Middle Medicine

Man, China really has to get a grip. First they try to annihilate CM and now they’ve got runaway industrialisation creating every environmental problem you can think of. And capitalism unleashed on this scale leads to quite a bit of white-collar crime as the business cut-throat style of kung fu becomes more and more prevalent…

However, something predictable happened as I was researching this post. The further I went in, the bigger and more complex the picture became. This is not an issue of one country being incompetent or reckless. There is a web of effects ranging from the newly developing Chinese middle-class, China’s movement to capitalism (authoritarian capitalism/social capitalism), what China is contracted to do and under what restrictions, how political machination plays a part in the successes and failures reported here in the west, how 1st world nations have become desensitised to their own often very negative effects on the rest of the world, and so on. It is unfortunately not so clear cut as “China really produces a lot of dangerous garbage – what a weird country”. It is easy for us to think of ourselves as particularly advanced, but that is our own rosy thinking. For example, it was not quite 30 years ago that the u.s. itself was battling a lead pollution health crisis – the same one that China is battling now. We tend to forget our own errors and instead imagine that China is unusual or reckless, when in many cases China is simply repeating the west’s mistakes as it follows the west’s examples.

Some things to keep in mind:

1. Economic Size
There is a very important seaport in South America called Valparaiso. Did you know that days where every single outbound vessel is heading for China are frequent?? Scary. Those ships are not loaded with products, but rather with raw materials that China then makes products with to temporarily stem the first world’s appetite for TVs, washing machines, plastics, what-have-you.

I bring this up because China is a huge economic force. Over 1 billion people strong. When an internet company promises 98% uptime, that translates to almost seven and a half days down per year.

2.
Chinese business is obviously responsive to the customer or contractor – and when the bosses want cheap products, pay cheap wages and generally act cheap, well, they will get cheap products, made cheaply, out of cheap materials. Why don’t we hear about the demand that has led to the supply?

3.
China is in the midst of developing a fully industrialised economy at lightning speed. In practical terms this means that they are, wrongly, cutting lots of corners – for example, they are they world’s largest producer and consumer of coal. Read about illegal coal mines here.

4.
Is it possible that there are heavy political forces at work creating, in essence, a trade embargo?

5.
It is easy to look at another country and see it’s scars and failures. We should look at ourselves as harshly and with as much fear:
Listeria
The most recent reports indicate that two-thirds of food samples in Toronto hospitals showed contamination! I mean come on!

Global Warming
The first world used so much coal during industrialisation that it threw the planet’s climate off. While some people still debate the reality of it, satellite imagery of the ice caps is shocking, and others say that the final word has been in since at least 2005. The “first world” set up a situation (and set an example!) that is potentially devastating for us as a species, and has proven devastating for others already. But it is such a broadly defined threat that we find it difficult to grasp. But, as always, we did it to ourselves. It is accepted that there are two major sources for the global warming problem: 1. the burning of fossil fuels (coal in particular), and 2. deforestation. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we know what the source of both those sources is: overconsumption.
Some forecasters are predicting a worldwide food shortage as a result of global warming – and the coal that China (and others) are adding into the mix doesn’t help. You see, half of the world’s grain production comes from three countries (the u.s., India and China). China’s wheat production is twice that of the u.s.’, and China’s rice production is far more than that. If these forecasters are right, there is a great risk of a permanent drought along the yellow river in the next 20-30 years due to the loss of glacier mass in the Himalayas. Both the Yang-Tze (in China) and Gangetic (in India) river basins will be affected in this manner.

6.
The Assembly Line and Globalisation
This is, simply put, a dangerous combination. Stuff gets everywhere with identical errors very fast.

And finally, what is perhaps my most scathing point:
7. The powerful are under attack??
It is the 1st world nations (who have a stranglehold on government and finances) who have the permits and documentation necessary to legally carry out dumping, mining, deforestation, pollution (kyoto anyone?), “development” and so on.