Strategy&Future

In the 31st January 1907 edition of Le Matin, under the headline Paris-Pékin Automobile: Un défi prodigieux, there was a really remarkable story which looked set to define what we now think of as the first era of globalisation. And since 2006 happens to be the year that Google Translate was launched, it shouldn’t pose too many problems for S&F readers if we re-publish the original text here:

The theory of global free trade is fashionable now, just as it was before the First World War. According to it, different parts of the world develop differently, depending on the possibilities and resources. But at the same time, by specialising in a given field of industry or service, they naturally produce a division of tasks over time. It was once believed that in this way the peace, development and brotherhood of mankind would be ensured.

Opened in December 2005, the Donghai Bridge — connecting mainland Shanghai with a new deepwater container port on the islands of Yangshan in Hangzhou Bay 32.5km away — was not the world’s longest cross-water bridge. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in New Orleans, completed in the 1960s, was longer. But Donghai (meaning East China Sea) Bridge was a very concrete symbol of China’s ambitions to dominate world trade.

Jacek Bartosiak talks to Hugh White of Australia on the Canberra’s strategic posture