Blog of the Day -- CHINA'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS
-- Micky's HO: Many China observers share the view that "all Olympic
athletes compete in the same air" , it is a factual statement in a
literal sense, however, for the local Chinese team who are used to and
thus developed natural resistance to Beijing's dirty air, who can say
that they may not actually enjoy a stealthy advantage. Fair play was
never the main theme of Beijing Olympics. Purely on technical level, the
dirty air ensures Beijing Olympic will not be a sports event of fair
games. --
http://divinedem.blogspot.com/2007/08/chinas-dirty-little-secrets.html
THE DIVINE DEMOCRAT
QUOTE OF THE DAY
All of the problems we have in the United States today can be traced to
an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American
Indian.-Pat Paulsen
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
CHINA'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS
The Beijing Olympics which will begin August 8, 2008 have been
celebrated as the pride of China. It is hoped that the Olympics will
lead to an improved image for the Chinese human rights and freedom of
the press.
Of course, this is the image they want to project. Instead, according to
the Washington Post"there has been "gagging of dissidents, a crackdown
on activists and attempts to block independent media coverage."
The Olympic security measures have little to do with threat of terrorism
or crime, however. What China deems as necessary security are the
threats of "those who reveal China's social problems and protest the
government."
Human Rights Watch sighted several examples of activists who have
been obstructed, including a husband-and-wife couple, Hu Jia and Zeng
Jinyan, who have been under constant surveillance and travel
restrictions since May for allegedly "harming state security."
Others include Jingo Yanking, a military surgeon who broke
government secrecy to reveal the true scale of Beijing's SARS outbreak
in 2003. He has reportedly been banned from leaving China to accept a
human rights award in New York.
Hu, an AIDS activist, said law enforcement authorities told him last
year, while he was in custody for nearly six weeks, that Olympic
security measures started two years ahead of the Beijing Games.
Although Beijing has loosened some of its rules which required
government approval for travel and interviews, it has at the same time
clamped down on domestic media and Internet essayists.
This isn't the only dirt that China is trying to hide. A report from the
BBC News states, "Olympic chief Jacques Rogge says air pollution could
lead to some events at the 2008 Beijing Games being postponed."
BBC sports news correspondent Gordon Farquhar said: "All the talk
has been about human rights but there has been a growing realisation
that Beijing has a smog problem.
"People are beginning to come to terms with the fact it could be a
major issue. Rogge said that some of the endurance events may be
postponed and that would be disaster for the organisers."
Postponing these events may not be an option, according to Wang Junyan,
the director of the cycling events for the game. The schedules for those
events have already been decided and it would be impossible for them to
change.
China has made an attempt to clean up the dangerous smog in their air.
In fact, they've spent billions of dollars by shutting down factories
and moving some of them out of town. This did little to help, because of
the "non-stop construction and booming car sales have made air quality
even worse."
Some measures to protect their athletes are being taken by the
Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates, who has revealed
that the country's athletes won't arrive in Beijing until just before
the Games in order to avoid respiratory problems.
A little known fact is that researchers have found that every year,
750,000 Chinese die prematurely from pollution ― 750,000 people a year!
In an interview on Marketplace, it was revealed that this information
was left out of a new World Bank report on pollution in China recently.
Scott Tong, correspondent of Marketplace said, "The Beijing Olympic
Committee is really sensitive about the issue of air quality. And
they're concerned about any issues that are seen as destabilizing
society in China. So you take those, put them together and according to
the Financial Times, they leaned on the World Bank to take out these
mortality figures." The interview continued...
Tong: One participant in this research study questioned the
methodology, that it was unreliable. This person also said that 'we did
not want to make this report too thick.'
Jagow: And what does the World Bank say about this?
Tong: The World Bank in a statement today said that what is public
now is a discussion version of a full report that's gonna come out at a
later date and some of the issues are still under discussion.
Jagow: Scott, you live in China. How do you react to hearing this
report?
Tong: You don't see a blue sky very often in Shanghai, I can tell
you that, and it's not fog. There's just a lot of industrial development
in a lot of China. Beijing adds a thousand new cars on the roads per
day. Now I do have to say that pollution is an issue that's not just a
China issue. I mean, these particles don't just stop at the border,
right? They've been known to have floated all the way over to the
Western United States and the Western North America.
And the reaction from the U.S. Olympic Committee chief of sport
performance to the pollution problem in China?
"I anticipate the improvement in Beijing's air quality next year,
and we will continue to monitor it, so the air condition is not a
concern for U.S. team," said Roush, who is leading the U.S. Goodwill
Tour group in commemorating the one-year-out date of the Beijing Olympics.
"I witnessed China's handling of traffic during the Sino-Africa
summit, so I am confident of Chinese government in its capacity of
dealing with air and traffic. It won't be a problem for us," added Roush.
Howard Bach, a badminton player in the Tour added this gem;
"I live in Los Angeles, and it's not very good there in air. I also
spend a lot of time in Colorado Springs, where I enjoy very clean air.
For us athletes, we travel around the world, so I won't concern too much
on it. It's a game for everybody and we are competing in the same air,"
said Bach.
Badminton is played indoors, is it not?
A report by
Forbes.com "U.S. cities continue to pollute at a great rate.
Still, to put this in perspective, they are all better than Chinese
cities that hold the title of the world's worst. The Chinese wrested
that title from Mexico City--since all ten in China are more polluted
than Mexico's capital."
I wonder if the mascot for the Beijing Olympics will be giving out free,
complementary face masks with the tickets to the events. It's a thought.....
Posted by Mary Ellen at 10:09 AM
Labels: Misc.
10 comments:
ThanKwee-Anajo said...
there has been "gagging of dissidents, a crackdown on activists and
attempts to block independent media coverage.
For awhile there, I thought that you were describing the U.S. under
our current administration!
As for pollution, China has such a problem because of over population.
I'm hesitant to point a finger at China as we are moving in the same
direction.
August 8, 2007 1:36 PM
Mary Ellen said...
Jo
Well, it certainly looks to me like George Bush would like to use
China as a model for our media coverage, there's no doubt about that.
One of the biggest problems with pollution in China is the factory
output (think about all the factories they need to make that crap they
import to us) and because of their booming economy, more people own cars
than ever before in China (lots of exhaust there and I'll bet they don't
have emission tests done on their cars).
A woman I know from my church was in China a couple of years ago,
her husband was an airline pilot for one of the major airlines. His
route was to China and she decided to go with him. She became very ill
with a bronchial infection that if not treated as quickly as it was, her
doctor said she could have died.
I can't even imagine the damage this is going to cause the athletes
in the Olympics. Why would the coaches want to expose them to that
pollution?
August 8, 2007 2:22 PM
TomCat said...
Shhhh.... Don't piss them off. Bush owes them around $1 trillion. :-(
August 8, 2007 4:41 PM
Mary Ellen said...
tomcat
I have the feeling that's why our Olympic Committee chief is acting
as if the smog isn't a problem. The US dare not pull any of its athletes
from the events for fear of reprisal.
August 8, 2007 5:12 PM
pekka said...
ME, this is a very good post! I think, that the environmental
destruction and human rights violations in China represent basically
both sides of the same coin.
The past decade Chinese have experienced changes in their society
that took a full century elsewhere. The world has never seen anything
like the mass exodus of peasants from the rural China into the huge and
ever growing industrial cities to produce cheap goods for us. If there
were no demand by us, there hardly were supply by them. Ergo, less
pollution by them.
China is unfortunately dependent on dirty coal, basically their only
domestic power source. They have an huge dilemma with the expectations
of the people who demand to get pulled out of their present rural misery
by ever increasing industrial sector. The Chinese Communist leadership
knows, that the only way they can hold on to power is to keep the
economy surging at an annual rate of 10%% or better and thus being unable
to cope with the increases of environmental degradation. They know now,
that North-Eastern problem of desertification is at some point going to
make it impossible to live in Peking.
I can't help but think that the global solutions are needed here.
What form they would take, I let smart people to decide.
August 8, 2007 5:20 PM
Mary Ellen said...
pekka
Thank you, it is a dilemma in China. We have been depending on their
cheap goods for years and with a good portion of our own manufacturing
having been outsourced, we are buying even more from them. In fact,I
didn't realize until the last year or so how much of our product comes
from China.
I think the recent events of pet food poisoning, children's toys
being recalled because they are not safe, and the bird flu in China has
finally opened the eyes of many Americans. I did a post earlier on that
touched on the problem with China. In it, the head of the FDA said that
we are constantly being inundated by China with bad food and goods. In
fact, they have been shipping a lot of illegal items, such as chickens,
which are forbidden to be sold here. They put them in cases that are
mislabeled to get them past inspectors. If they are sent back, they are
just repackaged and put through again until they get by inspections.
Just like the toothpaste that was being sold here that used a
product of anti-freeze for a thickening agent and sweetener. Unless they
get caught, they will continue to ship this garbage into our country.
What to do? Who knows. How can you buy something that is "American"?
Even the dog food industry which isn't regulated can say on the package
that their food is made in the US, but they don't have to say that some
of the ingredients are bought from China.
The Chinese also have us by the short hairs because of the debt that
Bush has wracked up. China basically owns us, which is why they get away
with everything they want.
August 8, 2007 6:57 PM
politiques USA said...
China's white dolphin likely extinct
China's rapid industrialisation has likely made extinct a species of
fresh water dolphin that had been on Earth for over 20 million years,
Chinese and British biologists said Wednesday.
Scientists from China, Japan, Britain and the United States failed
to find the white dolphin, known as the baiji, during a six-week search
of its natural habitat in the Yangtze river last year.
"This result means the baiji is likely extinct," Wang Ding,
co-author of the survey and one of the world's leading experts on the
species, told AFP.
August 8, 2007 9:59 PM
Mary Ellen said...
Steven
That's so sad!!! I love dolphins...it makes me sick when I see what
the human race is doing to this world.
August 8, 2007 11:22 PM
pekka said...
politiques, so sad with these unique creatures and unfortunately true!
Before we start feeling too good, about ourselves, let's remember
that we have, especially in Europe, done environmental destruction for
centuries. Only very recently have we become environmentalists. Those
gorgeous wide open sceneries around the Mediterranean are actually
result of the massive destruction of the pine forests and soil erosion.
Today, pines can be only found in parts of Lebanon. Same goes with
England and central Europe all the way to Baltic states that have only
measly slivers of once common forests left. Still in the fifties,
England experienced killer fogs as a result of burning coal. The last I
looked, those buffalo herds on the plains look awfully thin too. Those
Chinese dolphins would have met the same faith in the rivers such as
Thames, Rhein, Mossel, Potomac, Volga etc.
We should never forget that China is doing what we have done for
centuries. Not that we should accept this but finger pointing is not
going to do it. Hopefully the emerging environmental awareness among the
next generation of younger Chinese leaders, who are about to come forth,
will turn the situation for better. We all are in the same boat and
China's pollution is not just the Chinese problem. Our environmental
strategies have to get out of the nationally based compartments and
become links in the global chain. If not, we are doomed.
August 8, 2007 11:40 PM
Mary Ellen said...
pekka
Well said. We're all responsible for this. I think China is just so
behind the times with issues like this. Of course, their human rights
issues are also a big problem.
Even with all the awareness that's out there, we're still destroying
rain forests in Africa and we're losing a lot more than we could
probably imagine in animal and plant life.
I just hope the awareness about global warming doesn't disappear.
Sometimes issues like that will be like a fad, and then slowly people
stop being activists and go back to being apathetic again.
August 8, 2007 11:51 PM
http://divinedem.blogspot.com/2007/08/chinas-dirty-little-secrets.html
