Another China Factoid....

[Obvious Li]

i read in the news this morning that 8 million acres of arable land in china is so polluted they can no long use it to grow crops.....



last year it was thousands of diseased pigs dumped into their main rivers to float downstream...



you cannot breathe the air in vast portions of the country...



WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE.......surely there is something more valuable than money......the worst thing is that almost all products we buy and use come from China....personally i would pay a LOT more to buy products made of quality shit in North America like we used to have.....it pisses me off that the only option we have is to buy different versions of chinese junk.....as a matter of fact it REALLY  pisses me off.... :ugeek:



We  need a consumer backlash revolution to get this fixed..... lets call it the Stop Buying Oodles Of Chinese Junk or SBOOCJ movement....

[Anonymous]

i read in the news this morning that 8 million acres of arable land in china is so polluted they can no long use it to grow crops.....



last year it was thousands of diseased pigs dumped into their main rivers to float downstream...



you cannot breathe the air in vast portions of the country...



WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE.......surely there is something more valuable than money......the worst thing is that almost all products we buy and use come from China....personally i would pay a LOT more to buy products made of quality shit in North America like we used to have.....it pisses me off that the only option we have is to buy different versions of chinese junk.....as a matter of fact it REALLY  pisses me off.... :ugeek:



We  need a consumer backlash revolution to get this fixed..... lets call it the Stop Buying Oodles Of Chinese Junk or SBOOCJ movement....

Cheaper manufactured goods has not been all bad though. It has helped to lift hundreds of millions of Chinese out of abject poverty. It has also meant spoiled pampered Westerners can afford to buy and dispose of digital devices regularly.



However, the environmental costs to China have been huge. It's not that the central government does not have standards, it is at the provincial and local cadre level where the funny business is taking place. Beijing sets ambitious targets for growth and environmental stewardship, but the growth targets always trump the latter at the provincial level. Beijing knows this of course and turns a blind eye to it. The reason of course is they fear a revolt if the economy stops growing and producing more and more jobs. I believe they will turn the corner and eventually start caring about air and water quality as the health care costs of Chinese become evident.

[Odinson]

"Made in China" is a quarantee for crap...



Made in Germany is a quarantee for quality. I´ll pay alot more for a european product than a chinese one.



The japanese are the only ones in asia that can still make some good stuff... Like weird porn.

[Odinson]

i read in the news this morning that 8 million acres of arable land in china is so polluted they can no long use it to grow crops.....



last year it was thousands of diseased pigs dumped into their main rivers to float downstream...



you cannot breathe the air in vast portions of the country...



WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE.......surely there is something more valuable than money......the worst thing is that almost all products we buy and use come from China....personally i would pay a LOT more to buy products made of quality shit in North America like we used to have.....it pisses me off that the only option we have is to buy different versions of chinese junk.....as a matter of fact it REALLY  pisses me off.... :ugeek:



We  need a consumer backlash revolution to get this fixed..... lets call it the Stop Buying Oodles Of Chinese Junk or SBOOCJ movement....

Cheaper manufactured goods has not been all bad though. It has helped to lift hundreds of millions of Chinese out of abject poverty. It has also meant spoiled pampered Westerners can afford to buy and dispose of digital devices regularly.



However, the environmental costs to China have been huge. It's not that the central government does not have standards, it is at the provincial and local cadre level where the funny business is taking place. Beijing sets ambitious targets for growth and environmental stewardship, but the growth targets always trump the latter at the provincial level. Beijing knows this of course and turns a blind eye to it. The reason of course is they fear a revolt if the economy stops growing and producing more and more jobs. I believe they will turn the corner and eventually start caring about air and water quality as the health care costs of Chinese become evident.

Yes! Salaries were raised from 50cents/day to full one greenback! Hooray! Now they have reached the level of skinned broke.



The younger generation is rebelling against the party and soon there will be a rebellion if the policies wont change. Who wants to live in a place where you have to take care of what you say about the party.

[Obvious Li]

do not dispute any of the points you raised SL....but but but....don't you think the people who cannot breathe the  air, touch the water let alone drink it, eat polluted crops from polluted land  would get a little concerned at some point and wish to change their way of looking at things.....with the level of pollution in the country at large it would take a hundred years to clean it up of they went to zero pollution immediately....fucking generations will have to live like this...bloody hell



i cannot buy anything anymore that will last past a couple of uses..i have resorted to going to gargage sales to buy old well used shit (even a simple can opener) that will last longer than a week...IT IS A FUCKING DISGRACE WE HAVE NO OPTIONS ANYMORE AS ALL SUPPLIERS(with a few exceptions) NOW GET THEIR SHIT FROM CHINA.....we don't get access here to european made products much.....Korean electronics are good but they are all moving to china and vietnam as well...so there goes that option...bring back north american manufacturing with north american quality control......please....i pay more

[Odinson]

There is a good side in this.. Chinks are going infertile.



Every official in China is somehow corrupt and big companies can easily utilize mercenaries to drive the normal people of their own lands. Nokia does that kind of stuff and I bet KONE does that too.



European products are largely manufactured in europe. They are better than anything.



Even the old soviet era russkie made products wash the chinese products.



The Lada 1200 for example is damn ugly, uses more gas than a hummer but it doesnt break down. You can fill the tank with vodka and it runs on that. Like my old teacher says, when you hear a big rock crash into the chassis, with lada 1200 your smile is only gonna get wider.



With 50e per vehicle, youll laugh at stones.

[Anonymous]

do not dispute any of the points you raised SL....but but but....don't you think the people who cannot breathe the  air, touch the water let alone drink it, eat polluted crops from polluted land  would get a little concerned at some point and wish to change their way of looking at things.....with the level of pollution in the country at large it would take a hundred years to clean it up of they went to zero pollution immediately....fucking generations will have to live like this...bloody hell

The problem with Westerners lecturing the Chinese about their environment is that it reeks of hypocrisy. North America's pollution problems were much, much, much worse a century ago. This was before every family had at least two cars and yet the air and soil quality absolutely sucked. I agree that China's environmental problems are very bad, but shouldn't they be given the same chance to become an affluent society first and then tackle problems like pollution? Seems grossly unfair that they should be denied what the West already has done.

[Romero]

It's not hypocritical. Today's North Americans have nothing to do with what happened a century ago. And since we have freedom of speech, we get to criticize. We even often have to do it on behalf of the Chinese people.



China should be doing as much as it can. There's no point in waiting and making things worse. Hundreds of thousands are dying every year, millions of acres are dead, and uncontaminated water is becoming scarce.



China is at a tipping point. Affluence can't buy clean land, air and water.

[Obvious Li]

do not dispute any of the points you raised SL....but but but....don't you think the people who cannot breathe the  air, touch the water let alone drink it, eat polluted crops from polluted land  would get a little concerned at some point and wish to change their way of looking at things.....with the level of pollution in the country at large it would take a hundred years to clean it up of they went to zero pollution immediately....fucking generations will have to live like this...bloody hell

The problem with Westerners lecturing the Chinese about their environment is that reeks of hypocrisy. North America's pollution problems were much, much, much worse a century ago. This was before every family had at least two cars and yet the air and soil quality absolutely sucked. I agree that China's environmental problems are very bad, but shouldn't they be given the same chance to become an affluent society first and then tackle problems like pollution? Seems grossly unfair that they should be denied what the West already has done.

seems to me they should benefit from our experience and avoid the excess of the NA experience...if for no other reason than their own personal well being......china has unlimited funds available....why not 100% nuclear power,   why not pay people a living wage to clean up the water.....why not pay for air quality technologies......christ they lend 3 trillion to the USA...more than enough to buy 100% pollution free technology (which is available) for their industries...it is simply a matter of applying the funds to the more urgent needs of the people...once the heavy lifting is over then the govt. (state) can step back and let private enterprize take over ...still working within the rules.....personally i wouldn't give a shit if it wasn't for the fact that it directly affects my daily life...if they want to kill themselves then fine....just make me shit that works.....then carry on

[Odinson]

do not dispute any of the points you raised SL....but but but....don't you think the people who cannot breathe the  air, touch the water let alone drink it, eat polluted crops from polluted land  would get a little concerned at some point and wish to change their way of looking at things.....with the level of pollution in the country at large it would take a hundred years to clean it up of they went to zero pollution immediately....fucking generations will have to live like this...bloody hell

The problem with Westerners lecturing the Chinese about their environment is that it reeks of hypocrisy. North America's pollution problems were much, much, much worse a century ago. This was before every family had at least two cars and yet the air and soil quality absolutely sucked. I agree that China's environmental problems are very bad, but shouldn't they be given the same chance to become an affluent society first and then tackle problems like pollution? Seems grossly unfair that they should be denied what the West already has done.

Not the same thing Shen Li. You know it. No1 here thinks any less of you. I just think you are fun to tease personally so dont get your panties in a bunch. The following kinda shit is the truth.



Chinas situation is far worse. The chinese do not care about the environment. Atleast we whites try to reduce the damage. You forget that the west invented the industrialism long ago.



The coal mining fields in China are on fire in the certain seasons of the year.



You hear the truth from my mouth because we dont like anybody. Russkies we hate the most, then the americans and then the germans for wiping out lapland.

[Anonymous]

i read in the news this morning that 8 million acres of arable land in china is so polluted they can no long use it to grow crops.....



last year it was thousands of diseased pigs dumped into their main rivers to float downstream...



you cannot breathe the air in vast portions of the country...



WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE.......surely there is something more valuable than money......the worst thing is that almost all products we buy and use come from China....personally i would pay a LOT more to buy products made of quality shit in North America like we used to have.....it pisses me off that the only option we have is to buy different versions of chinese junk.....as a matter of fact it REALLY  pisses me off.... :ugeek:



We  need a consumer backlash revolution to get this fixed..... lets call it the Stop Buying Oodles Of Chinese Junk or SBOOCJ movement....

Taiwan used to be a lot more polluted than it is today too..



The island's dirtiest industries like shipbuilding and making steel either started using advanced technologies or relocated to China and Vietnam..



Perhaps China will do the same thing when they reach Taiwan's level of prosperity.

[Anonymous]

seems to me they should benefit from our experience and avoid the excess of the NA experience...if for no other reason than their own personal well being......china has unlimited funds available....why not 100% nuclear power,   why not pay people a living wage to clean up the water.....why not pay for air quality technologies......christ they lend 3 trillion to the USA...more than enough to buy 100% pollution free technology (which is available) for their industries...it is simply a matter of applying the funds to the more urgent needs of the people...once the heavy lifting is over then the govt. (state) can step back and let private enterprize take over ...still working within the rules.....personally i wouldn't give a shit if it wasn't for the fact that it directly affects my daily life...if they want to kill themselves then fine....just make me shit that works.....then carry on

They are indeed legislating better technologies that will benefit air and water quality. They have taken steps as well to control desertification. However, at the local level they turn around and dump agricultural chemicals in rivers, waste from factories sitting in open fields instead of recycled or safely disposed of and no scrubbers on smokestacks. As I said, the provincial cadres are under pressure to put up some impressive growth numbers and if that means sacrificing the air, water and soil, so be it. They think they can worry about that after they have achieved a wealthy society just like the West did.



At the national level hundreds of new coal-fired power plants are being commissioned each year. However, they are not alone in that as US coal exports to Europe are soaring.

[Anonymous]

It's not hypocritical. Today's North Americans have nothing to do with what happened a century ago. And since we have freedom of speech, we get to criticize. We even often have to do it on behalf of the Chinese people.



China should be doing as much as it can. There's no point in waiting and making things worse. Hundreds of thousands are dying every year, millions of acres are dead, and uncontaminated water is becoming scarce.



China is at a tipping point. Affluence can't buy clean land, air and water.

Actually the Chinese can and do bitch about air, water, soil and food safety standards. Happens all the time right across that vast nation.



However, when North America was polluting the air like mad a century ago, how much bitching did the Chinese do about that? How about people in India, did they whine much about North American pollution when they were becoming affluent? Don't you think the Chinese and Indians deserve the same chance to get wealthy first like this continent did. Once they become as affluent as say Korea or Japan they will turn their attention to problems like environment, worker and food safety.



What you are saying sounds like a 21st century version of Western imperialism to an awful lot of Chinese and I don't blame them one bit.

[Hornung]

Another anti China thread for those fruitcake nutcases Shen Li, Fashionista and Obvious Li to prove what racist, sinophobic, anti semitic, twirlybrained, lying spammers they are.

[Romero]

North America has enacted regulations to keep our environment healthy and it hasn't hurt the economy. It's actually helped the economy. If we can do it, China and India can do it!



The environment is going to take a back seat for a while but they should still be doing as much as they can. Comparing China and India to North America is pretty much irrelevant. Their economies can't do well with food shortages, contaminated water and cities shut down because of smog. They have to do at least something about it; not much argument there.



Affluence and what happened a hundred years ago aren't reasons to not bitch about things that are obviously bad. We and the rest of the world rightfully complain about our own environmental problems right here in North America.

Scientists Find 7,300-Mile Mercury Contamination 'Bullseye' Around Canadian Tar Sands



Canadian government scientists have found that levels of mercury — a potent neurotoxin which has been found to cause severe birth defects and brain damage — around the region's vast tar sand operations are up to 16 times higher than regular levels for the region. The findings, presented by Environment Canada researcher Jane Kirk at an international toxicology conference, showed that the 7,500 miles contaminated are "currently impacted by airborne Hg (mercury) emissions originating from oilsands developments."



http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/30/3107761/tar-sands-mercury/#">//http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/30/3107761/tar-sands-mercury/#

And ironically from another article I stumbled upon:

The source of the mercury could also be emissions from coal plants from as far away as China and India, said Herbert. JOSM scientists are confident they will be able to identify the precise source of the mercury at the end of their three year study, he added.



http://www.edmontonjournal.com/story.html?id=9039865">//http://www.edmontonjournal.com/story.html?id=9039865