Category Archives: China

Industrialization in China: Side Effects can Kill

Airpocalypse

Airpocalypse Beijing.

副作用可以杀死 Fùzuòyòng kěyǐ shā sǐ Side Effects Can Kill

China, since 1947, has become an economic powerhouse. But back in 2007, National Geographic reported, here, on a World Health Organization, WHO, report,  that 656,000 people died in China in 2006 from air pollution. National Geographic also reported that polluted drinking water killed at the rate of 95,000 people per year in China in 2006.  In 2012, The Guardian reported, here, that in 2010, 1.2 million people died in China and North Korea from air pollution.

 

Side Effects can kill. 副作用可以杀死 Fùzuòyòng kěyǐ shā sǐ 

Continue reading →

China Air Pollution: The Bitter Years Return?

China Air Pollution 中国空气污染

The Bitter Years Return 的苦涩年返回

Projection of air pollution deaths in China, based on reported deaths in 2006 and 2010.

Projection of air pollution deaths in China, based on reported deaths in 2006 and 2010.

During the “Bitter Years” from 1958 to 1962, an estimated 15 to 43 million people died of starvation in China (wikipedia). Mao, who ate well during that time, did not want help from the west. Fast forward to today. It has been reported that due to air pollution, an estimated 650,000 people died in China in 2006, and another estimated 1.2 million died in 2010. Knowing these 2 data points of this dynamic system, we can plot a curve. The blue line assumes a linear curve, the red line, the exponential uptick of a sigmoid curve.  Assuming reinforcing feedback, the red curve is more likely.

The three most important questions are

  1. “How serious is the air pollution?”
  2. “What will it take before the Chinese government acts?”
  3. “What will be the delay between action and results?

The short answer to Question 1 is “Very.” If this is as serious as I think it is, the challenge for the government of the People’s Republic of China as for other governments, will be to stop polluting and clean up the pollution it has allowed to be dispersed into the bio-humano-sphere. However, this conflicts with the apparent goal of the Chinese government to be the world’s biggest producer of stuff without regard to pollution.

Continue reading →

Forget the Great Wall – Meet The Great Haze

Beijing from space, courtesy NASA

Image 1. Beijing from space, Jan., 2013, courtesy NASA

忘了长城 – 我们现在有大的雾度

“Forget the Great Wall – We Now Have the Great Haze”

– Translation by Google

In the 1960’s and 1970’s astronauts showed that we could see the Great Wall of China from space. Today, it’s the Great Haze of China that we can see from space .  The New York Daily News, here, published this image, taken by NASA in January 12, 2013 (here) when the Air Quality Index, AQI, reached 775.

The AQI was established by the US EPA. AQI above 300 is considered dangerous. AQI at 775 is probably deadly.

Continue reading →

2012 Revisited

Crystal Ball

In “The World Will Not End & Other Predictions for 2012, here, I wrote:

  1. “Apple and IBM will continue to thrive. Microsoft will grow, slightly. Dell and HP will thrash. A share of Apple, which sold for $11 in December, 2001, and $380 in Dec. 2011, will sell for $480 in Dec. 2012.” (Mostly Correct, except Apple did better than I expected.)
  2. “The Price of oil will be at $150 to $170 per barrel in Dec., 2012. The price of gasoline will hit $6.00 per gallon in NYC and California.” (Wrong)
  3. There will be another two or three tragic accidents in China. 20,000 people will die. (The number of accidents was underestimate. Their magnitude was overestimated – however … )
  4. There will be a disaster at a nuclear power plant in India, Pakistan, Russia, China, or North Korea. (Wrong)
  5. Wal-Mart will stop growing. Credit Unions, insurance co-ops and Food co-ops, however, will grow 10% to 25%. (Wrong on WalMart, right on Credit Unions, altho the numbers were off.)
  6. The amount of wind and solar energy deployed in the United States will continue to dramatically increase. (Right. Very Right!)
  7. The government of Bashar Al Assad will fall. (Wrong – but there’s still time.)
  8. Foreclosures will continue in the United States. (sadly, true, but not as bad as it could have been – thanks to Obama)
  9. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio will resign. Calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from matters involving his wife’s clients will become louder, but Justice Thomas will ignore them. A prominent politician who says “Marriage is between a man and a woman,” or her husband, will be “outed” as gay. President Obama will be re-elected.” (Right on Obama and the American voter. Wrong on Arpaio)
  10. The authors of Vapor Trails will not win a Nobel Prize for literature. They will not win a “MacArthur Genius Award.” Nor will I despite my work on this blog or “Sunbathing in Siberia” and the XBColdFingers project. (Right, tho I would have like to have been wrong on this one.)

Here are the details. Continue reading →

“Grandpa” Wen Worth $2.7 Billion: NY Times Blocked in China

Wen Jaibao

Wen Jaibao,  NY Times, 10/25/12

Guangxi River

Guangxi River

Child in Linfen

Child in Linfen

 

The NY Times reported, here, that Wen Jiabao, the Prime Minister of China, has amassed approximately $2.7 billion, and so according to the Guardian, here, access to the Times has been blocked within China by the “Great Firewall of China.” In term’s of China’s population, Wen’s family fortune is approximately $2.08 for every man, woman, and child in China. This is ¥12.978 , at current rate of ¥6.2465 CNY to the $1.0 USD. The Times also details the Wen family empire, here.

Nicknamed “Grandpa Wen” because of his reputation of concern for the underprivileged, or, in Marxist parlance “The Proletariat,” for there are no “Privileged” people in the People’s Republic, Wen has called official corruption a threat to the ruling Communist Party. He should know. This is what happens when a disregard for rights is coupled with tremendous power. However, given that the Chinese leadership has embraced a form of capitalism, wherein the people who run the state own or manages the corporations that produce things or allocate resources, it must be noted that China seems to be following a fascist political and economic model, rather than a Marxist or Maoist communist political and economic model.

What would Mao say? Hard to tell. He ate well during the “Bitter Years” from 1958 to 1962, when an estimated 15 to 43 million people died (wikipedia).

Political and economic theory aside, when coupled with what we know about air and water pollution, working conditions in Chinese factories and coal mines, official attitudes toward intellectual property (Business Week / Popular Logistics) , the challenge posed by a demographic imbalance of a population of 700 million men and 600 million women, cultural attitudes towards homosexuality, prostitution, and HIV AIDS; the long term prospects for socio-economic stability in China seem low.

 

A small boy walks through the smog of Donglu, on the outskirts of Linfen, where villagers have difficulty in selling their crops because of the severe pollution. Linfen, a city of about 4.3 million, is one of the most polluted cities in the world. China's increasingly polluted environment is largely a result of the country's rapid development and consequently a large increase in primary energy consumption, which is almost entirely produced by burning coal.

Linfen, a city of about 4.3 million, one of the most polluted cities in the world. Courtesy Greenpeace.

Air and water pollution in China, as documented by Elizabeth Economy in The River Runs Black, in 2004, ISBN: 978-080-1442-20-9, available at the Strand Bookstore, here, and also documented by Greenpeace here and here here and here, present tremendous long term threats to the people of China to breathe, drink, and to eat.

River Guangxi

River Guangxi

As a public service to the people who make smart phones, laptops, routers, and clothing for use here in the USA, the NY Times article is reproduced below.  It is not the policy of this blog to quote entire articles. However, given that the entire article – and the entire web-site – is blocked from within “The Great Firewall,” we have made an exception in this case. We trust that the writers, editors, and publishers of The Times will understand. Continue reading →

Cyberwar: USA & Israel v Iran, China v USA, Russia v The World

Iranian Pres. Achmadinejad at Natanz

Iranian Pres. Achmadinejad at Natanz.

Focusing on “Operation Olympic Games,” the US efforts behind the Flame and Stuxnet cyber attacks, Mischa Glenny, in “A Weapon We Can’t Control,” an op-ed in the NY Times, 6/24/12, says the U.S. has “fired the starting gun in a new arms race … cyberweaponry.” However, Mr. Glenny ignores efforts by hackers in China and from the former Soviet Union.

Continue reading →

Cryptome: declassified account of two CIA officers who spent 20 years imprisoned by Chinese

Cryptome has published a previously classified account of John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau, two CIA officers captured on a mission to exfiltrate a dissident from China in 1952.  From Two CIA Prisoners in China, 1952-73, itself derived from Two CIA Prisoners in China, 1952-73, Extraordinary Fidelity, by Nicholas Dujmovic

This article draws extensively on operational files and other internal CIA records that of necessity remain classified. Because the true story of these two CIA officers is compelling and has been distorted in many public accounts, it is retold here in as much detail as possible, despite minimal source citations. Whenever possible, references to open sources are made in the footnotes.

Continue reading →

So What If We Default?

Tweet Follow LJF97 on Twitter   Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

Hong Lei, spokesman for foreign affairs of China

Chinese Spokesman for Foreign Affairs

If, on August 2, 2011, the United States defaults on various debt obligations, then historians may well consider that date as the date on which the United States of America ceases to occupy the position it has held since the end of World War II.  However, August 2, 2011, may be the end of the beginning. If so, it will mark a point of inflection in a curve that maps processes that has been in motion for a long time. The trends in personal debt, bankruptcy, home foreclosures, unemployment, and the disparity of income and assets between the wealthiest 10% of the population and the other 90% have developed over years.

July 14, 2011, Bastille Day in France, may be considered to mark the coming of age of the successor to the United States as the superpower of the 21st Century, and that would be China.  In “China Urges U.S. to Protect Creditors by Raising Debt,” Bettina Wassener in Hong Kong and Matthew Saltmarsh in Paris report in the New York Times, that “Hong Lei, a Chinese foreign affairs spokesman, urged the United States to protect the interests of foreign investors.” As one of the United States’s biggest creditors, China, which holds over $1.0 Trillion in US Treasury bills, “urged American policy makers on Thursday to act to protect investors’ interests, highlighting rising concerns around the globe about the protracted budget talks taking place in Washington.”

These mark gradual processes of waxing and waning of cultures and economies. These did not happen overnight. It did not happen with the election and inauguration of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States, as spokespeople of the Tea-Republican Party, and News Corp (some of whom are in both) may assert. Nor did it happen in 2000 with the Presidential Election, the Supreme Court decision which decided the election, and the subsequent inauguration of George W. Bush as the 43rd President.

The development of the US as a superpower at the end of World War II was facilitated by the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the office of President in 1932, and his reelections in ’36, ’40, and ’44.  However, it was less President Roosevelt himself than the progressive economic policies of the New Deal that he put in place.  Similarly the descent from superpower status and the crumbling of American infrastructure have been slow processes. Perhaps it began with the conflation of news and entertainment and the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 under President Reagan.

In order, therefore, for the United States to continue to be a superpower, we need to return to the progressive economic policies that build infrastructure and finance infrastructure projects by taxes, rather than by mortgaging our children’s futures to potentially unfriendly foreign powers such as Communist China.

The wisest, but least easy course would be to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire and increase taxes. Everyone should pay their fair share.

Finally,

If we increase the debt ceiling, will China continue to buy U.S. Treasury Bills?

China holds over $1 trillion of US Treasury Bills, about 7.5% of our debt.  Is that in our national interest?

Google v China, and Baidu v Iran

Google announced that it believes that China is responsible for cyber attacks on Google China. Google is now unwilling to censor search results in China (The Guardian).

Google China

Google China. by Phillipe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, about to begin a tour of Asia, said “We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions. We look to the Chinese government for an explanation.” (The Guardian / NY Times).On their blog (here), in a post entitled “A New Approach to China” Google said:

“In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.” Continue reading →

Coal Miner Deaths

In China, 407 Coal Miners Died THIS YEAR

. 104 Died THIS WEEKEND in the Xinxing coal mine – described by Chinese authorities as a SAFE

mine. 528 miners were underground at the time of the explosion – in which 19.7% of the miners were killed! China Mine Disaster Continue reading →

How China Polices the Internet: Kathrin Hille of the Financial Times

Kathrin Hille of the Financial Times (London) with a detailed, nuanced – and very disturbing contemporary account of how China suppresses and deters dissent in How China Polices the Internet Excerpts follow:

On the night of January 29 this year, five peasants were delivered into Jinning detention centre, a dark little facility in the province of Yunnan in south­western China. They were accused of illegal logging, a lucrative sideline for many farmers in this impoverished region.

It was a routine arrest. But 10 days later one of the men, a 24-year-old named Li Qiaoming, was dead. Presenting his bruised and swollen corpse to shocked parents on February 12, the police said Li had died accidentally during a game of blind man’s buff, or “elude the cat” as it’s called in China. Officers explained to the elderly couple that their son had been chosen as the “cat”, was blindfolded by cellmates, and while chasing the “mice” banged his head into a wall with such force that he died of his injuries four days later. The case was closed and Li’s parents sent back to their village.

But the next night, a Friday, officers on duty in a different department of the Yunnan police – the internet security management division – detected some unusual online activity. The story of Li’s death was being discussed with fervour. Two prominent local bloggers asked how stumbling into a wall could possibly kill someone. Internet bulletin-board users ridiculed the official explanation, suggesting instead that Li had been beaten to death by jail wardens. A cartoon appeared, showing three men in striped prison outfits with their heads stuck in the walls and the floor of a cell.

Continue reading →