Democrats refuse to let rapists be deported, the apple doesn’t fall far from the Democratic assassin’s tree, Israel decapitates Hamas, more illegal alien voting schemes exposed, the boom falls on Eric Adams, Goines goes down, another Russian ammo dump goes boom, a commie sub sinks, Raptor 1 Cylon 0, and 50 Cent throws down some Diddy dirt for your amusement.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Man, Democrats sure love illegal alien rapists. “158 Democrats voted against a bill that would ensure ‘aliens who have been convicted of or who have committed sex offenses or domestic violence are inadmissible and deportable.’ The Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act (H.R.7909) bill was introduced by Republican Representative Nancy Mace.”
No, they really, really do. “ICE Detains Illegal Migrant Accused Of Raping Pre-Teen In Nantucket…More Than A Month After He Walked On Bail.” “After being charged with one count of rape of a child with a 10-year age difference and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, [Bryan Daniel Aldana-Arevalo] was allowed to ‘walk free on bail’ and immigration authorities were never called, according to a report from the New York Post.”
“Ryan Wesley Routh Wrote of ‘Failed’ Assassination Attempt in Letter to ‘World’ Months Ago; Offered $150,000 Bounty to ‘Complete the Job.’” Plus a refresher to the would-be assassin the media already seems to be trying to memory hole: “While Trump was golfing at his International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida on September 15, a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle barrel with a scope sticking out of the fence and ‘engaged’ with the person, who was later identified as Routh, a Biden-Harris supporter and Democrat donor with an extensive criminal background.”
“Son of would-be Trump assassin arrested for child porn.” “Investigators say they discovered ‘hundreds’ of files with child pornography during a search of Oran Routh’s residence in Guilford County, North Carolina, on Saturday conducted ‘in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation.’ The two charges he faces include receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography.”
In little more than a year, a once-obscure South American street gang has taken hold in the Big Apple, exploiting the migrant crisis to build a violent criminal enterprise from within the walls of city shelters.
Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-bred crew of thugs, now terrorize Gotham with gun-toting, moped-riding hoods, sell illegal guns under the very noses of private shelter security guards, and run sleazy prostitution rings in neighborhoods suddenly besieged by the marauding migrants.
The gang, which also peddles a lethal fentanyl mix called Tussi or “pink cocaine,” has grown so fast that it has so far overwhelmed both average New Yorkers and the city’s elite police force.
Given how many FBI arrests have been sprung on NYPD brass over the last few months, I’m not sure how well that “elite” appellation still applies.
“Not every migrant is here to commit crimes, not every migrant is a gang member,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny. “But these TDA guys hide very well in plain sight in the migrant community.
“We aren’t looking to grab the food delivery guy, but these guys go so far as to wear Uber Eats clothing, [use] the delivery bags while they’re out there committing their crimes,” the chief told The Post. “When we do arrest them, they are very eager to talk about the crime they have committed.
“They are unwilling to talk about TDA itself.”
The gang, whose name means “train from Aragua” (a state in north-central Venezuela) in Spanish, now runs citywide theft and robbery crews that have terrorized neighborhoods.
In Jackson Heights, a stretch of Roosevelt Avenue dubbed the “Market of Sweethearts” has become a testament to TDA’s muscle and influence, with vendors peddling stolen items and an open-air red light district that has migrant hookers walking the streets day and night.
Plus a feud between Tren de Aragua and rival illegal alien gang El Carro De Lost Caragijos 666, as well as a guide to gang tattoos. (Hat tip: TPPF.)
Former President Donald Trump has gained ground and is leading Vice President Kamala Harris in key Sun Belt states, according to a New York Times/Siena poll from Monday.
Trump gained in Arizona and is now leading Harris by five points with the two candidates polling at 50% and 45% among likely voters respectively, according to the poll. At the same time, Trump has also held onto his lead over Harris in Georgia by four points and in North Carolina by two points. (RELATED: Experts Say Major Swing State Is Once Again ‘Pivotal’ To Trump’s Chances Of Retaking White House)
While the Republican candidate is leading, a significant portion of likely voters across all three states are independents, according to the poll. On average, 31% of likely voters in the Sun Belt consider themselves Democrats, 33% identify as Republicans and 31% say they are independents.
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and the guerilla journalists at Muckraker have teamed up to unearth a little scheme down in Arizona — registering illegal aliens to vote. And shocker, I wonder which political party those new “voters” might be supporting? I’ll give you one guess, and I bet you’ll get it right.
The illegals Muckraker interviewed said they were registered to vote at grocery stores, while others reported activists visiting their apartment complex and encouraging them to register to vote. Why does this matter? In 2020, fewer than 11,000 votes tipped Arizona’s electoral votes to Biden.
Fast forward to today, and recent polling shows former President Donald Trump holding a narrow lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona, a critical swing state. With the race shaping up to be just as tight in 2024, the integrity of voter registration efforts takes on even greater significance — as does the lack of concern from the left.
It gets worse. The Oversight Project tried to track these individuals on the voter rolls but came up empty-handed — they were nowhere to be found.
This development comes just days after the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruled that nearly 98,000 people with unverified citizenship documents are still eligible to vote in state and local elections.
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s rabidly leftist Secretary of State who will forever be known for her anti-democratic drive to knock former President Donald Trump off the ballot, has suffered another election law loss in federal court.
The U.S. District Court for the Colorado District last week issued an order demanding the Democrat secretary of state release Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) reports suspected of containing dead registrants on the state’s voter rolls. The reports, according to a settlement, include individuals who may have died within the past three years.
It’s another significant election integrity victory for the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), and another stunning loss for election transparency-stifling Griswold and ERIC.
“PILF has knocked down ERIC’s wall of secrecy in the voter list maintenance process,” J. Christian Adams, president of the election integrity watchdog organization, said in a press release. “States cannot use third parties to hide election records that the public has a right to see.”
Griswold ultimately signed the stipulation after the court denied her original request to dismiss the case. Judge Philip Brimmer ordered the secretary of state’s office to disclose the requested 2021 ERIC Reports by Nov. 1. Brimmer did allow minimal redactions to the ERIC Report Key. With the agreement reached, the judge dismissed PILF’s claim that Griswold violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993.
The long awaited indictments of New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams finally comes down.
New York City mayor Eric Adams engaged in a nearly decade-long conspiracy that included accepting bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources to benefit his political career, according to the federal indictment unsealed Thursday morning.
Adams is accused of accepting free airline flights and staying in luxurious hotels on behalf of Turkish business and government officials who sought to influence him.
He sought foreign money in part to benefit his 2021 mayoral campaign, according to the indictment. But some of the criminal conduct Adams is accused of dates as far back as 2015 when he was the Brooklyn borough president.
Adams had been charged with five counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals; wire fraud; solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national in two instances; and bribery.
He is the first sitting New York mayor to face criminal charges.
The 57-page indictment accuses Adams of funneling illegal foreign money through U.S.-based straw donors, including at least two New York construction companies, to reap over $10 million in public-matching funds based on false certifications that his campaign complied with finance regulations. The funds provide “eligible candidates with public funds to match small-dollar contributions from New York City residents,” the charging document says.
Adams also received free or discounted travel benefits on Turkey’s national airline from a Turkish official, who facilitated the funneling of the straw donations to Adams. These overseas trips included flights from New York to Turkey, India, France, Sri Lanka, China and Hungary from 2015 to 2019. These trips are valued at more than $100,000.
Other luxurious benefits included “free rooms at opulent hotels, free meals at high-end restaurants, and free luxurious entertainment while in Turkey,” the indictment states.
In January 2022, when Adams was inaugurated as mayor, Adams agreed to accept foreign contributions intended for his 2025 campaign while meeting with a Turkish entrepreneur whom the indictment dubs the “Promoter.”
The Turkish government sought influence over Adams, in part, to get his help to open a new consulate building in the city before the country’s president visited in 2021, prosecutors say. The 36-story skyscraper would have failed a fire inspection at the time.
Prosecutors say Turkish officials cashed in on their influence with Adams and he pressured the fire officials to open the building, which they did because they “were convinced that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t back down.”
The question, of course, is how the boom fell on Adams, but Bill de Blasio’s wife “mishandled” hundreds of millions in homeless funds and never received an investigation…
“Ukraine Destroys ANOTHER Ammo Dump! In Kammenyi, Krasnodar Krai.” Here’s my quick, handy description of the different between an “oblast” and a “krai’: I have no frigging clue.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly voted 26–25 to recommend Antony Blinken be held in contempt of Congress following the diplomat’s failure to appear for Tuesday’s hearing.
“Secretary Blinken’s refusal to comply with the Committee’s subpoena — despite months of notice and offers of accommodations — warrants contempt,” the resolution read.
The Republican-led committee has long sought to host the secretary of state as it investigates the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan over three years ago that left 13 U.S. service members dead.
Israel took out Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut. You would think Hezbollah honchos wouldn’t be hanging around their headquarters in the current conflict, but Israel reportedly took out five senior Hezbollah officials. Not sure if this is the strike or not, but it’s pretty shock-and-awe:
These are JDAMs using either BLU-95 500 lb (230 kg) (FAE-II) BLU-96 2,000 lb (910 kg) thermobaric warheads.
The double slap sounds and the jet plumes of orange tinted smoke out of the impacts signify an underground tunnel network being 'serviced' by thermobaric munitions. https://t.co/sZZQ1ngaXA
The blue is Israel. The lack of counter-activity (which would be in red) suggests Israel may have already crushed Hamas in Gaza.
Here’s a very long range look at Lebanon and northern Israel, showing that while Hezbollah is still launching a few rocket attacks at Israel, Israeli air power is bombing the absolute snot out of Hezbollah, not only with strikes in southern Lebanon, but even all the way up near the northern border in the Bekaa Valley.
Israel is obviously able to hit targets in Lebanon with impunity.
You feel sorry for Lebanese civilians caught in the crossfire, but pity is tempered by the fact that Hezbollah is part of the ruling March 8 coalition.
International law expert covers Operation Grim Beeper. “In the context of distinction, necessity, proportionality these principles of the laws of armed conflict being adhered to in an exemplary fashion.”
Bill to strip the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations (like the Council on American-Islamic Relations) moves forward in the house.
“Pentagon to Send Additional U.S. Troops to Middle East as Regional Tensions Boil Over.” “The U.S. maintains about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria, primarily tasked with counterterrorism operations. U.S.-controlled military bases also exist in Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, with a total count of U.S. military personnel in the region numbering around 40,000, up from the 34,000 troops stationed in the Middle East before the October 7 massacre.” But wait! Kamala Harris said we had no troops in a war zone!
A woman from Warrington, Cheshire, has revealed how her attempt to report a sexual attack led to her own arrest while the perpetrator remained free to assault others for nearly two years.
Helen Ingham, 48, recently waived her right to anonymity in order to share her harrowing experience with law enforcement after reporting an assault by Ahmed Fahmy, 45, a hotel manager whose reign of terror against women spanned more than 15 years.
There, as here, the left doesn’t want foreign rapists deported…
Democrats chances to take the senate this year appear to be dim. Good.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill on Monday aimed at streamlining permitting laws to facilitate the domestic construction of semiconductor factories.
The bipartisan legislation passed by a vote of 257 to 125, with 49 members not voting, and now moves to the president’s desk for approval.
The bill passed the Senate last year, and was passed in the House of Representatives this week as the “Kelly-Cruz substitute amendment.”
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) submitted the amended text of their Senate bill in December 2023.
When a bill passes as a “substitute amendment” in Congress, the original text is entirely replaced with new content. This new version of the bill, offered as an amendment, becomes the text that is voted on and passed.
It aims to accelerate the construction of U.S. semiconductor facilities, as the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act of 2022 has made over $50 billion available to promote domestic production and innovation.
It will also streamline federal permitting by designating the Department of Commerce as the lead agency for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews, exempting certain projects from NEPA, providing the Secretary of Commerce with greater authority to expedite reviews in coordination with state and local governments, and limiting court challenge timelines.
Snip.
Cruz supported one portion of the CHIPS Act but disagreed with another.
Cruz explained in 2023 that the CHIPS Act consisted of two key parts: the Facilitating American-Built Semiconductors (FABS) Act, offering a tax credit to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing investment, and the CHIPS Act itself, providing billions in direct subsidies to companies. While Cruz co-sponsored the FABS Act, he voted against the CHIPS Act due to his opposition to direct subsidies, favoring the more indirect incentive of the tax credit.
“Many companies have fired Gen Z workers just months after hiring them and several business owners said they are hesitant to bring on recent college graduates due to concerns about their work ethic, communication skills and readiness to do the job, according to a new survey. Six in 10 employers said they have already let go recent college graduates this year, while one in seven said they are inclined to refrain from hiring new graduates next year, according to a survey conducted by Intelligent.com.” Also: “Although they may have some theoretical knowledge from college, they often lack the practical, real-world experience and soft skills required to succeed in the work environment.” Also: “75% of companies reported that some or all of their recent college graduates were unsatisfactory.” There may be a bit of truth to this, but a lot of companies seem to be laying off and firing people of whatever age right now…
Seems like an Air Force F-22 Raptor shot down a UFO over Canada in 2023. This was during the Red Balloon Menace, but it sort of looks like a Cylon Raider from the BattleStar Galactica reboot.
Critical Drinker gives thumbs up on The Penguin. “Just the right balance between grounded realism and industrial gothic. It’s obviously still based on New York, but rundown, neglected, stricken by crime, corruption and decay. So basically just actual New York, then.”
Due to issues of politics, congestion, or just plain corruption, nations get the bright idea to build brand new capital cities far away from existing urban areas. Sometimes it works out (as with Washington D.C.), and sometimes it doesn’t. China’s Xi Jinping is trying something different with Xiongan, which is being built not so much a replacement to Beijing but as sort of “mini-me” Beijing to relieve overcrowding by offloading functions to the new built-from-scratch city in Hebei* province.
About 60 miles south of the center of Beijing, a new city is being built as a showcase of high-tech ecologically friendly development. Its massive high-speed rail station and “city brain” data center have been heralded by Chinese state media as evidence of the speed and superiority of China’s growth model—not least because the city is a “signature initiative” of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Commies (and their American fans) do love their high speed rail projects. Never mind that high speed rail in China has mostly been a trillion dollar, money losing sinkhole.
Xiongan New Area is also a test for whether China can boost domestic innovation and climb into the ranks of advanced nations in the face of slowing economic growth and efforts by the United States and others to restrict its access to advanced technology.
Xiongan offers a window into what Xi’s vision of state-led innovation looks like on the ground. Xi has called the city his “personal initiative” and a qiannian daji, or “thousand-year plan of national significance.”
You know who else had a thousand year plan?
Sorry, I just can’t resist a good Hitler meme when you pitch a slow ball right over the center of the plate…
The plan for Xiongan, which was formally unveiled in 2017 to relieve pressure on Beijing and promote the “coordinated regional development” of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, has faced financial struggles due to the huge investment costs—even more of a problem given China’s mounting real estate crisis. Overall, the new area encompasses about 650 square miles, with a planned population of around 3 million; currently, the three counties comprising the zone have around 1.4 million long-term residents. As of September 2022, 400 billion yuan (about $57 billion) in completed investment had been reported in the city overall.
While Xi has stacked the new Politburo Standing Committee with officials loyal to him, he has also elevated those with strong science and engineering backgrounds. In his speech at the 20th Party Congress last October, Xi declared that “innovation will remain at the heart of China’s modernization drive” and that China has “worked hard to promote high-quality development and pushed to foster a new pattern of development.” Nevertheless, a confluence of factors including COVID-19 lockdowns and trade tensions is contributing to overall slower growth in China.
In Xi’s vision, however, party control is not a hindrance to innovation. Rather, Xi’s vision of innovation is one in which the state and party play a leading role. Xi has led a crackdown on private technology firms such as Alibaba but has also promoted policies, such as his Made in China 2025, that aim to boost research-and-development spending and subsidies to give Chinese firms competitive advantages in industries including biotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and semiconductors.
We know from experience that this approach almost never works, because the profit motive of capitalism is always a superior discovery mechanism for innovation than top-down bureaucratic mandates. We know that the state-led approach has already been a colossal failure for semiconductors even before the sanctions came down, and it’s a good bet that it’s been just as colossal a failure in all the other areas mentioned.
Xi’s policies favor “hard tech” over software-based platform app companies. The first party secretary of Xiongan was Chen Gang, who oversaw Beijing’s Zhongguancun high-tech park before being transferred to Guizhou, where under Xi ally Chen Miner he helped turn the southwestern province into a center of big data and cloud computing.
The approach to innovation in Xiongan involves embedding technology within the fabric of the city as well as innovation processes within the party-state. Xiongan Group was created as the investment vehicle for the area’s overall development, under the control of Hebei province but backed partially by loans from China Development Bank. The first central state-owned enterprises to begin construction of offices in the new area were China Satellite Communications Co., the energy giant China Huaneng Group, and Sinochem Holdings. Others now include the big three telecoms and China State Grid, as well as China Mineral Resources Group, a conglomerate set up last year to centralize China’s coal mining industry. These state-owned enterprises could use Xiongan as a test bed for new technologies. Research institutes and satellite branches of several Beijing universities are planning to open in the area around 2025. The relocation of these major units and their thousands of employees will determine how quickly Xiongan’s development proceeds.
Even as China’s economy has slowed during COVID-19 lockdowns and the global downturn, construction of the first phase of Xiongan has marched on: A huge high-speed rail station to connect the city with Beijing opened in 2020, followed by residential slabs, massive underground utility corridors, and the city brain data center, which will serve as the nerve center of the city’s digital systems. The first section, Rongdong, has been mostly completed, with housing for 170,000 people. Media reports of new schools opening show the effort to build high-quality public amenities to attract residents to the city: Branches of Beijing institutions such as Shijia Primary School and Tsinghua University High School are among the new educational institutions being built in Xiongan.
The Foreign Policy piece is OK as a sort of sanitized, high level overview, but lacks several key words (“shoddy,” “rotten,” “unsafe,” “tofu dregs,” etc.) that reflect the grittier reality of Xi Jinping’s dream:
Takeaways:
“This is arguably the world’s biggest rotten tail project.”
“The project, which was billed as a Millennium Project and a major national event, fell apart after only five years.”
“According to the official website of Xiongan New Area, in 2021 the area arranged more than 230 key projects with a planned investment of more than 200 billion RMB. In 2022, 232 key projects were arranged with an investment of another 200 billion RMB and the cumulative total investment has exceeded 700 billion RMB, i.e. nearly 100 billion US dollars.”
Add area rail and road infrastructure investments and the total rises to $150 billion.
“Located 105 kilometers from both Beijing and Tianjin, the new area is positioned to decongest Beijing’s non-capital functions and will host administrative and institutional units, corporate head offices financial institutions, universities, research institutes and other organizations evacuated from Beijing.” I bet workers who have already gone through the expensive and difficult process of buying their own condos in Beijing will just love being forced to move an hour away.
“The initial planning area is about 100 square kilometers, with plans to slowly expand to an eventual area of about 2,000 square kilometers.” 2,000 square kilometers works out to about 772 square miles, or larger than Houston, one of America’s most sprawling cities.
“Average folks have wondered why did the central government put this new area…in a sparsely populated and heavily polluted poor rural area.”
The idea seems to be to bring Beijing, Tianjin and Xiongan into a single economic circle with a population of 130 million.
Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao each decreed creation of their own special areas, and Xi is following in their footsteps.
After the new area was announced, “real estate speculators from all over the country flocked overnight. The local property price soared from 4 000 RMB per square meter to 40,000 RMB, catching up with the first tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.”
There was an explosion of construction, but then it stopped.
“For more than five years, the large-scale construction of the Xiongan New Area didn’t move. The streets were empty, and people from outside had left one after another.”
A high speed rail station said to be the largest in Asia the size of “66 soccer stadiums” has only one train a day.
“In August 2021, the CCP issued a regulation that downgraded Xiongan to a regional level jurisdiction.” So instead of being it’s own special area, it’s now run by Hebei province, which means “this ‘Millennium Project’ is no longer possible, and the central government has simply dumped this hot potato on the local government.”
Official use words like “expedite, start construction, registering land, basically confirmed, etc didn’t explain any more specific progress. This actually allowed the public to read its true meaning, that is there is no substantial progress.”
The same pagoda seems to have been constructed several times.
“No one wants to go there at all. Even if you force them out of Beijing, they still don’t want to go there. There are no actions from the universities either.”
Chinese people think the area has bad “Feng Shui,” and it’s in a low-lying area near a lake that used to be flooded. The local lake and river also have very poor water quality. “However, the [water] treatment project hasn’t yet been completed.”
“Xiongan New Area is like building a mansion in a garbage dump, and people don’t want to live there.”
“More than five years later, no decent state-owned enterprises have really moved to Xiongan.”
“Given China’s objection to objective reality, the only way to make people move to Xiongan is by force. This is what happened in 2017, when the Beijing government forcibly evicted the so-called low-end population and people took to the streets in protest.”
Shenzhen New Area benefited from China’s opening, foreign investment and proximity to Hong Kong. “The dysfunctional mechanism of the CCP which had suppressed economic momentum for decades was released at the moment when the country opened its doors, so that Shenzhen could rise with the momentum.”
By contrast, Xiongan suffers from global economic headwinds and local finances are “very poor.”
Banks poured money into the area, accompanied by corruption. Natives forced out of their homes got low compensation and the new homes were shoddy. Many still haven’t found new homes.
“Videos provided by local residents show that the most common problems with homes are water leaks cracked exterior walls and sinking floors in some homes water leaked all over the floor.” A video shows a stairway turning into a waterfall during heavy rain.
It’s hard to find on Google maps, but I think this spot shows the same cookie cutter buildings seen in the video.
Ghost city, tofu dregs, rotten tail; parts of Xiongan seem to check all three boxes.
*Note: Hebei Province is completely different from Hubei Province further south…
I talked about buildings made of Chinesium and rotten tail buildings, upon which construction stops but upon which mortgage owners are still expected to make payments.
Shoddy Chinese construction practices don’t stop there. This week an entire Chinese residential skyscraper went up in flames:
Fires are hardly unknown among American skyscrapers, but usually they occur in older buildings, not ones built this century, as modern construction practices like firewalls and sprinkler systems generally prevent fires from spreading from floor to floor. The Lotus Garden China Telecom building in Changsha was finished in 2000.
Buildings made from subpar constriction materials in China are know as “Tofu Dregs” buildings, as though they were built out of tofu:
Shoddy construction practices extend to buildings, roads, bridges, flood walls and other infrastructure. It’s hard to do quality work when cutting corners seems to be your national ethos…
Only recently did I learn the word Chinesium, a much needed neologism describing the crappy, subpar metal that cut-rate Chinese manufacturers build their products out of.
So what happens when you build skyscrapers out of Chinesium? This happens:
Engineers were inspecting a skyscraper in southern China on Wednesday, a day after it triggered widespread panic when it suddenly began shaking, as people took to social media to ask if shoddy construction may have been to blame.
Shoddy construction? In China?
The 1,000-foot SEG Plaza in the southern city of Shenzhen near Hong Kong began swaying in the early afternoon on Tuesday, prompting people inside and those on the streets below to flee.
Emergency management officials quickly ruled out an earthquake as the cause of the wobble in the tech hub’s Futian district.
Officials said no further movement had been detected and experts found “no safety abnormalities in the main structure and surrounding environment of the building.”
The building had stopped shaking by the time people were evacuated, state media reported, and the plaza remained sealed off.
Building collapses are not rare in China, where lax construction standards and breakneck urbanization over recent decades has led to buildings being thrown up in haste.
You don’t say. It’s cut corners all the way down.
Poor construction standards are often linked to corruption among local officials, most recently after the collapse of a quarantine hotel in southern China last year.
As opposed to that corruption among national officials reporters aren’t supposed to mention.
Completed in 2000, the tower is home to a major electronics market as well as various offices in the central business district of Shenzhen, a sprawling metropolis of more than 13 million people.
The building is named after the semiconductor and electronics manufacturer Shenzhen Electronics Group, whose offices are based in the complex.
It is the 18th tallest tower in Shenzhen, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat skyscraper database.
I’d never heard of Shenzhen Electronics Group, AKA Shenzhen Fine Made Electronics Group Company Ltd., which doesn’t necessarily mean anything. There are lots of fabless semiconductor manufacturers in various vertical markets I’ve never heard of. Bloomberg says they have 899 employees. So why do they have a website that would have looked ancient even in 2005?
Hopefully their semiconductors are better constructed than the building they work in.
Chinese authorities last year banned the construction of skyscrapers taller than 500 meters (1,640 feet), adding to height restrictions already enforced in some other cities such as Beijing.
Sounds like Chinesium may be a widespread problem in China…
