‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 47
"The River Yangtze is the third longest on the planet. It is approximately 6,300 km long and accounts for more than a third of China’s total freshwater supplies. It discharges more than a million million cubic meters of water into the sea annually. A river so huge, it might be thought, would be almost impossible to pollute heavily.
Yet according to the 2007 health report on this river (which, despite being billed as ‘annual’ by the Chinese government is the first of its kind) it is under major pressure. Around 10% of the Yangtze is in ‘critical condition,’ and 30% of its major tributaries are seriously polluted. According to Yang Guishan, a researcher at a department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the nation’s leading intellectual body, this impact is ‘largely irreversible.’ In 2006, the Yangtze fell to its lowest level since records began in 1877.
Every species that lives in the river is in decline, most dramatically the white-flag dolphin, or ‘Baiji,’ one of only five species of freshwater dolphin in the world.
A six week search for the white-flag along the river did not find a single dolphin, leading some researchers to conclude it is in fact extinct. If so, it will be the first time mankind has driven a cetacean to extinction."
China’s lack of concern for the environment is pretty shocking. There is almost no environmental activism at any level in society. The sector I am most familiar with, the highly-educated, are no exception.
Now these guys are environmentally aware. They have some idea how fucked-up China’s environment is (though they only know a mere fraction of the true situation) but they simply don’t care. I’ve never seen a student turn off the air conditioner after class, or turn off a light. Most dump their trash – food wrappers, drink bottles – on the floor and saunter out of the class uncaring.
For most of my stay in China, I’ve never seen a Chinese person take a used plastic bag to the store. When I go to the store, I take a plastic bag. And when I get it out at the till, most times the checkout operator and the people in the queue smile, or laugh – ‘Look at the funny foreigner!’
I guess that’s slowly going to change now that Shanghai government compels stores to charge for plastic bags. The many years of ‘patriotic education’ – the slogans plastered everywhere exhorting people to ‘Love China’ and so on had precisely zero effect. There is very little sense of altruism in China; most everything is filtered through the lens of immediate personal benefit.
That’s why most Chinese people care nothing for the environment, but they do care to save a coin.
And that’s why China’s environment will continue to be raped, ravaged and exploited for the foreseeable future.
There’s money in it.
Now these guys are environmentally aware. They have some idea how fucked-up China’s environment is (though they only know a mere fraction of the true situation) but they simply don’t care. I’ve never seen a student turn off the air conditioner after class, or turn off a light. Most dump their trash – food wrappers, drink bottles – on the floor and saunter out of the class uncaring.
For most of my stay in China, I’ve never seen a Chinese person take a used plastic bag to the store. When I go to the store, I take a plastic bag. And when I get it out at the till, most times the checkout operator and the people in the queue smile, or laugh – ‘Look at the funny foreigner!’
I guess that’s slowly going to change now that Shanghai government compels stores to charge for plastic bags. The many years of ‘patriotic education’ – the slogans plastered everywhere exhorting people to ‘Love China’ and so on had precisely zero effect. There is very little sense of altruism in China; most everything is filtered through the lens of immediate personal benefit.
That’s why most Chinese people care nothing for the environment, but they do care to save a coin.
And that’s why China’s environment will continue to be raped, ravaged and exploited for the foreseeable future.
There’s money in it.
‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 47
"It’s safe to say that the idea of “harmoniously coexisting with nature,” which China introduced in 2003 as a “new concept” is not working. One reason that the national government has such limited success in controlling pollution is that local governments do everything they can to keep the inspectors out.
For example, many local governments set up industrial parks which banned other government departments from conducting any inspections whatsoever without direct approval. This is why most of the hundred firms in one such industrial park in Henan Province did not install any pollution control equipment at all, and instead just dumped untreated waste into a local river.
Similar parks can be found in Anhui, Gansu and Zhejiang Provinces. All across China county governments collude with polluters to keep the money flowing into their pockets and the poison flowing into the environment."
China is still brutalizing Tibet, even as the Games are underway. Heavy-handed crackdowns, making sure no Tibetan voice is heard free and clear. So if you are in China and can be on camera, make a ‘T’ sign for Tibet and an X sign for Xinjiang.
20 comments:
Your website is not proof of anything chinabounder. You hope to turn your deviant sexual exploits into something a lot deeper and more meaningful by attaching yourself like a parasite to your past host country.
When all you are is a pervert. That simply sums up your experience here in China and what you are in one word.
People will not view this blog with fascination or interest and as you hope read your rather boring "facts" about China. They will just read the parts about the sex and ignore the rest.
So, besides providing material for all the 14 year olds that come here to jerk off to your porno stories, do you really have anything of interest to share about China that is of deeper intellectual thought, and I don't mean your cheap book that didn't even make Amazon that you continuously keep quoting probably in an effort to achieve a mediocre level of sales.
Did I mention Britian is a nation of medicore people? We'll get into that next time.
Anony-mouse out.
P.S Did I mention that the women you fucked didn't seem that all together very important people.
Glad someone was getting some use out of them.
Lets hope one turns up with your love child. Then you could write about China's excellent child support system. (another idea for a book!)
P.P.S I can't believe you included your blog in your book! lol you fake phoney, douche-bag.
They say there are three ways to change people's behaviour -- by force, by money, or by moral education. The last is much the hardest (although ultimately the most beneficial and lasting) and I am not surprised that it is only money that is changing Chinese consumers' attitudes towards the environment.
Far worse, in my opinion, is the Chinese government's lack of concern for how their trashing of the environment damages other countries. Example: China is now constructing several dams on the Upper Mekong which will likely have devastating effects downstream for the 60 million people in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam who depend on the river for their sustenance (not to mention the endangered Mekong giant catfish).
The Chinese government's response? It's our river so we can do what we like, and f**k all you barbarians elsewhere.
"....all the 14 year olds..."
No, Anony-Mouse, all the 14-year-olds are too busy winning gymnastic gold medals for China, whose official sports foundation is pretending they are 16 years old.
Gold and jade outside, cotton inside...
Haha, Wright B, it is actually the other way round. All the 16 year olds are too busy winning gold while pretending to be 14 year olds.
Anyways, just that I think you should know.
Wright B:
"all the 14-year-olds are too busy winning gymnastic gold medals for China"
Are those 14 year olds guys or girls? moron.
Hey, speaking of girls..
I predict CB's next blog entry to be: Me and He....Kexin.
This is where we are guilty. Too much polution, too few people realizing it, and not enough efforts remedying it.
Sad
Communism has taught the Chinese that wealth is a zero-sum game. This has led to a predatory "selfishness" that benefit nobody in the long term. Their value system has been destroyed by a government that forced them to abandon everything but the most basic human needs. The Chinese would do well to learn enlightened self-interest from the modern world.
Enviromental pollution is a lie so is global warming made up by the west to trick the own people into voting on a certain issue.
Maybe there is some merit to it but when western political fantics get involved it loses credibility in the eyes of the world.
America, and England do the world a favor and put a muzzle on your loud, rude, fat and embarrassing protesters, then the world might take you seriously.
Enviromental pollution is a lie so is global warming made up by the west to trick the own people into voting on a certain issue.
Maybe there is some merit to it but when western political fantics get involved it loses credibility in the eyes of the world.
America, and England do the world a favor and put a muzzle on your loud, rude, fat and embarrassing protesters, then the world might take you seriously.
Man, we ought to acknowledge our failings when it is true. The environmental issues in China is horrenduous. Though China has been making slow efforts in averting the course of development, those are actions are, however, slow. Recent policy tightenings have had effects in limiting and reducing pollution-intensive factories from being built or operating, however, a large number of smaller scale rogue factories are still operating, particularly the high energy consuming, environmentally deadly industries such as coal and concrete factories.
The Chinese people are largely unaware or only partially aware of the looming disastrous consequences of the current environmental situation. Education on environmental protection is of the basic level and mostly limited to cities of high GDP and wealth. Its benefits near non-existing.
Behind all this horrible environmental reality is the mindset of acquiring wealth without regard for any cost. The Chinese people are in dire need of eollective awareness educations, and the number of people is phenomenal, yet CPC is occupied on all fronts of social issuses.
Clock is ticking.
"The Chinese people are in dire need of eollective awareness educations, and the number of people is phenomenal, yet CPC is occupied on all fronts of social issuses."
A "social" issue is just someones opinion, that doesn't make it fact.
If America and England believes there is global warming or enviromental whatever that's their opinion. But to go around and force it on everyone else is arrogant and will only be met with hostility. China has surpassed the economies of many in Europe.
Don't get jealous.
I am not jealous, dude. I am a Chinese. Environmental problems are in need of imminent attentions. Even state council's five year development plans acknowledges it and makes efforts to improve environmental conditions.
It is a FACT, acknowledged by OUR government.
Have you not been to the country side? In the north, which is my home region, where there used to be great pines and gigantic forests, now only small and young trees are planted here and there. The ENTIRE thousands of square km of ancient forests were cut down, for the profits of locals and local economy.
You clearly don't see the large picture.
<<<2. Liu was and will forever be a ‘one hit’ athletic wonder. A lot of athletes are like that. He should have walked away after the world record was set. Chinese people were shocked that he, an Asian, had beaten the clock in basically a Western competition. The shock was right. He will never do it again.>>>
One hit? LOL.
Liu actually dominated for several years, winning race after race, including breaking the world record in 2006, after his famous 2004 Athens Olympics feat.
"You clearly don't see the large picture."
Every industrialized country has gone through a period of expansion that resulted in destruction of their environment.
England used to have smokes stacks on every house making the sky black, so much so that animals adapting to the pollution change their camouflage to match the pitch black color of coal soot.
America too destroyed countless acres of forest to build farmland in the expansion westward. And Pittsburgh, the center of mining and industry at one time, constantly had acid rain as a result.
Pollution is a natural phase of industrialization. It is YOU who do not see the bigger picture.
Once again, you fail to see the large picture, my fellow country man.
It is true that it is the natural part of industrialization, but have you read any of the guidelines in our government's development policy?
It details that the future focus should be "sustainable growth", and a cut back of investment in sectors of "intensive pollution, intensive energy consuming" industries.
Environmental protection now has measureable indicators for every level of administrative government officials as "zero tolence" goals. Meaning, during your governing period, if ANY pollution indicator exeeds certain points, then you are out of the office.
You can cite the development history of these western countries for all you want, it does not change the FACT that we are facing serious environmental issues.
We have already taken SO MUCH from our environment in the past, and now it is time we realize these should stop now. Our economies and industries are past the stage of the old ways of growth, it is evident in that our government is already taking actions to divert of the course of development.
Talking about "bigger picture", why haven't you notice the efforts that these western countries put into reserving the environment?
Isn't THAT the ultimate path China should take?
Which is the bigger picture?
"SO MUCH"
Means what? That the environment cannot sustain a developing China, when it could sustain a developing England, Europe, Russia, and America.
Or that China should reduce its living standard because some western scientist wants grants money for his research so he publishes environmental disaster to attract attention?
Or that China cannot develop because it is "too big", or "too late"?
Or that there are not enough resources in the world to support everyone?
Bullshit! Who decides these things?
No, Leo it is YOU who is being duped. Even in America and England there is not a consensus on the "environment", but some western leaders pretend there already is a consensus.
America and England can say what they want, but China will decide for itself, we do not need a western boot lick to tell us what we should do.
I taught a training class in Guangzhou this spring for Chinese employees of a (Japanese) multi-national corporation. I tried using the environmental issues in China as a topic for conversation.
Dead silence. A few shrugs. The best student in the class offered, "Yeah, we know it's bad. But China can't afford to clean the environment. We're not rich enough yet. Maybe after we are [rich enough].
Shiya, keneng. And maybe not because it'll be too late. Might even be too late already.
Enjoy your blog. Even your current focus on touting the book...and stirring up the chi-gnats. But assuming (and hoping) you'll get back to shagging and more salacious material cum September.
"No, Leo it is YOU who is being duped.
America and England can say what they want, but China will decide for itself, we do not need a western boot lick to tell us what we should do."
How ignorant.
Have I not said it is OUR GOVERNMENT that has realized the seriousness and the magnitude of the environmental problems?
I don't see why you are denying the truth that our environment has reached catastrophic level.
OUR GOVERNMENT IS TAKING ACTIONS.
And you are here denying the fact that our environment is no longer able to sustain current course of development.
You quote that environment has been enough to sustain the devleopment of US, England, Russia and other western countries.
Do you even know the amount of money they spent in preserving environment every year? The efforts they put into educating their people to be aware and responsible?
THAT IS WHY IT HAS BEEN SUSTAINABLE FOR THEM.
Don't disgrace yourself.
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