Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

But 6 layers of VPN? I don't know about this. I was in China for 3 weeks this past summer. VyprVPN worked very well for my and my family.

China's mode of governance, while responsible for some horrible problems and extremely frustrating to be on the wrong side of, is not without its positive points. Hand-waving it off as a "dictatorship" implies there is no internal political change, that political terms are re-granted to the same power-base, that secret police stalk and raid the population with great frequency... something much more aking to Lee Kwan-Yew's Singapore. That's simply not the case, and I know that even my government-critical Chinese friends here on the ground believe that the reigns of power are wielded to some extent differently by different leaders, and that within the communist party exist factions and new ideas.

Almost the only thing Chinese people pretty much ever say when political issues are raised is "the population is too large ... there is no other option!" (人口太多了！没办法！) While hideously frustrating for westerners (consequently Chinese people rarely complain, disbelieving that fighting to leave feedback with bureaucracies has any effect) it is immensely pragmatic from another perspective. Remember, the population which incorporates entirely disparate language families (everything from Turkic to Tibeto-Burman to Sinitic to Tai) now effectively has total literacy and a mutually comprehensible spoken language... Mao and his legacy, for all his terrible failures, did achieve that, and nobody can argue otherwise.

Shouting "dictatorship" when basically China would have been another India without the events of the 20th century, which nobody could have foretold, falls hollow and in fact riles these ears... those without experience in the country hear too much of this fallacious drivel through the media already. You don't need to fuel it.

PS. Before I am accused of being some kind of victim of propaganda, I literally never watch TV or read Chinese government media and my 15 years in and out of the country has been tempered with roughly equal time on three other continents.

Reply to sean as out of posties: You want transparency in decision making? The west pretends it has it, but in reality even on matters of fiscal policy it doesn't. For example, look at central bank interest rate setting. It's done by secret departments. As another example, I asked Australia's body why it didn't embrace the IBAN like Europe, Israel and a growing list of other countries. I got no reply. Pot, kettle, black.

It is true that all of these problems exist. They can't be solved in a short time. Many Chinese think that it might take a generation to solve some, two or more generations to solve the others. They also complained a lot, but know it is not an easy job. If anybody cares to look at the history of industrialization and its affects on the society and their people's life, they know Chinese are paying the same price, maybe at less scales. It is unfortunate both for the world and for Chinese themselves. The question is, have we human beings find a feasible alternative approach to achieve the same goal while bypass all the negative stages?

As for air pollution, it is a horror. It is undeniable. Just look at the air condition today in Beijing and New Dehli. http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/ http://aqicn.org/city/india/new-delhi/us-embassy/

At least the government establishes many monitoring stations and suggests people stay inside. China and India are similar in many aspects. People in both countries, especially the young generations, are working hard to improve their motherlands. But, how often do we hear the media talk about air pollution in India?