August 2010

On 13 August, Noam Chomsky delivered a speech at the Peking University in Beijing. Chomsky, one of the leading public intellectuals of our age, is famous for his political activism and contributions to linguistic and philosophy. The talk, titled Contours of World Order: Continuities and Changes, was mostly about two dominant threats facing humanity: nuclear wars and environmental degradation.

While Chomsky has re-emphasized his criticisms on the United States, he has also expressed his opinions on China. In Chomsky’s view, emerging countries like China and India still have a long way to go to challenge the America. Of particular concern is the environmental cost of China’s development model, and the many internal and social problems that China has to tackle. This week, the Southern Metropolitan Daily publishes an interview with Chomsky. An excerpt of the interview is translated below.

The Chinese have seen the future of cost-effective public transport, and it looks not unlike a gigantic bus shaped like a compartmental tunnel that’s capable of ferrying around up to 1,200 passengers while two lanes of ordinary road traffic pass beneath it.

It may only be a concept at this point in time, but Chinese designers believe the aptly-named ‘tunnel bus’ is eco-friendly thanks to ‘relay charging’, its cutting-edge, roof-mounted electricity system. They hope it will also encourage vast sways of road users to leave their cars at home.

In terms of evaluating the placement and movement of the tunnel bus on the roads of China, current ideas are swaying back and forth between dedicated track lines splitting four-lane highways, or a combination of regular tyres and coloured directional road lines for the human driver to follow.