Calif. governor looks to China for investments

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Jerry Brown has designs on building some of the most expensive public works projects in the nation and wants to keep the state moving forward in its slow recovery from the recession.

Where better to go searching for the money to further those interests than the world's second largest economy and a country that has piles of cash to invest around the globe?

The governor of the most populous U.S. state heads to China next week to begin a weeklong trade mission that he hopes will produce investments on both sides of the Pacific. Brown will lead a delegation of business leaders in search of what he calls "plenty of billions."

"They've got $400 billion or $500 billion they're going to invest abroad, so California's got to get a piece of that," Brown said in an interview last week ahead of his seven-day trip to China.

The governor and business leaders accompanying him are trying to rebuild the state's official relationship with China after the state closed its two trade offices and others around the world a decade ago in a cost-cutting move. California finds itself playing catch-up to other states that have had a vigorous presence in China for years.

California, which would be the world's ninth largest economy if it were a separate country, will open a trade office in Shanghai during Brown's visit. The Bay Area Council, a coalition of business interests from the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, is raising about $1 million a year in private money to operate it.

"California shouldn't be the only state in the union not to have a presence with key foreign trading partners like China," said Jim Wunderman, president of the group.

The council opened its own office in Shanghai in 2010 to fill the void after the closure of the trade offices. Bruce Pickering, executive director of the Northern California office of the Asia Society, called the 2003 decision "penny wise but pound foolish."

"We've basically said, 'We're California, show up and stand in line with everybody else,'" Pickering said. "You have to do a little more than just say you're welcoming a business. ... You have to really send a message that you are ready for it."

Asia Society, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes collaboration between the U.S. and Asia, reported in 2011 that businesses from China have established operations and created jobs in at least 35 of the 50 U.S. states, including California.

Pickering said California is behind other states in recruiting Chinese investment, while states as varied as Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida and Arkansas have had an official presence there. The Republican governors of Iowa, Virginia, Wisconsin and Guam also are visiting China this month and meeting with provincial leaders to discuss trade and the environment.

"I would think it would be very difficult to try to attract investment without having someone on the ground there on your behalf," said Joe Holmes, a spokesman for the Arkansas Economic Development Agency.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe led a mission to China last year, and a number of deals are being discussed as a result, Holmes said.

Asia Society reported this year that China's direct foreign investment is poised to skyrocket to between $1 trillion and $2 trillion by 2020. California is ideally situated to capture some of that money if it goes after it: China already is California's third-largest export partner after Mexico and Canada.

And Brown already has a relationship with President Xi Jinping. The two met to discuss trade issues last year when the then-vice president visited California.

Technology, life sciences, real estate, banking, health care and agriculture are among the industries state business leaders and officials hope to target. The concentration of skilled technical engineers and the clean-energy sector in the Silicon Valley also are a draw for emerging companies, along with Chinese tourism to California.

State and local tourism officials are among those joining Brown on the trip, along with winemakers, cheese proprietors and almond growers. In all, about 75 business and policy leaders from a cross-section of California industries are joining the mission, which will include stops in the capital city, Beijing, as well as Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Those cities are among the most developed and important in China. Shanghai, a port city, is an important center of industry and finance, while Guangzhou is in the heartland of the Pearl River Delta region, which is home to the myriad processing and assembling factories that have made China the world's factory floor.

The nearly $4 billion a year in computer and electronic products California sends to China account for the state's largest export, followed by waste and scrap, non-electrical machinery and transportation equipment. The agriculture products such as strawberries, almonds and lettuce are fifth.

According to the governor's office, the vast majority of Chinese exports headed to the United States go through California ports.

The trip also signals a pivot for Brown as he seeks to rebuild California's nearly $2 trillion economy after the state's tumultuous ride during the Great Recession. It was the epicenter of the housing crisis and weathered double-digit unemployment for nearly four years.

Brown said the state budget has stabilized, in large part because of voter-approved tax increases, and that he is now moving on to broader policy issues.

"California is a place where it's a cauldron of creative activity, and I see that China has some of that, maybe a lot of that," Brown said in the interview. "You have always got to find a way to renew things, and that's what I see as my job here."

The governor's boldest and most expensive projects are a $68 billion high-speed rail system that is expected to start construction this summer and a $24 billion project to build massive water-delivery tunnels and restore parts of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast.

Brown is especially interested in studying China's extensive high-speed rail system and use it as a way to promote his own plan, which has come under intense criticism and has been losing public support as its projected cost has soared. The governor is scheduled to ride part of China's rail system from Beijing to Shanghai, accompanied by the chairman of California's high-speed rail board, Dan Richard.

China has the world's longest high-speed rail system, covering 5,800 miles, and has tried to turn it into a showcase. But the system also has faced problems: Part of a line collapsed in central China after heavy rains and a crash in 2011 killed 40 people. The former railway minister, who spearheaded the bullet train's construction, and the ministry's chief engineer, were detained in a corruption investigation.

Brown said he likes "the exuberance" with which Chinese officials approached building high-speed rail and would welcome investment in the California system or any other infrastructure projects in the state.

Despite the governor's enthusiasm, it's not clear how applicable the Chinese system is to a major infrastructure project in the U.S. The Chinese high-speed rail network benefits from heavy government financing and faces few of the environmental and legal hurdles in California. The land needed to build the Chinese system is often forcibly procured at below market prices.

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Associated Press writer Charles Hutzler in Beijing contributed to this report.

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Cuba looks to curb deadly scourge of jaywalking

HAVANA (AP) — Teenagers dash across a six-lane thoroughfare and launch themselves into the balmy waters of the Straits of Florida.

A couple skips the sidewalk and strolls down an unlit street as bulky 1950s cars with bald tires and worn brakes zip past inches away.

"Here there is no custom of using the crosswalk," said Maria Rubio, a 55-year-old Havana resident who had just sauntered across the six lanes of bustling 23rd Street, mere steps from a zebra-striped crossing. "We simply cross wherever we are."

Jaywalking is endemic in Havana, where islanders seem to treat the streets like a real-life version of the video game Frogger, weaving in and out of traffic while risking life and limb to reach the other side. Locals call it "toreando autos" — "bullfighting with cars."

Now authorities are trying to do something about the lack of caution, which they say contributes to hundreds of pedestrians being struck each year.

A recent full-page spread in the state newspaper Juventud Rebelde, titled "Lethal imprudence," showed photos of Cubans darting in front of oncoming cars. It also gave rare data on traffic accidents, saying more than 1,300 pedestrians are mowed down each year in this nation of 11 million people. About one in seven of those accidents is fatal.

"A catalog of suffering that can be overcome only through love of life and sufficient caution," the brief accompanying text said.

Official newspapers like Juventud Rebelde are commonly used to push campaigns against various forms of "social indiscipline," such as wasteful overuse of air conditioners and tardiness by workers in getting to their government jobs.

Outsiders who visit Havana often remark how little traffic there is for a city of its size, about 2.1 million people. But the streets have recovered much of their bustle in the years since the Soviet Union's collapse in the 1990s caused severe fuel shortages that idled all but a few vehicles.

New cars are flowing in from Asia and Europe even as older models stay in circulation long past the time when they would be scrapped in other countries. There are no statistics, but traffic is undoubtedly getting heavier each year.

The increased danger hasn't made any dent in lax attitudes about safety on the streets, as Associated Press journalists found while touring Havana's chaotic streets.

Here a man lay knocked to the asphalt by a '50s Detroit classic, quickly attended to by the driver and passersby amid cries of "He's alive!" and "Don't move him!"

At another spot, two women stood in the middle of the road trying to thumb a ride to avoid using Havana's irregular, crowded buses. Elsewhere, a woman pushing a stroller hurried across an avenue to beat approaching traffic.

Elementary school children streaming across a busy street in the Vedado neighborhood as classes let out said there's never a crossing guard to keep them safe.

Back on 23rd, a traffic cop looked on with a bored expression as a dozen pedestrians crossed against the light.

And there was no interference with the teenagers who were racing across the Malecon boulevard to build up speed for leaping into the sea.

"The police don't say anything to us," said 14-year-old Maikel Rojo. "They only tell us that if tourists are around we should be careful not to get them wet and not ask them for money. But they don't say a thing about our running."

The jaywalking problem is exacerbated by Havana's sorely deficient infrastructure. Along a 5-mile (8-kilometer) stretch of the Malecon and 5th Avenue, a major artery with a speed limit of 50 mph (80 kph), there's not a single pedestrian crossing and just five stoplights.

Crumbling and sometimes nonexistent sidewalks have locals so accustomed to walking in the road that many stroll in the only slightly better maintained streets even when a good sidewalk exists.

Motorists complain that driving the Malecon is particularly harrowing on weekend nights when thousands gather to socialize and get tipsy, spilling out onto the slippery, often unlit boulevard.

Given the relative lack of streetlamps, many drivers leave their high beams on to illuminate the potholes and jaywalkers — and in doing so, blind other motorists from the same hazards.

"When I'm driving, especially at night, it frightens me to think someone could suddenly appear, and if I hit him I go to jail," said Alejandro Llanes, who makes his living as a driver but had just strolled casually across 23rd Street in the middle of the block. "But look at the lack of culture we have. When I'm a pedestrian, I do the same thing."

Just then two city buses halted in the middle of the road, far from any apparent bus stop, and began disgorging passengers into traffic as cars whizzed by.

"Look at that!" Llanes exclaimed. "If something happens there, whose fault is it?"

Cuban law prescribes jail time for motorists who kill pedestrians, even if they aren't speeding and the victim crosses improperly.

Victor Guzman, a 55-year-old Havana resident, said that if authorities are serious about discouraging jaywalking, they need to fix the streets and sidewalks, improve signage and paint more lanes and crosswalks.

But he and others expressed doubt that a scolding in state media will fare any better than past drives to alter bad habits.

"This has been a joke for 50 years," Guzman said. "There is not even a minimal awareness of traffic rules, and that's something you can't change in a few days."

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Follow Peter Orsi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

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