but hey, if something is too hard or maybe too expensive, lets just not bother then, right? status quo forever
do you know how much rail line and paved highway, china and its partner nations have put down on the new silk road and its spurs in central asia?
it goes from , being modest ,Xinjiang, though arguable deeper into china with existing connections, across the -Stans with a spur down into pakistan all the way to port of Karachi.
connects existing lines north and south of the Caspian sea and then all the way through to Eastern Europe with a connection to Germany and western Europe-and therefore England, over existing rail lines.
the total of these new rail lines and pavement far far exceeds the amount of new line that would be needed to tie in on both shores of a chunnel
the 'recycled materials' are things like the stone to be excavated from under the sea is the ideal stone already used to crush for rail beds. as for steel? the chinese have been buying up nearly every scrap of waste metal from the rest of the world for years. and they and russia make their own steel as well.
the push back against this from Americans is at best xenophobic and the old belief that 'only america can build big' (hello.. Great Wall anyone ?)
it has been said on these forums that china and the east are the future of mankind's development and new ways of thinking in many arenas from largest floating solar array, to space exploration and near earth habitation, to robotics, to manufacturing and engineering/construction
americans still have a very narrow view of the east and what they have accomplished already-many do not even realise what they have done to date like a manned space station and its replacement to go up next year. Or that they have been scanning/ geological mapping the moon-no doubt to lay the ground work for mining there.
we are so far behind them we want to criticize them and believe everything they do is still worthy of the once lowly "made in china" label of cheap clothes and plastic junk. we can't fathom that they have leaped so far ahead of us.
thy may not get this chunnel done anytime soon, but the chinese people are a persistent and generational patient group, tie that to russian tenacity and hard headedness...it will get done eventually