China Law Blog

Dan, as I sit at home watching Travel Channel's Anthony Bourdain eating his way thru China, wondering why am I in Seattle:

http://travel.discovery.com/tv/bourdain/bourdain-season3.html

And as the hords of people eating with Bourdain in the background - not dropping dead - I wonder even more about those self-appointed expat China-experts and their "chicken little" blogs about food safety in China.

Why are they in China?

IMHO today's racism is this kind of invisible, easily rationalized fear, hatred, self-righteousness.

It's more dangerous than the overt kind.

Oh,my.
Korean Ambassador died after receiving IV drop in Beijing's Bisita clinic.
He had diarrhea after he had a sandwich that was bought in one nearby restaurant.
The death reason is unknown as of now. Could be fake drug, or way-to-fast IV drop.

the link for above story is from South Korea's Chosun Daily. Chinese edition.

http://chinese.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/07/31/20070731000017.html.

The english version of the story is

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200707/200707310022.html

Charles Liu:

The travel channel guys are just mouthpieces, they are only there to sputter on about long history and amazing culture.

The expats are in China to make money or at least try...and have fun with local girls.

Nanh, thank you for your comments, I rest my case.

Shocking story about S.Korean ambassador dying in BJ. Eagerly awaiting details to learn cause of death. Would appreciate all updates.

There are actually 2 distinctive environmental problems. One is in your face pollution everybody who has spent some time in China can easily notice. When you breathe in air with high level of total suspended particle, dust, sand, nitrogen oxides & sulfur dioxide, etc., calling it out has nothing to do with racism. Chinese bear the most brunt of it and it's the best interest of China to clean it up.

The other however, is much more dubious -- it's about the national carbon footprint, if you will. On that China has been unfairly called out sometimes, especially considered China's historical carbon emission and current carbon emission at a per capita basis.

Better check Korean Ambassador for Polonium, just to be safe.

Don't laugh, CIA ain't that far fetched. After all prior to 9/11 China was our intended "official enemy", and the Pentagon was running daily EP-3 recon flights and pushing for Taiwan-independence to create conflict in Rumsfeld's "Pacific Theater":

http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002523531.html

"The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations—creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says."

Off topic but hilarious, apparently Chinese IP copying is so shameless that a shanghai magazine has spoofed in all but title page The Economist magazine:

http://shanghaiist.com/2007/08/01/new_magazine_is.php#comments

I'm jealous because I actually pay for the real thing!

I'm not sure if all this criticism of China is necessarily racist, but I do think it's based on historical stereotypes that depict China as a fire-breathing dragon figure, or Communist freak, or simply being "backwards." The stories of China being an original innovator or leader of diplomacy or beacon of social responsibility are few and very far between.

Over the past few years, there's been a lot of media portrayal and hype about the "rise" (or "rebirth") of China, and it has hit a nerve with readers from many Western or developed nations that see China's progress as a threat.

Therefore, I think, whenever China experiences a setback or challenge, the rest of the world pounces on the country's problems.

China deserves a lot of criticism, for sure. But in that criticism, there is the potential of contributing to the most insidious form of discrimination (or, by Spencer's account, racism) which is something hardly noticeable, but very powerful in depicting China as incompetent or evil. It exists in pop culture, on the news, and in our everyday discussions, where people start talking about China as though it were a disease or a handicap, rather than a complex society that still has a ways to go before working out all its kinks.

@Responsible:

China's track record with its neighbors (dating back to Tang/Song dynasties) and the treatment of its people say alot about how China will most likely behave as a world power.

And the backlash against China's rise is nothing more than the anti-climax of the business world's endless lavishing, flattering and butt kissing.

China's rising and we can smell it in the air and taste it in our food all the way over here in the US.

Racism...

Saying that any criticism of China's environmental issue is "racist" wanders too far to the politically correct left.

Is it racist of me to say that Shanghai bus drivers are the most dangerous, crazed, bullying drivers on the road (just ahead of taxi drivers and those people driving cars with no number plates)?

Driving in Shanghai is similar in risk to the Pamplona Bull Run...sooner or later you are going to get rear ended!

FYI I use unleaded.

Mr. Liu,

Without underestimating the power of the covert racism you describe, I think those who were lynched in the American South would beg to differ with you.

I agree with you that the fears regarding the safety of China's products have gotten way out of hand, but I ascribe that more to the media and to politics than to racism.

wk --

Could be any of those things or any of a million other things. I'm betting on it being something else, just because the odds so much favor that.

nh --

Go ahead and spout this stuff, but I don't think anyone really cares because making money and having sex have driven human beings since money first came into being.

ResponsibleChina --

Nice comment.

nh --

I hate your argument. Fortunately, countries grow and develop. The US has come a long way since our mistreatment of Native Americans and Blacks and I would find it grossly unfair to tar us with that history as though it is our present or our future. I would find this grossly unfair both because it is not the sum of our past and also because it is our past. I think you are being equally unfair to China by acting as though its past necessarily equals its future.

Alex --

I agree that it is not racist, but I do think it is somewhat unfair to expect an emerging market country such as China to abide by the environmental standards of the developed world. I actually find this a very difficult issue because I want a clean environment as much as anyone, but at the same time, China is entitled to develop as well.

I am in Southern California right now with my daughter for a high school basketball tournament. A friend of hers who just completed her freshman year at a top California college came to the tourney to catch up with her old teammates. She told my daughter that her school is very politically correct.... so much so, in fact, that it is considered not-PC to use the word "straight" as in going straight (in a completely non-sexual way). That is some serious political correctness.

@nanhe

re your travel channel comment, while this may be true for the most part, as a fan of his show and general body of work and as a foodie, Bourdain serves as a mouthpiece for nobody, nor do I think anyone would want him being their mouthpiece...

"I think you are being equally unfair to China by acting as though its past necessarily equals its future."

Like comparing China's past behavior regarding the conquest of regions and dilution of the local population compared with China's current behavior in Tibet and E. Turkestan?

Like comparing China's past behavior regarding the conquest of its neighbors and current claims to 30% of northern Korea, the entire S. China Sea and yet another Indian state (Anaruchel Pradesh)?

But back on topic, what do you mean by "China is entitled to its own development"? Few if any of China's environmental problems are due to a lack of knowledge or access to technology, as has been the case in Europe and the US for the past 100 years.

China has lots of educated chemists and people various engineering positions who could curb this problem fairly quickly, as well as the presence of the US and EU EPAs and quick access to 100 years of research regarding pollution. And China has enough money to rapidly build up a fairly modern navy, air force and manned space program.

The cause of China's environmental destruction is purely greed. When China does buy environmental remediation equipment, the gear is often not installed. It is reversed engineered and a local company sells a very half-baked version to other developing countries at a big discount compared to the original western vendors. Water treatment plants in rural areas and even along the Yangtze river are shut down most of the time to increase profitability, which is the determining factor for local cadre promotion and bonses. Scrubbers and baghouses are bought and then bypassed in factories because the flow rate of the exhaust has to be regulated, slowing output (and thus affecting industrial output and the factory boss's bonus and the owners' profits).

And for all of these technologies and processes, you need to hire skilled people to maintain and repair them and replacement materials. All money that could have been spent on imported luxury items and KTV girls.

Dan, you and everyone else wants a clean environment but what are you and everyone else doing in your individual lives to contribute?
And defending China as a "developing country" despite all of its past innovations and inventions reeks of PC. China made its bed as the US and Europe did, except the US and Europe got their acts together. China simply points fingers, makes excuses and now screams "racism".

That is the difference between the West and China.

It seems my comment has been attributed to the wrong person. To be clear, the following is what I said, NOT nanheyangrouchuan:

"I'm not sure if all this criticism of China is necessarily racist, but I do think it's based on historical stereotypes that depict China as a fire-breathing dragon figure, or Communist freak, or simply being "backwards." The stories of China being an original innovator or leader of diplomacy or beacon of social responsibility are few and very far between."

Thanks.

- nanh, shanghiist.com is an expat community run by Gothamist LLC in NYC.

So much for your "Chinese IP copying is so shameless" venom.

- Folks, nanh pretty much exemplify what Spencer is talking about - not the criticism of China's problem but the self-righteous indigination, belittlement, fear, hatred that seep thru it.

- I'm glad someone brought up the carbon issue. Here's the history on Global warming contribution:

http://images.wri.org/map_cartogram_global_warming_large.gif

While Developing Asia accounted for 12% Developed Nations accounted for 75%.

- Here's another example, couple months ago China's stock market had an "adjustment", then US market dropped with some anomoly.

The expat China blogs all jumped on it with alarm. Then a few days later the real news comes out - softwar glitch in US market caused the Dow slide:

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;236050319;fp;2;fpid;1

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-6162756-7.html

A little introspection is all I ask, my fellow Americans.

But [nearly] no one followed up.

Poverty should never be used as an excuse for bad ethical behavior. You can't go before a judge and plead, "sorry for bad behavior, but I was poor!"

If your country produces two-ply toilet paper, you're developed enough.

CLB:

Re California. Governor Schwarzenegger is to be praised for the initiatives he has driven through as a Republican. I fear he is alone amongst most US governors although I did not that now NYC cabs are going green.

People have to be very careful throwing the environmental stone at China's glass house. Is it not the case that despite China's obvious issues (I have lived here 6 years) they are still #2 to the US in terms of Carbon output and oil consumption?

I agree with Responsible China that this criticism is completely biased and I fail to understand why it is being directed at China and not those other countries that have their own green issues. The only answer I can think of is that this particular type of xenophobia is based on those ill informed stereotypes RC mentions.

We should all look towards the terminator for examples of how leadership can change a nation. I say nation as I think CA has a GDP similar to the UK right?

Great debate, thanks CLB as usual.

CLB:

Re California. Governor Schwarzenegger is to be praised for the initiatives he has driven through as a Republican. I fear he is alone amongst most US governors although I did not that now NYC cabs are going green.

People have to be very careful throwing the environmental stone at China's glass house. Is it not the case that despite China's obvious issues (I have lived here 6 years) they are still #2 to the US in terms of Carbon output and oil consumption?

I agree with Responsible China that this criticism is completely biased and I fail to understand why it is being directed at China and not those other countries that have their own green issues. The only answer I can think of is that this particular type of xenophobia is based on those ill informed stereotypes RC mentions.

We should all look towards the terminator for examples of how leadership can change a nation. I say nation as I think CA has a GDP similar to the UK right?

Great debate, thanks CLB as usual.

Charles Liu:

The Shanghaiist article I cited was about a Shanghai magazine publishing exact copies of "The Economist" under a local magazine's banner. Reread Shanghaiist's article a bit closer next time.

As for global warming, common sense tends to lean towards something happening, but nothing is definitive and certainly not proven. Don't forget that is the West's larger economy/CO2 emissions that create the wealth to consume China's exports and produce the wealth to invest in China for its growth.

And CO2 is just the tip of China's pollution problem, China is pumping sulfur, nitrogen, lead, mercury, cadmium and countless toxic organic chemicals into the planet and these emissions are choking Asia. HK used to be a clean city but is now a victim of PRD filth.
All of Korea suffers from China's toxic sandstorms, which make their way as far as Taiwan, Hawaii and California. China has access to all of the technology and knowledge needed to clean up and they don't want to because the expense would cut into profits needed for buying foreign luxury items as a part of "face-building".

The software anomaly was only part of the Dow's 400 point drop that day, get your facts straight.

Charles Liu:

I did look at the map, and its division of the world into developed and developing nations must have to have some cut-off date, having the range of 1900-99. So, I am wondering exactly what you are trying to say by adding up the numbers the way you do.

Just an example. Given the fact that China only recently joined the more developed nations and Japan has been around for a while, isn't it interesting that Japan had a percentage of 3.7, compared to "China, India and Developing Asia's" 12.2? Or take Canada and Australia with 2.3 and 1.1 respectively.

Now, if I read these numbers correctly, they would mean that China's extraordinary contribution to CO2 emissions for the whole century has taken place only in the last decade or so. Clearly, we should just stop throwing stones and do everything we can to reduce emissions. And that includes China.

Here's a great picture of China's pollution. A thick brown cloud of organic ozone, dust and metals:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6926597.stm

- "stop throwing stones"... Bystander I like that. See, it doesn't feel too good when the table is turned isn't it?

Japan is a tiny nation, both size and population compared to rest of Asia, yet it's pollution contribution is 30% of all Asia.

- nanh, please take a look at the mercury, sulfer dioxide our own coal power plants are spewing:

http://www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/factsheets/power.asp#cite5

US is the #1 CO2 emitter in the world, and our coal powerplants accounts for 40% of that.

China, with 4 times the population of US, has lower capata mercury emission from coal power plants.

The opinion piece copied below is an interesting and informative overview of
the problems in China. It conveys the impression (though it doesn't explicitly
state it) that China is descending into a fascist-form of anarchy and could
soon (a few years) suffer a major economic collapse, if it doesn't drag the
rest of the world into something worse.

China is a troubling question to me. Are we seeing the rise of the next Nazi
Germany, but one with enormously greater danger attached to it because of
greater population, modern economic power, and potentially great military
power? Greater yet, because Republicans and the Democrats alike seem bent on
reducing the U.S. to second-rate status?

Or will the Chinese people, emerging from decades of communist rule, be
unwilling to give up new freedoms and prosperity and resist imperialistic
ambitions of their government?

I honestly don't know for sure. I've talked to a Chinese ex-patriot at work
about this (I think his father was somehow in the Party apparatus, cause he was
protected as a child during Mao's cultural revolution), and also an
ex-Taiwanese (also at work), who both have given me fascinating perspectives I
haven't found in any Western sources. Both are surprisingly (to me) well read
and informed of the geopolitics even if they don't have the big philosophic
perspective. I've also had third-hand knowledge from others who know people
from China, or have visited China. Mixed, uncertain opinions from all with an
undercurrent of worry.

I'm tempted to say the opinion piece below tells a story with an inexorable
logic that flows along with that undercurrent, and frightens me.

Is China a major threat to the world? I don't feel qualified enough to pass
that judgment -- I'm simply not knowledgable enough. From an Objectivist
perspective, I haven't identified the philosophic fundamentals well enough --
but anyone who's read Atlas Shrugged can see frightening, though imperfect
parallels. Unlike the world of John Galt, which explodes in anarchy because
the motor of economic power stops when the men of ability go on strike, China
sounds like a country about to explode because of a motor running out of
control and far into the red (forgive the pun, and it has three entendres
here), fueled by the ambitions of a quasi-fascist communist government that is
pumping in an explosive mixture of influence peddlng, stock market
manipulation, currency inflation, intellectual property theft and a host of
other ills too numerous to list at this time of night.

I disagree with one implied contention of the op-ed. The problem is not
insufficient regulation of Chinese businesses. I think the Chinese government,
while nominally communist (much as the Nazis were nominally Socialist) has
simply morphed into a fascist super-state (like the Nazis did, as explained so
well in Peikoff's book, "Ominous Parallels"). The power of the government has
extended itself to rampant corruption by pull-peddlers of the kind Cuffy Meigs
and Orren Boyle and Jim Taggart would feel right at home with. That's the
primary cause of the trumpeted problems of poisoned food and defective products
and the cover-ups and murders surrounding them. In the long run, and in the
big picture, these are symptoms of a greater disease, but in the short run,
just a red herring (last pun); companies that want to do business with China
will simply strengthen quality control standards or risk fatal litigation.

The pro and con of what's unwrapping in China seems almost too dynamic to
analyze and reduce to a clear principle, but my inclination is to reduce the
problem to its simplest essentials: The desire for a people to be free and
prosperous is not a fundamental; the ideas they hold are. The people in China
do not yet hold the right ideas. They want to be free, but they don't know
why. This makes them terribly vulnerable to the power-lusters of any statist
government.

Likewise, the government of China, however much it has loosened the reigns,
does not yet have the right ideas. It doesn't know its proper function. The
Chinese people may have been granted greater freedom of action and freedom to
prosper, and superficially some official respect for property rights has
appeared, but any "rights" their government seems to have granted seem to be
only for the purpose of buttering up the milch cow.

The operative word is "granted". A cow that has a "granted" right to exist,
rather than an actual right to exist, could just as easily be slaughtered as it
could be milked.

Under a genuinely free, non-threatening government, rights are not "granted",
they are inalienable. In the absence of that idea -- inalienability of
natural rights -- a government that appears to have an overweening desire for
power concerns me.

More succinctly, my simple inclination is to say: in principle a fascist
government with a philosophically unschooled populace (at least, unschooled in
a philosophy of reason and rights) has to be a threat. We shall see.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/s7_27.asp
Friday, July 27, 2007
Sol Sanders, "China in crisis: Export disaster, eco-mess threaten Party's
economic gameplan"

Perhaps it tells us something about contemporary America that food and
medicine adulteration in products the Chinese use themselves and increasing
sell the world should come to light because American pets suffered. It was no
secret that the nominally Communist Chinese regime had for decades looked the
other way when scandals involving Party members or government officials came to
light concerning lapses in health and safety standards.

But the current continuous foreign – and even domestic — media reporting
of poisoned products for pet food, adulterated tooth paste, deadly cough syrup,
fish products containing cryogenics, defective pharmaceuticals, dumplings which
may or may not have been stuffed with cardboard, etc., etc., are all part of a
pattern of the virtually complete failure of Chinese regulatory agencies.

It is not as new story. When the 72-year-old Dr. Jiang Yanyong in 2003 exposed
the outbreak of China's SARS, a deadly respiratory virus which could have
turned into an international pandemic, he and his wife were arrested and the
government attempted to continue to cover up the whole outbreak. –

A half million people suffered from the negligence of the responsible
authorities and the greed of the underground "blood heads" organizing the sale
of blood for plasma in the villages in eastern and southern Henan Province.
This led directly to the eruption and spread of AIDS to whole villages. Again
the authorities tried to hush it up.

Although the death toll in Chinese coal mines was officially put 661 in the
first three months of this year, less than the official figures last year, the
official State Administration for Coal Mine Safety Supervision reported a
succession of “cover ups” of fatal accidents in March. China, with vast
reserves and a desperate need for energy, accounts for around one-third of the
world's coal output, but accounts for four-fifths of industry deaths — 50
times higher than in the United States, the world's second largest producer,
but also even ten times higher per ton of coal than in India where accidents
are also far too prevalent.

These are only a few examples of a failure of a rapidly growing economy to
cope with the demands for health and safety required of any modernizing
society. True, China’s rapid growth rates make it difficult to institute new
safety and health requirements. An impoverished society is trying to catch up
and environmental concerns, as one Chinese spokesman has said bluntly recently,
will have to take lower priority to economic development.

But just as environmental concerns now threaten the water supply for some of
China’s largest cities and industrial water resources may curtail that very
development, the bad publicity for China’s exports has taken on economic
consequences. The China brand is increasingly becoming suspect in foreign
markets.

Toward the end of July, faced with potential boycotts of Chinese products
abroad and a massive array of reports of inferior products, the government has
set up a team of top officials to steer efforts at repairing the stained
reputation of the country's food and products at home and abroad. The
government gave no details of how the new agency would operate – especially
important given the already existing proliferation of half a dozen regulatory
agencies with conflicting jurisdictions.

The execution of the head of China’s food and drug regulatory agency for
taking bribes to validate pharmaceuticals and the sentencing of a second
official of the agency also to death was intended to tell the world Beijing
means business. It also dramatized the acceptance by Beijing authorities that
the problem has now become a critical politico-economic issue, perhaps at home,
but certainly abroad..

The reason is clear: China’s economic development program is overwhelmingly
dependent on its export-led product manufacturing and sale of intermediates and
components overseas. The avalanche of reports of faulty manufacturing and
adulteration threatens that whole economic program. A government media report
in July claimed that 19.1 per cent of goods for domestic consumption checked in
the first half of this year failed quality standards. Among smaller
manufacturers, the failure rate was 27.1 percent. The statistics are probably
not less bogus than other statistics that take on imaginative and creative
aspects in the China environment.

But having virtually abandoned any ideological or national goals except
economic growth – however unequal and limited to elite in the major port
cities – the very raison d’etre of the regime is now jeopardized by this
sudden explosion of revelations about the seriousness of the problem of
inadequate standards and Party greed gone berserk.

Nor is it clear that despite Herculean efforts to remake Beijing, it would be
able to provide a healthy environment for next year’s Olympic games. The
regime has stake a great deal on the Games as an international accolade which
crowns “a rising China’s” ambitions and progress. The Chinese capital
suffers a perennial water shortage – the government has a massive canal
underway to bring water from the south to the north across much of China and
with many barriers. Its frequent dust storms — the loess blowing in from the
increasing march of desertification now extending only a few miles west of the
capital — leads to an almost permanent haze now worsened by the exhaust of a
growing automobile traffic and unrestricted belching of fumes and particles
from new industry..

It is far from certain, then, that the central government will be able to
bring the whole chaotic mess under control because of the fissures opening in a
one-party regime which is now functioning on pure opportunism.

Several factors lead to this speculation:

The Chinese Communist Party leaders appear to have lost control over local
cadre, particularly in the rural areas. With no substantial investment in
agriculture there are falling living standards in the countryside by all
estimates of international organizations – and, indeed, by the Chinese
economists themselves where they have been allowed to publish. Legitimate tax
collection has given way to extortion by the local Party cadre. They have
become the principal entrepreneurs as well in most instances since they have
the only access to capital and the use of government fiat for appropriation of
land and other resources. Increasingly they thumb their nose at the central
government which is, nevertheless, given the nature of the state dependent on
them for cohesion and order. Again, a situation pertains as the old saying
about Chinese imperial governments, “The emperor’s writ stops at the
village gate”.

In the major provinces and the larger cities, Party officials also blackmail
the government with the proposition – which has validity – that unless they
are given a free hand to pursue development, the government’s principal
virtually only goal of rapid economic development will not be met. With the
residue of a formerly failed centrally planned economy including giant moribund
state enterprises, the country is dependent on these new relatively progressive
enterprises for economic progress. Therefore, in instance after instance
reported in the official media, when the government has intervened to impose
higher standards of environmental controls or to curtail questionable
infrastructure projects or to enforce intellectual property rights for foreign
owners, Beijing has had to back down in the face of local Party “economic
warlords”.

Mining is the perfect case study of central-government relations with local
government in China," says Arthur Kroeber, editor of the China Economic
Quarterly. "The clash is between the central government's desires and the local
government's pressing economic needs, and in 99 cases out of 100, local
government wins out."

So Beijing resorts to the kind of band-aid announcements of new regulatory
devices that would make it appear that it takes the problems seriously and is
solving it: it embargoes cargoes of food and raw materials from the U.S.,
damning them as inferior merchandise, in a tit-for-tat operation and to prove
the problem is universal and no better in the West and Japan than in China. It
issues public relations statement after statement that the whole problem is
being addressed. But these moves are only propaganda which does not address
fundamental problems.

It is not racist [nor “culturally intolerant” or any of those other PC
charges] to point out that cleanliness has never had a very high priority in
China’s incredibly rich and varied cultural history and inheritance. The
Chinese Communists and their intellectual fellow travelers who came to power in
1949 recognized – as had earlier reformers –that the issue was one that had
to be addressed if traditional Chinese custom was to be overcome. And so you
had the incredible things such as the “no flies in China” campaign, or at
least what was sold to starry-eyed foreign visitors as a new beginning for
Chinese sanitary and health standards. But like so many of the projects of the
Maoist era – not excluding the so-called “barefoot doctors” in rural
areas – the reports of success were largely the imagination of the visitors
and government propaganda than they concrete reforms. [The continued insistence
that a health care infrastructure and other social emoluments under the Maoist
regime had been allowed to lapse are observations of those who did not know the
era and depend on official propaganda of that time.]

With a Party Congress looming on the horizon, President Hu Jintao and his
fellow apparatchik Prime Minister When Jiabao are now exerting all their
efforts to maintain their always precarious hold on power. The sacking of the
Shanghai Party chairman in late July was one more evidence of the backroom
games being played out among leaders in a Party which once had a grip on the
country through terror and charismatic leadership but now is dissolving into
irrelevance on every major issue, not excluding environmental concerns.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25
years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News &
World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World
Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.
----- End forwarded message -----

"US is the #1 CO2 emitter in the world, and our coal powerplants accounts for 40% of that.

China, with 4 times the population of US, has lower capata mercury emission from coal power plants."

Charles, you are playing numbers games. China is now the #1 emitter, period. And your "per capita" analysis falls flat on its face. Net output is net output. Is breathing exhaust from 3 hybrids better than breathing exhaust from one SUV?

http://profmaster.blogspot.com/2007/06/china-overtakes-us-as-world-no-1-co2.html
http://whiletheearthburns.blogspot.com/2007/06/china-top-carbon-dioxide-emitter-report.html
http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/2007/06/china-overtakes-us-as-top-co2-emitter.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/19/china.usnews

Now tell us again about the potential of 1 billion customers just to make us feel better.

Here is a great factual website comparing national emissions, pay great attention to the numbers Charles and note the years. These surveys occurred before China's industrial machine really took off.

http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/data_tables/cli4_2003.pdf

Charles Liu:

This is not about turning tables, scoring cheap points or making people feel more or less comfortable; it's about the environment.

Regarding the US, I'm completely with you and if you have paid any attention to what the world press has been writing, the heat has been on the Bush administration to change its policies on global warming for several years.

About Japan, it may be a small country, but it has more than a third of the population of the US. And according to your table, Japan has emitted 3.7 per cent of historic emissions compared to the US figure of 30.3 per cent. Clearly some populous developed countries have done their homework about CO2 emissions and perhaps we should learn from them? Perhaps Japan has something to teach China?

All being said, the fundamental point is that the atmosphere doesn't pay any attention to where the CO2 emissions come from. It is the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that matters. If China has overtaken the US in total CO2 emissions, that is something we should take into account.

Right, and y'all ain't playing the numbers game when insisting on absolute figure to justify your demonization of China?

http://www.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=11068

The basic premis for ignoring the per capata figure is "we are rich so we can pollute more". Each of us are responsible for 20 tons of CO2, 4 times of a same human being in China.

Unless the Chinese, somehow, are subhumans undeserving of the same consideration.

Net output per person is net output per person, when you drive a SUV you pollute more than someone driving a little hybrid.

Following your rationale, nanh, who should change their car first? I say the SUV guy should be shot for faulting the hybrid guy.

NH,
Your comments are among the most interesting and controversial on the China blog circuit, although I disagree with some of your ideas and attitudes. My question now is what do you do for a living? How do you have so much time to write? God bless you, man.
Todd Platek

Bystander, what part of the following is not about scoring cheap shots?

"shameless"
"fascist"
"Nazi"
"imperialistic"

I stopped half way thru the comments.

@Todd:

It should be obvious what I do for a living, and thanks to alot of energy, efficient work practices and really good tasting coffee I am also a great multitasker.

Charles Liu:

You use words like "Demonization of China", "the Chinese, somehow, are subhumans", "we are rich so we can pollute more", etc.

I am not sure if this is in response to anything I said, so I don't know how to respond. I have never denied that the developed countries have to take the lead in decreasing CO2 emissions. I have never denied that Chinese people have the same right to decent living standards as anyone else. And I am in favor of banning SUVs both in China and the US.

But if China has now joined the club of polluters, we need to talk about that, without accusations of demonization being hurled. It is a real problem. Per capita figures can be informative, but also misleading. I strongly suspect that per capita emissions are higher in the cities of China than in the countryside. Companies pollute more than individuals. I spent a month in Beijing and the air quality was appalling.

Is it really a wise decision to build Chinese cities around the car? We know more about global warming and air pollution now than when the Autobahns and Interstates were built. You ignore that knowledge at your own peril.

b.cheng --

I have actually never watched this show. Can you tell me more?

nh --

If China's present provides the same proof you seek as China's past, I suggest then that you focus on the present.

I am not going to get into what I do to protect the environment because that is compeltely irrelevant, particularly since I have never claimed to be more environmentally pure than anyone else, nor do I even think of myself that way.

I am not PC, but I appreciate your calling me that as it gives me something to show off to my liberal friends.

China is a developing country. Hundreds of millions of its people live in abject poverty. Yes, it would be nice if China were more concerned about its environment, but the unfortunate reality is that concern tends to be confined to the rich. Talk to the average Zhang in Shanghai and I am sure you will find real interest in the environment, mostly because they are able to think beyond their next meal. Talk to the average Zhang making $50 a month and ask if he wants the factory at which he works closed down so as to clean up the air in his village and I think you will get a very different answer.

Yes, we should be working on China to improve its environment, of course, But China is not Denmark and it is flat out silly to expect it to have the same environmental standards.

Charles Liu --

I pretty much agree with you regarding nh. His choice each time is to view China and the Chinese as though it and they are somehow completely different from any other country and people, whereas I am constantly looking at China through the prism of other countries.

57Chevy --

I wish it were that simple. To use your analogy though, China may produce 2ply toilet paper, but I am betting less than 10% of the population can afford to use it. And let's be careful here, we are not talking about stealing. We are talking about where to fall on the jobs/environment continuum. These issues drive me crazy in the United States as well because on the one hand, I do care about the spotted owl, but on the other hand, who am I in Seattle to act like it is no big deal for thousands of working class lumberers to lose their jobs. These are not clear cut and easy issues, at least not for me.

Alex --

Thanks for the kudos and thanks for putting everything in perspective. I do not think it is so much racism that causes people to go crazy on China regarding its environmental problems as other things. I love the United States and have always been and will always be an extremely patriotic American. So patriotic in fact, that I think it critical that we know about our own history and how far we have come. It drives me crazy how few people know how badly we screwed the Native Americans and how quickly we ignore the horrible way we treated Blacks for so long. Now I know we can all argue "context of the times" and all that and that is fine, but what is not fine is for those things to be completely ignored and then for us to go off on other countries as though we ourselves have always been perfect. So I see a lot of the criticisms that are thrown at developing countries (not just China) arising from the crazy view that the US enacted the Declaration of Independence and things have been great ever since. I also see a lot of the demonization of China coming out of fear that China is going to take away all of our jobs. The reason I do not think it is racism is because (and I know many people will disagree with me on this) there is almost never racist language used in the criticisms. I just don't see it.

Dan:

"Yes, it would be nice if China were more concerned about its environment, but the unfortunate reality is that concern tends to be confined to the rich."

I beg your pardon? As a matter of fact, a number of grass-roots protests have organized over envornmental problem in the past couple of years. And the very reason is that the first to suffer environmental degradation are the poor.

In Japan, one of the most important environmental movement started among ppor fishermen in Kumamoto:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease

I wonder when ordinary people in China will be afforded the same opportunity to change history without being arrested.

". Talk to the average Zhang in Shanghai and I am sure you will find real interest in the environment, mostly because they are able to think beyond their next meal. Talk to the average Zhang making $50 a month and ask if he wants the factory at which he works closed down so as to clean up the air in his village and I think you will get a very different answer."

The rising number of pollution related protests directly contradicts that statement Dan.

Bystander, nh, Charles Liu,

Economics is the determinant. Nh, I know there have been many rural protests about pollution, but those protests come from those who are harmed by the pollution, not from those who profit from it. Charles Liu -- who cares about the United States? You cannot expect us to shut up about China just because the United States has its own problems too. This is a blog on China, not on the United States. Bystander, you make a lot of sense, most of the time, but you scare me when you call for banning SUVs around the world. That is one bark far worse than any bite.

I know this is radical (and it led to my getting a buzz cut back when I proposed it while sitting in a barber chair in Iowa in 1979), but the best solution is that proposed by none other than Bill Clinton: a BTU tax.

It's the economy....