141–150 of 216 posts
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London suffered from bad smogs almost century before they did anything to them. Great Smog was just one incident.
Hence the term "London Fog" which was not water.
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And Chinese workers have stuff like food. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China#Poverty_reduct...
We could just give people food without having to make stuff for us in return. The world does not have a food shortage.
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Fair question. My impression here in Beijing is that people are highly dissatisfied with the pollution situation. They don't want lung cancer and they don't want their kids breathing this crap. That being said, the government is taking steps to address the issue. Specifically, due to an outcry on Weibo last year about having to get PM2.5 numbers from the US embassy's twitter feed and iPhone app (twitter is blocked, b…
I also think I read that more than 50% of the nuclear plants currently being built are in China. That is a big way that they will eventually combat this problem.
I see this as a difficult to fake signal that China's economic growth is more real than some folks in the West would like to believe. It is similar to the challenges faced by industrial cities in the West as they exploited the massive production capacities created during WW II. Generally the reasoning goes, high pollution from lots of power plants / factories is a function of production of those power plants / factor…
> China's economic growth is more real than some folks in the West would like to believe i know that people in general are racist against the chinese for all sorts of reasons, but this is the first time i've heard this one. does anyone actually doubt china's economic growth? i mean all you have to do is go there and see it. (granted, very, very few 'experts' on china have ever actually been there)
The global interest in China's actual GDP on a comparative scale is to help estimate things like their future consumption of natural resources, their threat to global stability, and to evaluate global recessions/growth more accurately.
The problem with "seeing it" is differentiating what you are seeing with what is. So for example a city in the US that has a lot of large buildings being built is a clear sign of economic growth because the market dynamics are structured so that people don't build buildings unless they believe they can rent them out profitably, so they 'lead' in the sense there is demand for that space, they go up, it gets rented, and now there are a bunch of new jobs in the city which brings in workers with wages etc etc etc.
But in China there are buildings that were built simply because the government said "Build a building." There are buildings that are totally empty (see this link http://io9.com/chinas-brand-new-abandoned-cities-could-be-dy... which has some fascinating pictures).
So people don't trust the economic statistics the government produces and seek out other ways of either confirming or denying what is said. Energy consumption is one such indicator which, when combined with a technology sophistication index, can provide another data point on China's economic strength.
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I know but my wild guess would be that the tendency should start to show up in stats given the pollution already started years ago (?)
It's a good guess but we probably won't see the impact for a a little while. Before Deng's reforms in the 80s industry was limited and the growth in the past 10 years has been incredible. My own grandfather's health was only really significantly affected by the pollution floating over to HK in the past 3-5 years. I'd say wait another 10 years before the true consequences start to become apparent.
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I lived in Hong Kong 2010 to 2013, but actually ended up living in Shenzhen for most of 2011. 18 pages of my passport are taken up with visas and stamps from the mainland (plus several more from HK and Taiwan) As a Hong Kong resident I had a 6 month visa and then a 1 year China visa. Notably, though, both times it was a 30 day maximum stay, and as a UK citizen they still always just give me 30 days per entry. I know…
so you mean "I love Taiwan"
I wonder how this compares to the worst smogs experienced in London and elsewhere before the West got its act together with regard to particulate pollution. Apparently the Great Smog of 1952 killed on the order of 10000 people in just a few days. I'm not sure many young people nowadays realize how horrible the situation was just half a century ago. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952
It really irks me whenever there's a talk about nuclear energy. Nuclear power may have its own set of challenges, but coming from the baseline of coal it's hard to do worse.
Is there a level of public outcry regarding the pollution? I realize that criticism may be somewhat muted given the nature of the PRC government, but I can't imagine a city as large and cosmopolitan as Shanghai merely accepting this level of environmental mismanagement. Unfortunately, articles regarding Beijing/Shanghai pollution usually fail to mention public sentiment above the level of brief individual anecdote ("…
I mean, the problem is that there's a bit of a cultural difference between Americans circa-Industrial Revolution, and the Chinese now. So saying that the Chinese will stand up and protest isn't necessarily true. I don't want to speak for all Chinese, but from what I've read -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- is that there is more of a culture of deference to authority in China. Compare this to Americans, who have a…
The thing I think is really important but often falsely confused with a lack of willingness to protest is a general distaste for the sort of personalized politics prevalent in the West. Chinese political participation in the US is lower than average. It seems like the culture in that sense is more focused on success economically and academically.
It's important to remember that the only reason the Communists have managed to last so long is because of their "support" from the start of the farmers, i.e., not killing and stealing from them like the KMT. As soon as that support is lost en masse, we will see another percieved experation of a mandate and another revolution in a long series of revolutions. What that will mean for the Chinese or whether that will mean more democracy we will have to wait and see.
I see this as a difficult to fake signal that China's economic growth is more real than some folks in the West would like to believe. It is similar to the challenges faced by industrial cities in the West as they exploited the massive production capacities created during WW II. Generally the reasoning goes, high pollution from lots of power plants / factories is a function of production of those power plants / factor…