Arthur

An excellent article highlighting yet another side of China.

Your articles and comment provided me with some direction in searching the net for answers but I almost overlooked your reference to cancer villagers in your "Does China deserve a fair go." I first assumed that these were recuperation centres for cancer sufferers.

How wrong was that!

My students and I were horrified and disgusted when searching the net for cancer villages in China. Entire village communities are not only suffering and/or dying of cancer from lethal air pollution and their only water source contaminated by toxic industrial waste and sewage, but they also know that they cannot afford to move.

That this is occurring at all is outrageous, but when seeking legal recourse against those responsible, the courts refuse to hear, or reject the claims out of hand. Those speaking out suffer at the hands of the police or jailed by the courts meant to protect them. As for the "responsible" local government? Difficult; since the factories "provide employment". Health care? What is that!

Because of the increasing impact of China on our economy and future, we are now forming study groups to research many of the points that you, AgScientist, Expat China Journo and David DuByne have raised to obtain a broader understanding of China and rights abuse that now appears to go well beyond Tibet.

We would be totally ignorant of China's "other side" without articles and comment from your four. David DuByne's explanation of the meaning of "face" and implications in its use was excellent and explained many things. Virtual translation? Half truths, lies and damned lies.

Thank you all for your input and keep the articles and comment coming.

Cyclops

Romany

You ridiculed Arthur by stating his input could be found in the public domain. That is as obvious as you also using the net. With such vastness, however where does one start without knowing what problems exist?

Reading Dialectic Blue, Graeme and Kaixin and then Arthur, David, AgScientist and Expat China Journo, two different China's emerge. Difficult to research the former, but with the leads provided by the latter, easy to establish the credibility or not for ourselves. No bias or opinion, just direction.

Associates and I are only now discovering that we know very little about China other than its highly promoted tourism, economic boom and Olympics, and intend to rectify that for ourselves and our students.

Only now are we starting to realise that the problem of Tibet may only be one of what appears to be many serious credibility problems for China. We hear of religious persecution in general throughout China. Now we know about the North Korean refugees forcibly returned to face brutal measures and the Shaanxi brick kiln child slavery. . A new picture of China is emerging, one that not only has zero regard for the basic rights of ethnic and religious minorities under its care, but now the health, safety and basic rights for its own citizens and disregard for the rights and international responsibilities for the future of its neighbours.

The wider reasons for international support for the Tibet uprising are now becoming clearer.

We found many obvious bias sites that would include China state media, Falun Gong, Free Tibet and likely CIA and treat content accordingly after further research.

For any government to spend the billions on the 2008 Games when such abuse and shortages exist is criminal, irresponsible and definitely unforgivable.

Cyclops

Cyclops,

I am appalled that you are influencing students and others due to the input you received from certain posters because you consider that information easier to find.(Especially as one of them researched the "fact" that I was male, Chinese and part of the CCP’s covert propaganda machine!)

I sincerely hope you are balancing this with information such as that in the Economist of May 5th which explains that the Chinese Centre for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims - which was established in 1998 - records 60,000 citizen organised (i.e. independent of Government), protests against pollution last year alone? And that multi-National Companies were responsible for 260 reported incidents of water pollution infringements and 50 incidents of air pollution last year.

As the top 7 companies involved were Pepsi, KFC, Carlsburg, Nestle, GM, Dupont and 3M (Eye on the Earth Feb.6) perhaps you should be directing students away from these products?

Have you told them that the world's largest cow-dung methane power plant which is the sole source of energy for 30,000 households is also in China? http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5599

Have you got them to research the Green Loans Initiative launched in July '07 (using market tools, not Government initiatives)? They would then know that the China Banking Regulatory Commission, in November last year had blacklisted 12 of the most notoriously heavy polluters whose loans were cancelled, suspended or rejected? And that since '06 a total of 16.7 million RMB had been withdrawn from companies which infringed regulations and four times that amount was distributed to companies which adopted Green initiatives? http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5604

Did you go back and read my last posts on the other China thread in which I provided links to another country whose human rights, pollution, totalitarian government and surveillance record is every bit as bad as China? Have you also given this information to your students to provide them with a balanced worldview? To balance the China polemic try:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/25/3410/
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/07/156211&mode=thread&tid=25
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewarticle&code=CHI20070521&articleId=5720
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/print.php?idnews=1008

ps As an educator your use of language is careless:. Nowhere did I "ridicule" Arthur. You obviously misunderstood my point.

Centra

Some components of the original concept were quite correctly rejected as totally impractical. The project itself however is continuing and we will come to realize in the near future.

In the meantime, spend some time doing open DETAILED research on the problems being experienced by Three Gorges. Go back and check why advice by some of China's own eminent engineers and experts (especially the late Prof Huang Manli) was rejected. In the 1992 NPC session, 33% of the members abstained from voting for the dam. Check why Hu Jintao has distanced himself from the project. All photos of Hu were removed from the dam's exhibition hall. Notice none of the leadership turned up for the Hallmark Dam Completion Ceremony May 2006? Unlike all previous dam events it was not even shown live on China Central TV. Very unusual to miss such publicity opportunity for such an icon project.

Landslides, mortalities and continuing community relocations have been caused by the rising waters as the reservoir fills. Other problems include methane, massive algal blooms, contaminated water supplies (check on Chongqing), reservoir pollution, landslides, floating debris endangering shipping, and downstream siltation just to name a few. Don’t bother blaming drought either. As for humanitarian suffering, the original relocation estimate of 1.13 million citizens to make way for the dam has rocketed by an additional 4 million to 5.15 million, directly attributable to landslides, poor soils and even worse planning. Many of theses poor souls are in their third evacuation and lacking adequate compensation.

Great planning record indeed. By the way did you know that China is hiring a major US environmental consultancy firm to overcome Three Gorges Dam management problems? Another bit of information for you - the Three Gorges cannot meet one of its major objectives, flood control.

Continued

Continuing

Centra, get another source with up to date and more reliable information. Why not enter the world of reality by also checking out the increasing number of problems on the downstream Mekong in Laos and Thailand; especially the extensive river erosion caused by the blasting of the bars and rapids in Laos that once controlled the flow. Traders are experiencing increasing problems with the continual groundings of the larger river vessels introduced by China to monopolize river traffic trade. As the energy of the river declines, the salt tide will penetrate further up through the Mekong delta. I am sure that the Vietnamese will be overjoyed and I am sure that the neighbours are happy since Xinhua says it is so.

Try reading the many independent reports available, many are free while you may have to pay for some of them, but they do make interesting and realistic reading for those who genuinely want to understand the problems and know the truth. There is also some imagery available to support the foregoing, also at a cost.

Better still, go and take a boat trip down the Mekong from Yunnan between January and April and see it on the ground for yourself and talk to the natives, especially between Chiang Saen and Xihounbanna. Especially talk to the shipping agents and try and get confirmed schedules into China.

I assume that you do have open internet satellite access.

Ag Scientist.

Ag Scientist,

>>spend some time doing open DETAILED research on the problems being experienced by Three Gorges ...<<

I am working in aeronautic and space industry right now. No matter how much time I spend, I can not figure out even the part of the problems in the Three Gorges dam project, and quite sure there will be continuous new problem come out in the future, as my project experience in other area told me. But I still try to understand the project according to non-China media (most based on pure scientific international periodicals): over a trillion ton water runs off from hundreds to thousands of metres high in west China to sea level in east China can generate great power and possibly cause big damage. The dam creates a reservoir to store maxim 39 billion m3 water, it does improve the flood control. The downstream is China's most prosperous aera for over a thousand years. Considering, hundreds of people lost their lives and billions of dollars property damaged by severe flood almost annually. Also power generated by the project equivalents to 40-50 million tons of raw coal annually, this is clean renewable energy.

Frankly, overall assessment of this project is out of ability of any single individual. I do not think this is a perfect project, but at least this is not an evil project. That's why we need balanced information.

As trans-national Lancang/Mekong river, compare the regional countries, basically, they did the same thing on the river.
There are interest conflict which I did mentioned, but I also noticed they cooperate well. On Yarlung /Brahmaputra River, did you notice what project planed in India? Half of the river is in China and outflow from China is over a trillion ton annually, making good use of and diverting some water is nothing wrong.