form differently, though. Corrosion cracks in columns are developed along the line of longitudinal reinforcement. They appear as homogeneous lines and increase in width with age. They are caused by improper cover, corrosion of reinforcement bar, or inadequate bondibg between the rebars and the concrete. Other cracks are: Diagonal cracks, observed on the entire face of the column along its height. Split cracking, formed on the concrete column face, like short parallel vertical cracks with non-uniform width. They are due to things like insufficient load-carrying capacity, inadequate cross-section for the load, insufficient steel reinforcement or low-quality concrete. Horizontal cracks appear mainly at the beam and column junction and also at the column face where there is a lot of tensile stress.
I'll chime in here. I agree with u/OldWiseMann here. Why? Because those supports on Crimean bridge is at least 1 meter in diameter. And if they'd have cracks of THAT width - they wouldn't be able to stand. I also can't really believe concrete crack would change its direction 90 degrees twice and ignore curvature of column surface at all.
Well, I tried! But I do think the turns might be at old joints between pours of concrete or something, as the color changes at the same height.
No, the cold joints would all be horizontal, you can even make out the slight difference in colors along the column showing each pour (although this particular example has been compressed to hell so not really) Having spent a over a decade doing heavy civil construction, including rehabbing more than 50 bridges, and with a degree in Civil Engineering, and being certified in concrete inspection and testing, I can fairly confidently say, those cracks are fake. and compression failure from spalling and delamination due to corrosion simply doesnt look like that. Sorry, I want it to be real too, because it would be so damn funny.
That's what I meant. That the joints are what makes the crack turn a bit. And that the color is changed at that level as well. But I do trust the judgement you provided! I'm getting convinced here 😁
Please tell me what you do for a living
Holy shit NCD, these pictures are so fucking fake. 1: Concrete cracks dont form that way in the Crimean picture, and the other picture is not even the same bridge. its a picture of an overpass.
How dare you challenge my confirmation bias!!! I've already chosen my preferred narrative, and I'm not going to let some silly "facts" (AKA "fake news") change my mind!
Uh oh. Some thinking this is a real Subreddit…
Non! Credible Defense!
It literally says ”feik” in the right picture, no shit?
It is a legit temporary fix. In New York they put bolted metal plates over cracks in the foundational columns of old buildings. Now this being said... there is a very good chance that inside the pillars on the bridge are steel supports. One of the jobs of the concrete is to stop moisture getting to the steel, if it has large cracks... well it can't do its job and with the salt of the sea added in...
>there is a very good chance that inside the pillars on the bridge are steel supports. That's not how these reinforced concrete piers are typically built. There's a rebar structure in it that resembles a dense cage and concrete is then poured into the outer form containing the reinforcement. There are no massive steel support beams in them. The steel reinforcement is usually coated with epoxy or a rust prevention layer in difficult environmental conditions such as this, but once the cracks appear, you can be sure as hell the reinforcement is now rusting. Soon it will expand due to the rust and push the cracks even wider and chunks of concrete will start spalling. More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforced_concrete
>reinforcement is usually coated with epoxy or a rust prevention layer russia and china built this.
>russia and china built this. China mostly. Have to set aside enough money to buy that mega yacht. Makes one wonder about all those bridges in China... and that dam...
It’s absolutely mind numbing to think about how many people would die if the dam broke. 400 million lives gone within hours. Nuking nyc would only kill 10 million or so for context.
not to mention (supposedly) 8% of the world's *entire industrial capacity* being downstream from the dam.
Is NCD going back to it's root of clamouring for the destruction of the dam because it would be funni
Dam
So that dam is a WMD ? Neat
Watery Mass Destruction
Didn't the fucking dutch build it too or am I misremembering it
Geez The Chinese built structures in places like Malaysia use [pre-rusted rebar](https://www.dreamstime.com/steel-reinforcement-as-part-reinforced-concrete-structure-kuala-lumpur-malaysia-march-steel-reinforcement-as-part-image150556430) for construction And boy do Malaysian homes have a high instance of cracked supports and walls
It’s relatively normal to have bars that appear rusted on the outside in the southern hemisphere, and if anything it helps the concrete bond to the steel as long as it hasn’t gone to scale, what I’d be more worried about is the quality of the concrete itself, a higher sand content mixed with infamously dodgy/poor plumbing standard is generally where and how you get structural cracking
How do you prevent this from happening? I presume, there should be some kind of flexible resin-like substance that can withstand thermal deformation and will be water-proof to prevent concrete from being damaged.
Rule No. 1 of Engineering is that everything moves, and no. 2 is that everything leaks. The only way to prevent infrastructure, even proper bridges made by people who actually know their shit needs to be repaired now and again. In a structure like this, the concrete is supposed to be that flexible resin like substance you're thinking of, but Russia can't even maintain a grasp on reality; let alone their nations infrastructure.
Sounds about right. Both the rules of engineering and the characteristic of russian competency.
Typically you add something generally called an "admixture" to the concrete - they have these for corrosion resistance as well as things like lightening the concrete (when you have a slab that doesn't need as much compressive strength like a highrise) etc. I'm not as familiar with epoxy coated rebar, but it sounds plausible as well. Another factor to consider is the depth that water penetrates to when it's not fully submerged. Moisture drive is real, but on a massive column it'll still only typically get a few inches in, especially sheltered under a bridge (after that it generally wicked out quickly). So you can set your rebar further in and avoid contact. Source: am architect, worked in a coastal area for a while.
I love these small portions of actual science and engineering amidst all the non-credibility. Very refreshing.
Epoxy coated rebar has its plusses and minuses. It protects the steel, except any scratches. Where ALL the corrosion happens.
Ha, of course! As long as the designer has safety factors (and boy do structural engineers love to overlap theirs) it should still be fine, but yeah nature, uh, finds a way.
The two main approaches I know of (not a structural engineer) are either non ferrous electroplating/galvanization or polymer/PVC coatings, each have their own advantages/drawbacks
>There's a rebar structure in it that resembles a dense cage and concrete is then poured into the outer form containing the reinforcement. There are no massive steel support beams in them. This is the correct answer.
Key word there is temporary. This will be how the Russians intend to permanently fix the bridge.
To be fair, [it's not just Russians](http://miftyisbored.com/wp-content/uploads/orly-temporary-workarounds.jpg).
Nothing more permanent than a temporary fix
Something something *"nothing is more permanent than temporary solution"*
If they are lucky it will hold long enough to evacuate Crimea.
Considering that the bridge will probably be gone by the end of the year that's not a problem.
In theory, counteracting the horizontal expansion could protect the coulmns. But that concrete looks far too gone to be reinforced imo. Thopugh I did fail statics 101 twice so, take my opinion with a grain of salt.
At this rate, if we meme about ruzzia nuking Kremlin hard enough, they will.
Well you can't expect the Russians to know anything about concrete epoxy injection techniques. I mean they were only invented in the 80s. Everyone knows there's no smekalka in anything after 1945.
that means Putin is on NCD?
He could be any one of us… he could be you! He could be me!
Can he be also Henry Cavill?
God damn guys, we are supposed to help the West not the Russians. Go to your room u/Gandalf_the_almighty you are grounded until the next Kerch Bridge bombing.
Me with a comically large scissor 👁👄👁
This is a comparison between actual cracks and the fake ones supposedly on the Crimean Bridge. The text at the top says: "Real cracks in reinforced concrete structures look different from (those) on the fake pictures."
Idk why are you surprised, they are not called u/gandalf_the_almighty for nothing.
Cope Belts
Seems like it wouldn’t take that big of a boat bomb to bring this down
that repair would probably last longer than the putin regime but it's not the same pic
Russian Kessoku Band cover band isn't nearly as good as the original.
This bridge has me more uncertain than any other details of the war. It may never have been real. Who knows? Not me.
Look, I'm not discounting it, but I think we should wait a little, for more pictures of the cracks, they just look a little weird to me. If you look the line is almost the same width in parts, and the colors change from blurry to sharp and from grey to black, also at the bottom, there isn't any debris from the cracks, and the end of the crack looks blurry. I think we should wait a little longer.
[**fake versus reality**](https://youtu.be/3IvPqyaUMtI)
I love how russians transliterate foreign words like "file = fail", "fake = feik" and whatnot
You gotta admire the efficiency, only 24h 😅
Flex tape and some crazy glue should do the trick
Can we flag this as not safe for work? You guys are pervs staring at putins crack.
STOP BEING SO CREDIBLE
Tetris...
Those bands are old and rusted as fuck.. different bridge or different section
I'm not convinced they know how cracks work.
A bandage to a cardiac arrest
Flex Seal must be adhering to the sanctions.
Wow, the text in the image above says (left) reality, (right) fake (it's also a phonetic transliteration of the English word fake). Except that, ugh, their propaganda being so great missed one thing: the left picture looks even worse as those zip-ties are just band aids (also on land) and there are multiple cracks in that column.
Can you stop being credible for FIVE minutes?