I just watched a documentary on this tower being designed and built ... woooo! I found out I can get vertigo from images on a large screen TV. An amazing country China, we go on about poor quality in many of our motorbikes yet the Chinese can go into space and also successfully build such designs as this.

One thing it shows for me is that co-operation internationally (not just theft of designs) leads to superb creations. I hope this will be the future my children grow to see and enjoy instead of the image some politicians still put forward of hordes of Chinese invading the rest of the world ...

My thinking is that ALL human endeavour is built on previous experience, and except when the Romans burnt libraries and razed cities and societies to dust or when plagues swept half the world or volcanic ash caused century long weather changes, our history as a human race is an amalgam and blend of art and science with cross-cultural exchange being a major catalyst. This balances to a small extent the wickedness of war and the destruction that brings. Rigid ownership of ideas should not in the end be justified except that it allows the short-term gathering and control of resources toward an end. Market forces, yes, aspiration also.

In this case, millions of tons of steel and concrete shape a true wonder. It could be said that the same resources would have built many dams for water, levy banks against flood, proofing against earthquakes and so on for the general populace, however such a tower also aids in keeping information flowing at all times including disasters.

The Chinese Universities did the engineering modelling against cyclones and earthquakes, well they have to live with it after all. If they can do that, one day maybe our little china-bikes will also evolve! I wish I had another lifetime to live in to watch all this unfolding - if the wars already going don't spread and wipe us all out, if food and resources are somehow kept available for our populations, this century will be a wonder to experience as the globe becomes one living entity.
年年有餘