What is Digg?80 Comments
- mark1372, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25What's interesting about that statement is how the U.S. gets its panties in a twist over poor, broken Cuba, but gleefully does a colossal amount of commerce with the largest Communist nation in the world with barely an official complaint or sanction regarding the ubiquitous Chinese domestic atrocities.
Something is seriously wrong with that picture. - mark1372, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21Unfortunately, there are virtually no American-made products at Wal-Mart to buy (this is absolutely true). Sam Walton is spinning so fast in his grave that he'll eventually reach China.
How Wal-Mart is allowed to have their "we buy American whenever we can" slogan is beyond me, considering how abysmally false that is. - silenceHR, on 10/12/2007, -7/+24interesting enough... everybody seems to be forgetting how west developed it's industries.
i am sure it was all enviromental friendly and so on....
not to mention slave labor in US of A, home of democracy (sure ::rolleyes:: ) and what did workers there had to endure before they were granted their rights.
China is doing the same..... and next time when you go to your Wall Marts, skip cheap chinese goods and spend 2-3x more cash on western goods.... or are you too cheap ***** to do that? - mark1372, on 10/12/2007, -11/+27If the American (and other) companies contracting-out to China demanded that the factories being built were done in a less environmentally-impactful way and insisted on better living conditions, it would happen. It doesn't happen because it's slightly more expensive and a company must make every single last penny in profit to impress their shareholders.
Publicly-held companies need to be posting increasing profits and cheaper manufacturing because their shareholders demand it, and consumers demand absolute rock-bottom prices (unless you're Starbucks, which itself could be demanding all fair-trade coffee but doesn't except for one particular flavour).
Blame the Chinese government for sickeningly poor labour regulation and environmental laws. Blame Western society for not forcing them to manufacture their products in a more humane and less-impactful way. - bigfatelvis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17I live in China at the moment. The Chinese have a very different view of what is happening. They see the world outsourcing and using China and in return receiving cheep products. The rest of the world is not only benefiting from whats going on in China but are also, to a massive degree, the instigators of the process.
If you don't like whats going down in China, stop supporting the mostly western companies, Nike, Apple..... the list is massive, who are exploiting the country. - ThomS, on 10/12/2007, -7/+22Guantanamo
- mark1372, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14Of course, the U.S. government could phase-in regulation that requires American companies to demand better working and environmental conditions from their offshore manufacturers, and if you want to do trade with the U.S. from outside, you have to do the same.
That will never happen because it will upset the stock market, it would take decades to implement, and all these companies like Levi's and Nike would sue the government for not allowing them to be true capitalists and squeeze every last penny of profit out of each Honduran child worker.
Sigh. The USA has the unique position of demanding change, yet it won't because of it's own inherent selfishness and economic structure. Plus, it has a war to pay for. - TheCasablancan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12300,000 Does seem high, but everything is relative to population, they have 1.3 billion people, we have 295 million. So their 300k = 68,076 for the US. So that's a touch more that ours deaths by Influenza/Pneumonia.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm
So 1 in 4333 people will die from environmental reasons in china, 1 in 4491 and will die from Pneumonia/influenza in the US.
Everything is is a matter of perspective, but still. It sucks. - cygnusx, on 10/12/2007, -10/+20> ... an ecological wasteland, home to world-class smog, acid rain, polluted rivers and lakes, and deforestation
Anyone else had a vision of Mordor when they read that? :-) - zimm, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12
the rest of the world cant say ***** about this.
since every one of the developed countries went thru the same stage.
and in the usa. we have way worse problems with pollution. superfund sites anyone?
and WE still get most of our power from coal too.
until we clean up our own coutries.. we have no right and no business telling china what it should do. - kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11"no-one mentions enormous environmental problems from our industrial revolution, including smog on the streets of London and the Earth heating to chaotic temperatures."
Well, one difference between the ninteenth century and the twenty first century is: We now know better. After 200 years of measuring, testing, actually figuring out what cancer is ... we have irrefutible proof that various types of pollutants KILL people.
200 years ago, I'm sure the newspapers had "controversies" much like the "debate" about global warming. (eg: The factory was always able to find and promote a dissenting scientist who would claim there's no connection between soot/asbestos/etc and premature death. )
Once you "know" something, you lose plausible deniability. Companies KNOW that production processes that use mercuryarsenic/lead/etc without proper handling will ultimately kill people. Saying "but the chinese government let me kill these people..., I'd lose money if I avoided killing these people...." is not a moral loophole. If you know your business kills people, and you don't take steps to correct that, that makes you, in a word, evil. - Hender, on 10/12/2007, -12/+20I think it's quite sad to see the enormous political bias there is on digg against China.
When they have enormous pollution problems, it's because they don't care about their environment. When they commission nuclear power plants to deal with it, it's unsafe because they're commies and can't be trusted with nuclear power plants. When they build enormous hydropower dams, it's bad because it destroys the land and because due to 'unofficial' sources (which are of course more reliable than the commie press!), they exceeded their budget.
What I see is anti-commie prejudism, and that no-one mentions enormous environmental problems from our industrial revolution, including smog on the streets of London and the Earth heating to chaotic temperatures. Maybe that's inevitable if you want to get a people off the ground with serious economic growth. And if it is, who are we to tell China they can't do it when we've already done it ourselves, and are reaping the rewards?
Blah, now digg me down.
Edit: Hey, I see those that share my sentiments have been dugg up since I started writing. Guess I type too slowly. =/ - AKBryant54, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11my english teacher went to china this year, (adoption), and brought back some beautiful pics of the mountains and scenery and lakes... u know.. behind all the thick yellow air pollution that seems to be all over the place near the big cities.
- vfrex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I think I failed to make a point there. Although big corporations are playing a role in polluting China, there is a fair amount that China is doing to themselves. Or perhaps, there is a lack of action from the government to improve conditions. I guess this is where protesting would be useful. Dirty coal burning power plants NEED to be dealt with. Car emission standards need to be developed and enforced. It is largely up to the government to take care of some of these issues. Further, SEPA isn't granted the ability to hand down fines that make companies think twice about polluting and dumping into water system. That would be a good start.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8sorry bub, but i live in australia and we don't get acid rain.
you seriously need to brush up on your high school science. acid rain is localised. pollution from us doesn't cause acid rain in china. - mark1372, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9China is a gorgeous country with loads of beautiful geography, but most of its people live in extreme poverty and are victimized cruelly by their government, lax laws, and lack of a constitution. It may look nice in a lot of places, but the country is in a very, very dangerous predicament right now.
The fact that one of the most corrupt and evil regimes (and last major Communist government) is about to become a virtual superpower should be scaring governments everywhere *****. But they make cheap ***** for us and we don't have to watch them suffer, so yay! - noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8There's a lot of hypocrisy coming from western nations that don't make much themselves, but effectively outsource their manufacturing requirements to China. This is done solely on the basis of dirt-cheap prices that don't- and clearly can't- include sufficient anti-pollution measures, and they damn well know this.
The fact that they have increasingly service-oriented (and less polluting) industries simply makes them look "better" in comparison to China, but this gives a false picture. The title of this article is misleading- it's no secret, and those who continue to enjoy the cheap cost of Chinese manufacturing have known (or should have known) about this for *years* now.
Whether or not you think such pollution is an acceptable trade-off for cheap consumer goods, the fact remains that the western economies also bear a responsibility for it. They can't wash their hands of this simply because someone else is doing the work for them. - vfrex, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12One of China's big problems with air pollution is the widespread use of coal burning heaters and power plants. A source suggests that 70% of energy production in the country is done by coal power plants. Cue support here for the introduction of the Three Gorge Dam, which should produce enough electricity to take a number of coal power plants offline. Further, the number of cars being owned and driven there is large and getting larger. As China is a poor country, they aren't using new cars with better fuel economy and low emissions. These are old clunkers that probably would fail inspection in the US.
Water pollution causes problems in and out of the cities. For example, there are farming villages that are seeing highly elevated cancer rates and low crop yields as a result of factories or mines opening upstream: http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3104453
Shamelessly quoting from a paper I wrote last semester: It was found that incidence rates of respiratory related diseases were significantly greater in higher pollution areas of the city than lower. “Y. Li et al. (1998) reported that the incidence rates were higher in ‘polluted’ areas than in ‘clean’ areas and the differentials of the incidence rates were 9 cases per 1000 residents for chronic bronchitis, 11 per 1000 for pulmonary heart disease and 8.33 per 100 000 for lung cancer”.
More shameless quoting: In urban China, 10% of sewage is being processed by treatment plants. That, among other problems, has resulted in studies showing that 97% of 135 cities in China failed to meet safe water quality grades for rivers. Further, out of China’s 27 biggest cities, only 22% deliver safe drinking water to their populations. The country’s rampant pollution of its water supplies is magnified by the fact that per person, it has one fourth of the water that the average nation in the world enjoys. (from a 1998 study).
Here are a few links:
http://www.cpirc.org.cn/en/30Province1999-Beijing.htm
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/chinaenv.html
http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ecn&an=0629327
http://countrystudies.us/china/35.htm
http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Asia-and-Oceania/China-AGRICULTURE.html
http://www.aworldconnected.org/article.php/798.html (this one is particularly interesting)
http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/ptr/water-supply-prt.htm
http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3104453
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/1999/107p251-256wu/wu-full.html
http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive/2005/Apr/15-468002.html
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-12/05/content_3880299.htm - this one is particularly interesting. shortly after the crackdown on the coverup of the benzene spill, 4 spills/accidents are quickly reported. - ChileanGoD, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11@mark
Hypocrism at its best. - tuna1, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12These digg and run people like to blame America for whatever they can. Because it's either America's fault or GW's fault.
- oblivinated, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7"But what if the global media pack and the millions of tourists who descend on China two years from now take away a less-than-flattering impression of the Middle Kingdom?"
Haha... impossible. The Chinese government will try so hard to impress the modern world. You won't be able to see any deforestation, polluted rivers, or lakes in Beijing in 2008. They're even going to alter the weather so it won't rain. Image is such an important factor to the Chinese, and trust me, they will make it look like China is the best place to live. For the duration of the Olympic Games at least. Once it's over, that's a different story. - raid517, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6You know the way the West trades with China is utterly immoral. There was some lame pontificating in the late 80's and early 90's that if you engaged with China economically that this might eventually lead to stirrings for democratic change. However there is just as much evidence of that happening now (which is zero) as there was back then.
The mistake many people appear to make is that China is somehow rich in both money and resources. But the reality is that it isn't. As ever the one resource that China is rich in above all others is people - human beings and this is where China's vast production capacity really stems from.
People are so cheap, so plentiful and so utterly expendable that there are literally thousands upon thousand of them prepared to compete with each other for every single job going - which is exactly why production costs in China are so low - because what you have is a situation where there are endless masses of people fighting over jobs and prepared to accept working conditions that most people in the West would consider little short of barbaric.
So the next time you buy your cheap 'Made in China' MP3 player, spare a thought for the poor Chinese peasant girl who has been strapped to her desk (maybe not literally, but with Communist party officials and factory bosses watching over her) for 18 hours each day, sometimes for seven days a week with no time off and who has been doing so for the last five or six years for a wage of maybe $20 a month and who will be tossed out on her butt and replaced with no compensation and no prospect of further employment, the minute factory officials suspect that she is no longer able to keep up.
That is the deal I am sorry to say that we have struck with China. It is literally a deal with the devil - because it is a trade not just in goods but in the misery and suffering of millions upon millions of people. Moreover our governments know only too well that this is going on, yet they are far too interested in making money out of China to want to be in any kind of a hurry to apply any real pressure or to change anything too much.
That is why I always look at the labels on the things I buy - and if it says 'Made in China' I avoid them like the plague. Unpopular as it may seem, I unfortunately do have a conscience abut these kinds of things. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8The U.S. population is 300 million, not 300 thousand
- kremvax, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7With the primary goal of pegging it to the US dollar.
If they un-peg it completely... the US dollar's steady decline over the last 7 years will turn to freefall. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10like you americans can talk when it comes to human rights.
you people hold prisoners without charge and without council, in military kangaroo courts. you torture and beat them.
Guantanamo has people held in total darkness in small cages. the victims in there have been held for 5 years without trial or charge.
so don't even attempt to take the high road on humans rights, your country continues to stamp all over peoples rights along with the worst of them. - shmatt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6dude, you're off-topic, derogatory and showing your redstate.
- pabster, on 10/12/2007, -13/+17Always has been. It's just receiving more attention now that so much of the world's manufacturing is done there.
Don't worry, eventually China will become a state of complete ruin, and companies will find another country to employ cheap slave labor under grueling conditions to produce our iPods and other fancies. - raid517, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That changes nothing. I believe in all of the things you say you believe in - but not if it means propping up a morally and politically corrupt regime and not if it means doing business with a bunch of criminals.
If you didn't have any factories there, it certainly sounds like you were there representing someone or a particular company that did - hence your seeming need to justify your actions.
Anyway why take a hissy fit and block people when you disagree with them? Maybe you really have spent too long in China - because that is exactly the kind of thing they do there too. - Tracon, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11The yuan has been floating for about a year now. Meaning its not pegged to the US dollar for more than a year now. But of course the human rights is still a huge issue there is no debate there.
- dwhitbeck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7World pollution, a small price to pay so we can buy cheap products from Walmart. Our kids will end up paying for it just like the national deficit.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4industrial booms are always followed by massive pollution.
soon china will add up the cost of it's ways an see that unlivable cities aren't worth it. - tonage, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7- Blaming America isn't a fad. the rest of the world is PISSED off for very real reasons.
You Bushphobes are actually happy to hear hatred towards this country. Because you can use it to push your anti-Bush agenda. The left in this country is actually to a point where anything that happens that is bad for this country is actually good news for them. More ammunition. Sick. - vfrex, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9Don't mod me down for speaking the truth. The Yuan is in a floating band, not a free float. That means China is still maintaining control over it.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2006/05/27/2003310305 - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8No, but China has around 4 times the population of the U.S. and FTA "China consumes more than three times the world energy average to produce one dollar of gross domestic product—4.7 times the average for the U.S., 7.7 times the average for Germany, and 11.5 times the average for Japan," add this to a world where environmental damage is already a very serious issue.
- raid517, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Don't be so quick to judge. Not everyone in the West is rich.
And rich or not, there have has been plenty of evidence of the kind of abject oppression that goes on in China. If you speak to any Chinese dissident or activist they will say the same. Do not buy Chinese goods - because if you do all you are doing is propping up a brutal and corrupt regime.
As for 'oversight' it hardly matters - as the party officials have been replaced by factory managers - who (like the mafia) if you really want to get along in China, are almost all Communist party members.
Anyway, before you try to tell me how 'developed' and free China is, try watching this Video:
http://www.torrentportal.com/details/567872/The-Tank-Man.avi.torrent.html
If of course, you can.... - williamdyer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4China is no disgrace. There are disgraceful parts of China, and the level of pollution may be out of balance with the exact desires of the people, since China still does not have multi-party representative government, but you will not hear widespread discontent with the balance of development versus environmentalism.
The Chinese people know that 10% growth rates (and that may be a low number since so much economic development goes on outside official boundaries) means their children will have a much better life. Fast growth is the only way to raise hundreds of millions out of poverty. Poverty isn't good for your life expectency, either.
The views of the people also vary by region. In Bejing, people increasingly want to preserve the historic city. In the south coastal cities, nobody seems to care about old buildings, especially if it is to make way for a new one. - raid517, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Watch the damned video. It deals with the current realities in China, not just the past ones.
At the end of the day this is a political argument - I have no objection to the ordinary Chinese people improving their working conditions - but as ever it is only the top few percent, the elite of Chinese society - and those who are prepared to play the game that benefit most - which still leaves the vast majority - the peasant class as you put it - who you appear to be implying should somehow be worth less consideration than everyone else - who are left to suffer. These are the 'natural (and seemingly expendable) resource' that I mentioned in my original post.
Anyway it sounds to me, rather than calling me 'a rich Westerner' that it was very much you who was the rich Westerner in China. Why else would you be visiting their factories and defending the exploitation of the peasant classes in this way - unless of course you personally have, or had some vested interest in doing so? Is it possible that your attempts to justify the current state of affairs in China is little more than a half baked Google/Yahoo' type attempt to ease your conscience, because you too had your hand in the cookie jar when you were there?
As I said this is a political argument. Ultimately if the Chinese people can improve their standard of living (for all Chinese people and not just for a small percentage) then good luck to them. But that does not mean by definition that we must feel obliged to lend support to a corrupt and morally reprehensible political system either.
So I'm afraid I will not knowingly buy Chinese goods and I will tell all of my friends and family not to buy them either. - stormmind, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7silenceHR and Hender:
Couldn't agree more. Wasn't the forrest in Greece completely destroyed on some islands due to industrialisation? Such stuff is forgotten now and everybody speaks of big and bad China. We are not a bit better. Even worse, since we buy chinese products and profit from their dirty industry. It is the same mentality England had during industrialisation when they started building higher chimneys so that the smog would blow "some place else". - mt066, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7Why does that totally vague comment get +8 diggs? You guys are just being anti-US for the hell of it.
- whizzbang, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5A lot of this comes from burning old computer hardware to get at the precious metals. Oh by the way, that our computer hardware that we send to be recycled. Just ask your local recycle center where the old hardware goes.
- galatians, on 10/12/2007, -14/+16China is learning from the USA.
- williamdyer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2300k is not an unbelievable number. Medical error is the U.S. kills about 50k - 100k, depending on which numbers you use, which, proportional to population, is about the same fraction of population killed by one cause. These kinds of numbers are typical for top-ten causes of mortality, with the exception of cancer and heart disease, which are each about 5X more.
- TheWalkingDude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@timmarhy
Who said we are American? Check the profiles.
Also, the article is about China, therefore we are discussing China.
Tit For Tat doesn't change the fact. - raid517, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I think the point a lot of people are missing is that two evils do not add together to make a right. Just because the West did some questionable things in it's past (although Middle East wars etc have nothing to do with this subject) does not by definition mean that it is OK for China to behave in an evil way now.
We have learned, we have moved on - we have come to terms with our past and made massive efforts to put right the wrongs of our past - and in large part we have succeeded in doing this.
But our own errors do not negate the errors of others - just because some guy who lives 3 blocks away from you murders his wife and 3 kids does not make it OK for you to do it too - so I think using past evils as a justification for present evils is entirely the wrong way to go about it.
We are not our parents or our grandparents - and we in by far the largest part are not murderers or routine abusers of human rights - so saying that we should somehow just turn a blind eye to what is happening in China is in my view utterly wrong and misguided.
Evil is never a valid excuse for more evil. Evil in what ever format it comes should always be resisted. - wardboro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I didn't represent anyone. I lived there as a student. I spoke to regular people in their own language. I dealt with the people not the businesses. I mentioned living conditions above, not work conditions. I'm not justifying any business I have done or will do overseas. I strongly believe in free trade.
You make a good point that the rich will benefit from international trade. The poor will also benefit but to a lesser degree. What's your solution? Communism? That's been tried there and was a miserable failure. Since the implementation of the Open-Door Policy the living conditions have made a strict improvement across almost all demographic groups. There have been some who have disporportionately benefitted from China's move toward capitalism and free trade, but you could observe the same thing in almost every developed economy in the world. I also believe that trade partners make bad enemies in war, but that's a whole different topic.
I don't care if you buy things from China or not, I just wanted to offer a different viewpoint. I didn't block you and I never intended to. I added you to the friends list cause I'm interested in what other stuff you post. - Hender, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2kremvax: Firstly, I wasn't talking about US businesses in China, I was talking about China. I never brought outsourcing into the debate.
Secondly, it's fair and square that we know better than to pollute, but try telling any developing country that, countries which by achieving a high growth rate can lift the next generation out of poverty. - mark1372, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5As long as you are contracting-out China to make all of your stuff and as long as you are the most powerful nation on the planet, you absolutely have business telling China what it should do when it's employing the resources that you disproportionately consume.
And the USA does NOT have way worse problems with pollution than China. The U.S. pollutes disproportionally, but it's not unfettered like it used to be and is now in China.
Everyone is guilty, but it's those who have the power to change it now -- and don't -- whom are the guiltiest. - tonage, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Just scanning the thread you see posts about GW and Iraq. The story is about freaking China. I guess China is free to do anything they want since everyone is too busy worried about how they can bash the USA.
Every story about something a country does bad turns into a comment thread bashing the USA. Because Digg is full of a bunch of jealous ungrateful jerks. - cheersrazer, on 10/12/2007, -13/+14So it is ok for the U.S.A and other developed countries to damage their ecosystems but China should be condemned for the same behaviour?
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