This article is written by Teafox
Source: Tea Fox Looks at the World
The article has been authorized by the author
In August, Chinese all over the world were overwhelmed by an old woman, with my knowledge of Americans and my observations of American public opinion. The reason behind it, in the final analysis, is that americans are "ignorant" and "arrogant" about China in their bones, and ignorance produces arrogance, and arrogance fuels ignorance. The United States misjudged itself, and it also misjudged China.
But then again, don't say that the Americans misjudged China, in fact, even Chinese may not really understand China. On the one hand, because China is too big, 9.6 million square kilometers, 1.4 billion people, everyone says they know their own country, but in fact, you only know your own surroundings. On the other hand, it is because China is changing too fast. As a Chinese, you must always be curious and have the courage to try in order to keep up with this fast-growing country, otherwise, if you are not careful, you will be disconnected.
Summer vacation is the ban on fishing in the East China Sea, I have not eaten fresh sea fish for a long time, the other day I had a whim, I wanted to buy a live fish. Sure enough, the sentence was fulfilled: China's Internet, you can't buy it, only you can't think of it.
The seller said the fish was deep-sea cultured and tasted somewhere between wild and normal farming. In most parts of the country, air freight arrives every other day, and the package is live! Don't live to refund money!
Such a confident tone, then I will believe you once!
A fish weighs a pound, with a total of 10.2 kilograms in packaging, shipped from Wenzhou, 300 kilometers away, and arrived the next day. Open the box, it is a foam box, which contains a plastic air bag, and between the foam box and the air bag, it is stuffed with ice packs, still keeping the temperature low. There was a fish in the air bag, lying upright, eyes fixed on me, grinning, looking dying.
Seeing this, I was a little disappointed, and not long after, the seller took the initiative to call and explained that at low temperatures, the fish seemed to be in hibernation, opening the air bag, and after the temperature slowly rose, the vitality would be restored.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before the fish was in my sink and started bouncing around! For me, the biggest selling point of this fish is not the taste, but the sense of ceremony and freshness.
Although I grew up by the sea, it was the first time I saw such a large sea fish, bouncing around in my own dishwashing trough. My wife grew up in the inland areas, and she has never seen such a scene, and her ordinary life adds a surprise.
The weather was too hot, and I didn't go out on weekends, so I cooked my own fish at home.
I put the video in the WeChat circle of friends, judging from the message, most people have no experience of shopping for live fish online.
A friend of mine in Zhengzhou watched my video and wanted to buy one. I said, this fish is too big, the family is not easy to deal with, really do not recommend you to buy, cost-effective is not high, spend this money to buy a fish, you can go to the restaurant to eat a big meal.
Unexpectedly, he was just like me. He said he didn't care about the taste, he just wanted to see a live sea fish, bouncing around the house.
When the economy develops to a certain extent, consumption will upgrade, and consumers will not only pay attention to material needs, but also spiritual satisfaction. Take eating fish as an example, before you can't afford to eat fish, then you can afford to eat, and then you want to eat well, and the last thing you eat is a mood.
The average annual food expenses of ordinary people are at most tens of thousands of dollars smaller. Nowadays, many people are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to correct their teeth, or spend tens of thousands of dollars to travel abroad to increase their knowledge.
Consumption upgrading and industrial upgrading are mutually reinforcing, with higher demand, there is a driving force for progress, dental surgery has promoted the progress of medical equipment, and traveling abroad has promoted the development of the aviation industry.
Because of a fish, curiosity opened a window, and after doing a lot of research, I saw a whole new world.
Let a fish arrive from thousands of miles away, the next day, and bounce around in your house's sink. Not only to be able to raise fish, but also to raise well, not to be able to deliver, but also to be able to deliver home alive! To complete this process, it is necessary to have three conditions: advanced infrastructure, a strong industrial system, and efficient express delivery services. Not only to do it all, but also to the extreme, which seems easy, but is actually very difficult.
Efficient courier service
In the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai-Anhui Postal Zone, there are about 200 million people equivalent to the size of the economy of one Japan, or two South Koreas. 11kg next day arrival. Ordinary express delivery, 28 yuan, e-commerce discount price, as long as about 19 yuan. SF Express, 35 yuan, e-commerce discount price, as long as about 25 yuan.
Wenzhou to Zhengzhou, 1300 km. SF Express 11kg, the next day arrival, 102 yuan. E-commerce discount price, about 70 yuan.
I looked at it, 1300 kilometers is almost, the average distance from Wenzhou to all parts of the country.
Wenzhou to Wuhan 900 km
Wenzhou to Guangzhou 1200 km
Wenzhou to Kunming 2200 km
Wenzhou to Chengdu 2020 km
Wenzhou to Lanzhou 2300 km
Wenzhou to Harbin 2670 km
Wenzhou to Lhasa 4000 km
Wenzhou to Urumqi 4200km
The land area of the United States is about the same as that of China, 1300 kilometers, which is also about the average transportation distance nationwide. New York to Chicago is also exactly 1300 kilometers.
According to the American Express Discount Comparison Network coolparcel.com/
For shipping from Chicago (60007) to New York (11210), 22 pounds (11kg) shipping costs up to $180 cheapest, FedEx $327 cheapest, and DHL as low as $335.
In my experience, the discount of the courier company in the United States is difficult to negotiate, and on the basis of the public discount, it is very good to get 20% off. The lowest e-commerce discount price is about $144.
The fastest speed is the next day arrival, which in this case refers to 1 business day. Europeans say rest, that must be rest, but the United States is not the same, as long as the money is added, holidays may also be delivered, but not a small amount. If you are not willing to add money, put it in the warehouse for a few days, the live fish will already become a dead fish.
1300 kilometers, the next day, the Freight in China is 70 yuan, the United States 144 US dollars, about 15 times ours. Although Americans earn more than us, they can't afford 15 times the freight.
Think of that year, Trump launched a trade war, Boston lobster slow sales. An internet celebrity (Jerry Guo) went to Boston and made a video about lobsters, and he asked the stall owner why not put lobsters on the Internet to sell?
The stall owner was stunned for a moment and asked rhetorically, can you still put lobsters on the Internet to sell? You don't know, the courier fee is too expensive, and it is difficult to achieve domestic distribution of fresh food. As a result, the big farmers in Boston can only watch the lobsters cannot be sold.
Long-distance fresh distribution is our daily life, live fish is indeed rare, but the cold chain transportation of fruits and meat has been very popular. In the United States, however, it is rare. The high and inefficient express delivery freight rates in the United States limit the consumption of fresh products, and in turn, the small demand also leads to high average costs, forming a vicious circle. Nationwide B2C fresh distribution is difficult to achieve.
According to the German "Focus" weekly reported on the 14th, in 2019, the global parcel volume exceeded 100 billion. According to the Data of the State Post Bureau, the national express delivery business volume reached 63.52 billion in 2019. With 18% of the population, China accounts for 60% of the world's parcels.
Quantitative changes cause qualitative changes, and on the basis of quantity, we can talk about innovation. Once the scale breaks through the critical point, it will lead to the ultimate division of labor, and efficiency can be improved.
I remember 20 years ago, the parcel area express delivery started at 5 yuan, and now it is only 8 yuan, and the core factor that can maintain the low price is the efficiency improvement, because of various supporting facilities, the number of parcels handled by the courier every day has been greatly improved. So, while courier salaries are soaring, the cost of spreading it out evenly to each package is under control.
Strong industrial system
A fish must be worthy of hundreds of dollars of freight, and the quality must be unusual, otherwise no one will buy it.
In the past, fishermen, in the offshore fish farming with ordinary cages, pollution is more. On the one hand, farmed fish have a bad taste. Fishermen, on the other hand, are physically burdened and their incomes are unstable. Relying on the sky to eat is very risky, and a typhoon may ruin the fishermen's homes.
I usually like to watch CCTV's science and education channel, and there is an episode of "Innovation in Progress" with the theme of "Smart Ranch on the Sea". In the program, the modern deep-water cage platform "Ploughing Sea No. 1" has a total volume of 30,000 cubic meters and an annual output of 150,000 kilograms of marine fish.
Today's fishermen, to put it mildly, are driving "aircraft carriers" out to sea to raise fish. You can even raise fish remotely at home on the shore, blowing air conditioning, and using mobile phone apps. According to the changes in the water temperature, ocean current speed and other data, not only can the position and depth of the fish farming platform be adjusted, but also the time and quantity of feeding can be controlled.
In the past, cages could only raise fish, but now the platform has restaurants, accommodations, and entertainment facilities, which can receive tourists, play sea fishing, watch sea views, and eat seafood.
CCTV Chinese International, there is a program called "Can the Yellow Sea Raise Salmon?" Went to China's largest deep-sea cage culture base "Deep Sea No. 1".
Salmon farming areas require clear and pollution-free water quality, and the optimal temperature is between 8 and 14 °C. Due to high environmental constraints, farming is only carried out in 10 countries and regions, including Norway, Chile, Scotland and the Faroe Islands. Among them, Norway's production accounted for 51% in 2020, and Chile's production accounted for 29.5%, accounting for nearly 80% of the two.
Global salmon production distribution in 2020
On the coast of the mainland, the water temperature is too high in summer. However, we found a "cold water mass" in the Yellow Sea, with an area of 130,000 square kilometers, a volume of 500 billion cubic meters, excellent water quality, and is a rare shallow aquifer cold water mass in the world.
Relying on the strong shipbuilding industry, Shandong has built the world's largest deep-sea cage "Deep Blue No. 1", weighing about 1400 tons, cultivating more than 50,000 cubic meters of water, with a design annual output of 1500 tons, which can sink into the Cold Water Mass of the Yellow Sea in summer.
In time, in the near future, China may become a big salmon farming country.
In addition, many people may not know that the eels eaten by the Japanese, known as domestic, in fact, most of them are made in China, and the caviar that Europeans and Americans are obsessed with, in fact, the best varieties are produced in Qiandao Lake, Zhejiang, and the output accounts for one-third of the world.
At present, China accounts for 60% of the global marine aquaculture industry. The whole industrial chain has been formed, and the manufacture of large-scale offshore fishing equipment has been almost monopolized. At the same time, the marine aquaculture industry in the United States is negligible.
On June 17, 2017, China delivered the world's first semi-submersible deep-sea fishing vessel to the Norwegian salmon farming giant. The service life is 25 years, and the amount of fish culture can be achieved at one time. The cost of a single set of this fish farm is 420 million yuan, which is equivalent to the price of a small civil aviation aircraft.
Even ten years ago, who would have thought that we would export machinery and equipment to Europeans, and let the proud Vikings raise fish for us.
The catch of the ocean is limited, but the potential for seafood aquaculture is enormous. In the past, fishermen raising fish, just like farmers farming, was a hard job, but in the future, it may become a fashionable high-tech industry, and a few young people sit in air-conditioned rooms, facing computer screens, playing like games, playing and playing, and raising fish well.
Such a scenario requires strong industrial support to be realized, and China is the only country with such supporting capabilities.
Advanced infrastructure
Many people say that the United States does not have high-speed rail, but it is not entirely true. In the northeast, which has the highest population density in the United States, there is a quasi-high-speed railway with a maximum speed of 240 kilometers per hour and an average speed of 134 kilometers per hour. From New York to Washington, D.C., 366 kilometers, the Acela "high-speed rail" takes 2.5 hours, and tickets range from $130 to $276. Even if it is slow and expensive, there are still people sitting, because the peer-to-peer time is similar to that of airplanes, and the comfort is higher.
Houston and Dallas are the 4th and 9th largest cities in the United States, respectively. The distance is 380 kilometers, if it is not blocked, it takes 4.5 hours to drive, and the traffic jam is bottomless. If you live in Houston, if a friend temporarily asks you to go to Dallas for the weekend to play cards. Although I would love to go, you may give up when you think of the hard 10-hour drive back and forth.
In addition to the car, Dallas to Houston, there are 19 direct flights a day, flying 1 hour and 15 minutes, the fare is $139, including airport connections, waiting and security checks, one way at least 4 hours. Aircraft are relatively small, such as The Embraer 145, Bombardier 900, Airbus 319. Even if the full occupancy rate reaches 80%, the daily one-way passenger flow is only 2,000 people.
Many "American Passes" often say bitterly: "Don't show off the high-speed rail, show that you are ignorant, Americans rely on highways for short distances, and rely on planes for long distances." This kind of person, either stupid or bad, the Metropolitan Area of the United States hopes for the stars and the moon, but can't look forward to high-speed rail.
At that time, the United States could handle tens of thousands of kilometers of highways, but now it cannot even repair an inch of high-speed rail, and it can only be said that the interest groups of the United States have completely kidnapped the United States. The California high-speed railway, tossed for decades, is still half dead. In fact, between Dallas and Houston, there is also a high-speed rail, called Texas Central Railway. The total length of 390 kilometers, the budget of 20 billion US dollars, 330 million yuan per kilometer, this is only the budget, the United States is now a project, settlement overruns of more than 2 times is the norm. However, like the California high-speed rail, the Texas high-speed rail is also full of twists and turns, and the progress is slow.
In January 2017, Trump made the project a national transportation infrastructure priority.
In June 2017, construction is said to begin in 2019.
In February 2019, the first subcontract was signed.
In September 2020, it received regulatory approval from the FRA and construction is expected to begin shortly thereafter.
In June 2021, the construction contract was awarded to Webuild, which is expected to start construction at the end of 2021.
In September 2021, the CEO said there was a 50% chance that construction would begin within 6 months, depending heavily on the infrastructure bill of the U.S. Congress.
It's September 2022, and I've checked when construction will start, and I still haven't heard from them.
That's the efficiency of the United States. My American friend once said to me very seriously that when he was young, the United States built a road and it was very efficient. Nowadays, to build a road, there are always endless lawsuits, and the cost of lawyers is higher than the cost of the project itself.
In the past, Americans were very ambitious and united, but now, interest groups are fragmented, and the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have no room for unity except to unite against China, and they will tear each other down for the sake of votes.
In essence, the interests of the financial lord father behind the parties are different, for example, aircraft manufacturers and oil companies hate high-speed rail the most, once the high-speed rail is opened, no one sits on the plane, no one buys gasoline, then it has to be?! So they supported environmental groups to make trouble, endlessly.
In 2008, the Guizhou-Guangzhou high-speed railway began construction, the then governor of Guizhou Province, Lin Shusen, insisted on increasing the speed from 160 km / h to 300 km / h, at that time Guizhou was really poor, for this high-speed rail can be described as tightening the belt. A lot of people said he was crazy, and looking back now, how visionary it was. Today's Guizhou has gone from being "abandoned" to becoming a "high-speed rail hub", thanks to the foresight of the decision-makers at that time.
Today, Guizhou has been reborn from the poor mountains and bad waters of "no three miles flat, no people have three or two silver", taking advantage of the advantage of being a latecomer, and has developed into China's cloud data center and tourist destination. In recent years, Guizhou's GDP growth rate has ranked among the best. Recently, many friends have gone to Guizhou to escape the summer, and the evaluation is very high, which is not at all the stereotype of "poor mountain ravine" in the past.
In 2019, China's railways sent 3.66 billion passengers, of which 2.3 billion were high-speed rail, and the United States was almost zero. In 2018, U.S. air traffic was 890 million passengers, compared with 610 million in China, which accounted for 68 percent of the U.S. passengers. Combining aviation and high-speed rail, the United States in the long-distance passenger sector, the volume of shipments is only 30% of China. Moreover, with the continuous improvement of China's high-speed rail, this gap will become larger and larger.
Driving from Shenzhen to Chaoshan is about 360 kilometers, similar to the distance between Dallas and Houston, it takes 4 hours not to get stuck in traffic, and there is no bottom of traffic jams. However, between Shenzhen and Chaoshan, there are 100 high-speed trains per day, and the express train takes 1 and a half hours. The fare is 130 yuan. Equivalent to one-seventh of the fare for an aircraft between Houston and Dallas.
You can choose to take a nap in the car and swipe your phone. According to my own test, Chaoshan departed, Shenzhen finally arrived, and the number of people who got off the bus each time was a lot. Each train is 500 to 1,000 people, and even the most conservative estimate is that the average number of people per car is between Shenzhen Chaoshan and Chaoshan. That one-way passenger flow is 10,000 people per day. It is 5 times the passenger flow between Houston and Dallas.
Many people think that the biggest advantage of high-speed rail is that it is comfortable and fast, but from a macro economic point of view, high-speed rail is an industrial upgrade. Because of the limitations of the aircraft, within 800 kilometers, the high-speed rail is a dimensionality reduction strike on the aircraft.
Americans are so rich that the two big cities (Dallas and Houston) have only a mere 0.2 million one-way traffic per day. Between Shenzhen and Chaoshan, the daily one-way passenger flow is more than 10,000. How many demands for transportation, accommodation, catering, and services can be created by 5 times the difference, and how many jobs can be brought with it? These are real economic needs.
The tertiary industry in the United States accounts for up to 80%, but ordinary Chinese who have been to the United States are inevitably confused, how to see, can not see that the Service Industry in the United States is developed, the Restaurants in the United States are far less than the Chinese, and the domestic travel density is not as high as china.
The backwardness of the US infrastructure has affected the upgrading of the service industry. The service industry in the United States that I said last time can only be concentrated in the so-called fire industry, which ordinary people cannot see and touch, and their interests are monopolized by a small number of groups, and they cannot share dividends. The so-called "fire industry" is also the collective name of "insurance, finance, and real estate services". （FIRE Sector）Finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing。 The "fire industry" is the most typical rentier economy that does not generate real material wealth.
People who often watch American dramas should remember this sentence, I have bills to pay, the meaning is, I want to support my family, the literal translation is "I have a lot of bills to pay." The biggest cost of living for Americans is not the chai rice oil and salt in daily life, but all kinds of bills, what lawyer fees, accounting fees, insurance premiums...
In December 2020, the mainland's 350-kilometer-per-hour freight high-speed railway rolled off the production line. This is a whole new economic field, and only China in the world has the ability to make this industry bigger. Within 800 kilometers, high-speed rail passengers crush aircraft, and within 1800 kilometers, high-speed rail cargo crushes aircraft.
summary
At present, China has the most complete industrial system in the world, the most advanced infrastructure, and how many new economic forms can be created, the Americans do not know, even we ourselves do not know.
The United States does have some advantages, such as chips and aero engines, but high-specification chips are only used for mobile devices, and today's mobile phones are not changed for several years, and the 3nm chip is good, but it is only the icing on the cake, not in the snow, low-specification chips, we can also manufacture. The United States does not learn from it with a humble heart, learns from its strong points, and has to play extreme pressure; the Democratic Party cannot do a good job in building infrastructure at home, and can only transfer the contradictions outward, which is the essential reason why the old American woman visited the southeast island.
All in all, with my experience of walking on both sides of China and the United States for many years, I am more and more certain that time is on our side, the United States is becoming more and more anxious, the future extreme pressure, the dangerous game of wiping the gun and the fire, may be more and more, concentrate on doing our own things, Chinese pay attention to the gentleman's revenge for ten years, not too late, all the accounts are recorded in the book, and one day will pull a list for her.