It's a good news story so far as our efforts to increase markets in China for our lumber are concerned. Which is quite an accomplishment in itself, and worthy of our congratulations to all concerned.

But it's sad to see the Chinese making the same mistakes we've made here, i.e., de-populating their rural areas for an increased urban concentration into cities that are already way too large.

I was hoping they would be smarter than that. That they could find a way to give people in the rural areas a better life, right where they are. But it seems they're as dumb as we are in that regard.

Makes you wonder what 300 million people are actually going to 'do' once they get to the cities? The short-term promise of a better life will likely fall far short of the reality for most of them.

One thing about an autocratic, highly centralised, 'planned' economy like China's, if they follow a 'Plan' that's wrong the potential for disaster multiplies exponentially.

Just look at the old Soviet Union's infamous "five year Plans" for various parts of their economy, and how, in their agriculture they went from a country that could feed itself to one that had to regularly import western grown wheat to stave off famine.

Too bad a little more effort couldn't be put into promoting the use of BC lumber to provide better housing in their rural regions. To give the people there a better life, right where they are.

But then that would expose the futility of the present promotion, and increased urbanization itself ~ for there's really no way the Chinese can "pay" for all the lumber we hope to sell them without un-employing a whole lot more people here that make the same stuff they're going to be shipping us TO "pay" for it.

And how many of OUR then unemployed are going to find work in the forest industry? An industry that displaces more labour every time it becomes "more productive"? As all those well-paid gurus of economics at the Conference Board of Canada, Fraser Institute, and such like-minded think tanks, keeping telling us we must?

I let my typing fingers do a little walk through the net to find out waht this is all about.

Seems that the area contains a relatively high proportion of foreign nationals. It is known for the large number of International Schools located there.

Looks like there is a Spanish style compound, another with red brick apartments, another with English style houses, another with a housing mix and the Shimao Lakeside compound made up of western style apartments and houses.

So, now it is starting to make a bit more sense to me.

http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20040502_jinqiao_biyun_international_district.htm

Here is a gallery of upper crust buildings from the old Shanghai.

http://www.autumnleaves.com.cn/housing/h-old-gal.html

Here are some "old" houses/apartments for rent. Most are very large. There is one there that is actually only 100 m2 renting for 12,000 yuans/mo or C$1,800. Prices in line with larger Canadian cities.

Ah ...... what I would not give for our matchstick housing rather than to have to live in such hovels ..... LOL!!!!

oops ... in case you can't find the hyperlink on the page provided above ....

http://www.autumnleaves.com.cn/housing/h-old-dat.html

Let's see ... Shanghai, New York, Paris ..... which will it be ....??

So, from the link provided by Gus, it seems the new, BC lumber-built, housing development referred to in the story is more for the comfort and convenience of "foreign nationals" working in China than for the average, relocated rural Chinese whose now 'making it big' in the Big City. Interesting. Could our Premier be misleading us? Again?

Notice they never mention how much the lumber is selling for?? Are we to assume that the Chinese are paying the same rate as the Japanese and Americans. I kind of doubt it.

In any event if it keeps the mills running for a little longer then its a good thing. Once the beetle kill is logged and sold, and the available lumber diminishes, then the lumber will be sold to the highest price market which will be the USA and Japan.

There is no reason to beleive that BC will be the main supplier of lumber to China. After we opened up the Japanese markets they started buying from the Americans and Europeans, and acutally put an embargo on some Canadian Lumbers. No deal is set in stone.

"Who cares who lives in the housing developments? Why does it matter?"

Simple. The use of the lumber is being promoted in the media with the implication that it is to convert the general Chinese population to a North American style of building technology.

This is not the first time that I am experiencing this kind of promotional effort on the part of the Canadian lumber industry in my life. There was a considerable effort by COFI some 30 years ago to do this in Europe. One of the targets at the time was the Netherlands, Germany and several North Sea associated countries. There were small subdivisions that were planned in the style of Canadian subdivisions along with housing units that were not only built using the western platform method but also the layout of the housing units themselves were designed in the Canadian style with open living/dining/kitchen concept which were typically not used then in those countries.

There was no great change in custom that ensued afterwards.

There have been many attempts to do the reverse in Canada. All of those have also failed over the years. We are not building housing with steel framing as promoted by the steel industry, we are not building SF dwellings with concrete panels, nor with lightweight, insulating concrete blocks, nor are we turning away from asphalt shingles to any great extent. We are not even switching to solid manufactured timber homes which would use considerably more wood in our own country.

National building customs are very difficult to change no matter what country one looks at and no matter how much sense it might appear to make to the promoters and their countrymen.

This 500 houses in Shanghai represents less homes than the Vancouver suburb of Surrey will build this year. It represents the bulk of Chinese wood home construction and is mostly for the comfort of foreign nationals. IMO it represents the peak in the Chinese market. Its great for mills that sell to China and all the new orders the batter, but in no way do I see this as a long term growth market for wood housing... rather a market for low grade lumber that will diversify our markets somewhat. I don't think it will ever replace Japan and America as our top customers in revenue/profits.

Great place for politicians to go for a holiday though and a photo op....

Gus:- "National building customs are very difficult to change no matter what country one looks at and no matter how much sense it might appear to make to the promoters and their countrymen."
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That's absolutely true, Gus. And the Chinese, like the British, still prefer houses that are made out of brick. Or, often now, concrete. The Japanese, and to a lesser extent the Koreans, like wooden framed houses (preferably in the manner of their traditional 'timber framing'). The Chinese do not.

To them, a house made entirely out of wood is considered to be something that only 'poor' people could afford ~ something temporary. And in the southern parts of China, right down into Viet Nam, treated lumber would be a necessity or the termites would literally chew your house down.

There were a great many efforts made to get the British to change to a North American stick framed house, complete with central heating, all through the latter half of the last century.

But the only time our lumber made serious gains in the British market was when "Imperial preference" was in place, before Britain joined the EU ~ and then it wasn't for new North American style houses. But rather as replacement product for American and Baltic lumber imports tariffed out of their market. Lumber that was used as it traditionally had been used ~ wide dimension floor joists and heavier 'full-sawn' dimensions for roof rafters (to hold up a heavy, slate roof), upper-storey flooring, and lesser amounts for door and window frames.

The policy of the Chinese government is to concentrate as many people as possible in large cities. Large cities have the lowest carbon footprint per person compared to rural areas.

Everything is within WALKING distance, shopping, schools, medical facilities, entertainment etc.

Water and power lines, electrical and sewer lines, communication infrastructure, everything takes less material when people are living close together, especially when living vertically in highrises.

They take the people to the jobs rather than the other way around as the living accomodations will be clustered around industry.

The less sprawl, the better. Way of the future for countries with immense population numbers.

Beehives and anthills are good examples of
compact efficient living.

It's signifigant, I think, that today is the anniversary of the Walkerton disaster.

An example of what happens when you concentrate too many animals in one place, in massive feedlots, and their feces, which nature could deal with naturally if they were not so concentrated, gets into the water supply.

The same thing is true with human beings. The solution to pollution is dilution. Not increased concentration. We are NOT 'ants', nor worker 'bees', in spite of the best efforts of our elite to make us so. And you can rest assured THEY will have a comfortable place in the country, to escape from the Hell on Earth of the modern super-city.

Your opinion is worthwhile. Of course one should not stack up people like so much cordwood.

I just related what I heard on the radio a couple of days ago. And I am neither Chinese nor an apologist for Chinese government planning.

Your idea of dilution is a good one, but in a finite space no matter how much dilution takes place - one day a point of barely tolerable stressful saturation will be reached.

Perhaps it is not such a good idea to have THAT MANY people to put such a tremendous strain on finite space and air, energy and water resources?

Just a wild guess, of course.

BTW, the solution to pollution should never be DILUTION! The solution is REDUCING the pollution.

Everybody should know that. I can't believe that anybody would say that as long as we dilute we can keep on merrily polluting!

OMG.

You eat, you poo. Stop eating to stop pooing, what happens? You die from starvation. Pollution happens, and diluted, nature deals with it naturally. It's when we try to abstract ourselves from natural law, for purely 'financial' reasons, that we have trouble.

We can certainly make efforts to stop the cause of NEEDLESS pollution, and much of our current pollution caused by crowding too many people into too large cities for purely 'financial' reasons, is completely needless.

But we can't do that as long as we're determined to make the physical "facts" FIT pre-determined financial "figures", rather than having those "figures" doing what they're supposed to be able to do, REFLECT the "facts". Accurately.

At some point, as you say, "barely tolerable stressful saturation will be reached". I think this is something we artificially are creating now, in the push to urbanise. We do it to provide an excuse for NOT making the "figures" REFLECT the "facts", but trying to have them take on a life of their own. A futile impossibility.

We can hardly be over-populating when the birth rate in this country and the other western countries has fallen to the point where we're not even replenishing our numbers, and have to resort to Third-World immigration to do that.

China has a massive looming problem in that their one-child per family enforcements have led to an imbalance of males to females, sons being the preferred gender over daughters in that country.

So long as 'financial' perversions keep the Third-World in perpetual poverty, people in those places will continue to breed like flies, simply to try ensure species survival. The "Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse" will visit those lands with regularity. And we really won't make much more than a token effort to stop them.

I believe single solutions to virtually any issue is wrong headed thinking for many reasons. The key one is the notion that natural systems survive due to diversity. Monocultures are extremely vulnerable.

Every living organism consumes and every single living organism pollutes. When everything is in balance the pollution of one organism is what allows another organism to exist.

The #1 use of Canadian Lumber in Chinese construction?

Building concrete forms.

Lets hope they take some of the 'junk' that's for sale in lumber yards here then. And we get some better quality lumber for our own construction.

Unlike the United States lumber producers, where they keep the best, for Americans, and ship the rest, we'll probably send the Chinese our best, and be stuck with the rest. Gotta 'capture' those "global markets", you know.

Go into a building supply store in the US and look at the quality they offer their own citizens in American (and Canadian) lumber, and compare that to the crap that's offered up here.

I was in a Lowe's "Indoor Lumber Store" in Missoula, Montana a few years ago, and they had some of the nicest looking Douglas fir studs I've ever seen. Cut by a mill in Darrington, Washington, and on, (at the regular price), for $ 2 apiece. Beautiful stuff. You'd never see the likes of that up here. It's all gone elsewhere.

"Pollution happens, and diluted, nature deals with it naturally."

It's no use to pretend that *when people poop* and when a refinery emits *sulfur dioxide and mercury vapours* are the same kind of pollution.

Since the beginning of industrialization mankind has been subjecting the natural environment to unnatural stresses of pollution.

Air, water and soil keep getting more and more polluted.

Those are the facts. No use to try to gloss over it with financial and other excuses.

One can put lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day it's still a pig.

socredible,

the best of the best lumber still goes to Japan, they have the highest standards and are willing to pay the highest prices.

If you follow the mills that are reporting that they are signing contracts with China you might notice their timber supplies are primarily bug killed pine. Canfor Quesnel has a yard full of 12' dried out to the max bettle killed wood and they are sending their contractors out for only dry wood this summer.

The main reason for that is the majority of the wood is being cut into dimensions which they can take and use for reman projects and rough construction such as the previously mentioned concrete forms. Very little is destined for home building at this point.

We have to look at this lumber a bit different, its a product with a very limited shelf life, the trees will soon have no value, so getting something for them at this time is a bonus.

The fact remains, Prince George, that if you can't FULLY financially 'pay' FOR what you've done FROM what you've done, 'Finance' is forcing you to do MORE than you should have to do in order to access what you've already done. And, since that, like production and consumption itself, is an ongoing process, there is the source of most of the modern world's man-made but otherwise needless, pollution.

Everybody wants (not necessarily needs) new stuff and the old stuff ends up in the dump before its time.

If you can find a solution for changing that consumer attitude you will be top rooster on the heap!

Does it cause pollution? Sure.

People who never had a car (1 billion Chinese people) want to advance from a bicycle to a car. 1 Billion people in India want the same thing.

Perhaps, if they live in a city close to everything they may decide that they don't need one after all. Less pollution! Bingo!

The world is changing.

In Germany, one of the the world's most car crazy nations people are opting more and more for public transit and the occasional rental car, foregoing ownership of a car altogether.

If one lives in a big city with all the amenities close by, including parks and lakes and outdoor recreational facilities it is not a hardship one wants to escape from by all means.

The world is changing.

PrinceGeorge,

Times are changing. I have a Yukon, my wife has a Honda and we share a 1 ton pickup for recreation purposes. Thats still the old generation, we think we cant live without vehicles. Now my oldest daughter, she recently finished her education at BCIT, she has now settled in Vancouver, her most important criteria for finding an apartment? Access to the Sky Train. Her new home had to be within 3 blocks or she wouldn't even look at a place. She has no drivers license and no interest in getting one.

A good example of what your talking about.

Precisely, Stomping Tom!

Getting back to the comments of socredible who insists that the solution to pollution is to disperse people as much as possible into rural areas.

The exact opposite is true.