Backwardly Conflicted
The nation with the largest population in the world, just recently hailed as the emerging world tiger in economic empowerment, sending its cheaply-produced and inexpensive products all over the world, is in a financial bind. Like just about every other country in the world, affected intolerably by the global economic collapse. China has set a trajectory for itself, to continue a steady course of economic growth to ensure it continues to acquire wealth and stature, and of course to employ all those millions of its population annually coming into the workforce.In the process of building its steady growth pattern, the country has seen its production rise, and its trade strengthened by a world greedy to acquire products whose inexpensive manufacturing costs lead to inexpensive acquisition costs. Most of China's small and large factories operate on coal-fired furnaces, and they spew pollution unceasingly into its environment, winds carrying them far afield, to other countries of the world. China's degraded environment has caused endemic diseases of heart and lung among its population.
Spills from chemical factories not known for their care of the environment have polluted vast water systems, further making people ill who live downriver of those incessant 'spills', and who have no recourse to legal action. China's labourers in its many coal mines work under dangerous conditions and mine collapses are numerous, taking their toll on mine workers' lives. The demand in wealthy countries of the world for energy-saving fluorescent bulbs is imperilling the health of Chinese workers handling the mercury that must go into these bulbs.
Now government officials in China have been instructed they are required to smoke cigarettes in great numbers as an assist to the flailing economy during these stressful economic times. An edict has been issued by officials in central China threatening to fine those failing to meet their stated targets - or who are incautious enough to smoke cigarettes produced in provinces other than their own. This, despite that China has a national anti-smoking policy.
China, above all other nations, makes its own interesting times for its people to live and labour in.
Labels: China, Economy, Values
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, May 05, 2009
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