Mea Culpable
"Some of these problems have built up over time, while others have emerged in the course of economic and social development, and still others have been caused by inadequacies and weaknesses in our government work."
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao
This was part of a policy speech opening the national legislature's yearly session. When China's outgoing premier acknowledged that quality of life has been impeded in China in the greater interests of advancing the country's breakneck economic growth. Something had to give in the process and that something was the integral quality of the air that people breathe, the water they drink, the state of the land they depend upon for crops.
Premier Wen Jiabao stated a list of problems that had been allowed to build up in the last ten years. Problems that will be left to his successors to solve any which way they can manage. Problems that include a growth model that is beginning to lean in on itself; poisoned air, waterways and soil; a growing gap between the country's rich and its endemic poor; the most unfortunate reality of rampant official corruption.
"Is this a time bomb?" a retirement government research official, Yao Jianfu asked. "If there's an economic downturn and massive unemployment, will the 200-million migrant workers become the main force of the next Cultural Revolution?" he posited enquiringly, referring to the 1966-76 period when the country was in turmoil and children turned against parents, and urban dwellers were thrust out into the countryside.
Mr. Yao's specialty is China's migrant workers who are often deprived of privileges others depend upon, like housing, education and other government services. Stimulated and powered by the Internet and mass communication, the Chinese public has become increasingly restive and vocal about their dissatisfaction with the unacceptable status quo and the obvious need for change.
Three thousand legislative deputies listened in the Great Hall of the People as Premier Wen Jiabao spoke for almost two hours, his last address before relinquishing the problems of the Chinese state to a new cadre of administrators. The concerns of environmental degradation enhanced by the focus on manufacturing with no controls on effluent and smokestack carbons along with corruption benefiting a party-connected elite represent Chinese problems of huge magnitude.
A huge effort to overturn the damage inflicted on the environment will soon be concentrated in the untried hands of an administration pledging to devote itself for the next decade to overturning China's disastrous self-inflicted wounds on its way to becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the world.
Labels: China, Controversy, Corruption, Economy, Energy, Environment
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 07, 2013
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