In this weekend’s Sunday New York Times, the newspaper covers the cost of China’s economic growth in the article, “As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes.” The facts and figures are pretty staggering:
“Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut. Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water…”
In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics, the city of Beijing has been experimenting with taking half of the cars off the road as well as experimenting with seeding the clouds to force rain to help clean the air. If you really want to see what economic growth at any costs is like, go visit China. You’ll be amazed at the growth AND the pollution!
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China Law Blog wrote:
China Is Choking On Growth…
I am tired of reading about China’s environment, mostly because the articles on it have become so repetitive. They all but scream as having been written as a knee-jerk response to an editor’s calling for “another China feature story for this week.”…
Posted on 27-Aug-07 at 11:09 pm | Permalink
John wrote:
Well, I think there will only be more articles on China regarding everything as we approach the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Additionally, reports of product recalls and warnings only add to the public’s interest in learning more about China.
Posted on 28-Aug-07 at 10:10 am | Permalink
akrypti wrote:
I was wondering when someone on 8A would write about this! I’ve been hearing news about this for a while now, but since I didn’t have any hard sources or links, couldn’t blog on it. Good work, John!
Posted on 28-Aug-07 at 6:26 pm | Permalink
Bertie wrote:
China appears to be going through a period of unregulated capitalism, much like the U.S. did in the early 20th century. Only after a while did the ills of industrialization become considered a valid issue in the U.S. (see, for example, Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”). China just hasn’t gotten to the point of instituting quality control or pollution control. Eventually, it will.
So, this too shall pass.
Posted on 29-Aug-07 at 7:43 am | Permalink