Jonathan Xavier Weinert 2008

September 21, 2005: It's now been 7 weeks since I've landed in China. Classes started up here a couple weeks ago here so life at Tongji's Jiading campus is now in full swing! A brief update since last time:

1. Visit to Taiwan:
I got the chance to go to Taibei, Taiwan for a week to visit Jason Ni (my UC-Davis colleague, also doing research now at Tongji) and observe the city. Some of you suggested I note the differences between the two cities in terms of transportation and fuel.

Overall, on the long and winding road to development, they seem to be right in between China and the US. Transportation there is much more orderly, less chaotic than Shanghai. Two wheel scooters and cars dominate the roads. Bike's are almost non-existent. Alternative fuels have minimal penetration (as far as I could tell). The air is much cleaner than Shanghai. Buses are a lot less crowded.

During our visit, Jason Ni and I met with his former advisor (Dr. Jason Chang), who is really well connected in Shanghai and often serves as a transportation advisor here. Dr. Chang illuminated two important principles about working in Shanghai.
A) The first deals with Planning vs. Implementation. Shanghai has excellent transportation planning/modeling capability. The actual implementation however rarely follows the plan. Why? Because (as I understood) when it comes to implementation, politics gets in the way of implementing the plan due to special interest groups (e.g. developers) swaying the few decision makers in charge of implementation (sound surprising?). An example, many very tall office buildings have been built right next to the highway, rather than directing development along subway lines. This will only lead to greater automobile growth and congestion.

One conclusion to draw from Dr. Chang's insights is that Shanghai doesn't need more modeling/planning, rather it needs more enforcement of the plans. How to apply this principle to my research on automotive fuel transitions in Shanghai? I will spend the next few months coming up with answers. Of course, I welcome your thoughts/reactions to this question.

B) The second is "Friends first". I had heard about the principle of "guan xi" (relationships) before, but Jason re-iterated it to us, that in doing business or any sort of work in China, it's important to become friends first. Also not too surprising, but a good tid-bit of wisdom.

2. The Shell Hydrogen Lighthouse Feasibility Study; wrapping up.
My colleague and I completed the rough draft of the final report for Shell a couple weeks ago and they are now reviewing it. I contributed to the report by applying my H2 Station Cost Model to estimate the cost of several hydrogen fueling station options for the city. We will meet with Shell in Early October for a final wrap up meeting.

3. Automotive Fuel Transitions (i.e. My dissertation)
While I have spent most of the last 7 weeks working on the Shell project and Chinese, Dr. Ma and I have begun discussing my research topic in more depth. He knows people at the Shenhua Group, China's massive state-owned coal company. Their R&D center is in Shanghai and they are working on synfuel production technology so I hope to pay a visit sometime in the next couple months and find out more about their plans for synfuel production. You can check out the company here: http://www.shenhuacoal.com/english/e_index.htm. I've begun pouring through a few of the "suitcase o' books" I brought over from the US on technology evolution and innovation. That should keep me fairly occupied for a while.

3. Conference on Intelligent Transportation Technologies
I attended a conference on intelligent transportation technology put on by Tongji's Transportation Studies Department. It was a good opportunity to rekindle some of the contacts Jason and I made last December with some of the transportation teachers and students. While their studies are not directly related to my research, they are quite familiar with Shanghai local gov't and the planning process here.

4. Met with Lee Schipper and crew
Last weekend, Jason and I had dinner with Lee and his colleagues, Dr. Yoshi Hayashi from Nagoya University, and Peter Roberts from the World Bank. All have extensive international experience in the development of transportation infrastructure. They and a few more of the world's leading sustainable transportation professionals/reserachers are in town for a special workshop with Shanghai Planning Commission to talk about how other mega-cities around the world have dealt with congestion. Shanghai needs them badly!