China is now the world largest producer of gold(in additon to almost every other metal as well). I wonder if anyone has any info on the gold production there. It is clear that they can produce things much cheaper than here in Canada.

You wonder how they so quickly became number one. Gold has to be found and then extracted. If they can discover and ramp up production so quickly, while things over here takes at least 10 years, they must be doing something right. Sure there environmetal permits, asking all neighbours, etc, but clearly in terms of business they are ahead of us.

The Chinese basically killed the Magnola project(Noranda Magnesium) and they are ramping up nickel production in additon to steel and aluminum, so I wonder how far they can go in gold.

One general problem here in the West is that everything has to be "huge" before it becomes economic. Farms no longer are measure in acres("an acre is the amount of land a farmer with his horse can plow in a day"). One thing I learned the year I lived in Chile, was that small farms without any heavy machinerey served the people well, since at times they hired tens or hunderes of people to do labour work. It was employment, low risk to the farmer since I did not have to invest in huge machines etc.

Any toughts how this may relate to the development of Herc?