TIME OUT FROM ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Two sides to the coin of China’s astounding economic miracle

There are two sides to the coin of China’s astounding economic miracle—the first how the country of over 1 billion people lifted itself by its bootstraps to an impressive 10 percent annual national growth, and the second how it is paying so heavily for its progress in terms of environmental degradation. In a newly released book, When a Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind—Or Destroy It (Faber & Faber, 483 pages), award-winning environment writer Jonathan Watts has meticulously documented that second side of the coin even as he vividly portrays the diversity of a country that’s too often viewed as a faceless machine. His conclusion: China’s galloping development has taken our planet to the environmental edge, giving it the choice of accepting catastrophe or making radical change.

In “Many Poisoned Rivers,” a review of Watt’s book in the Literary Review, Jonathan Mirsky says: “At first you might imagine that Watts is peddling the latest version of the Yellow Peril. After you’ve read about fifty pages you will find his occasional attempts at fairness bizarre, as in his clichéd conclusion that, faced with two ‘extremes’, ‘the truth was probably somewhere in between’. But there is no ‘in between’. China is destroying itself and threatening the rest of us. And, like useful idiots, we are helping the Chinese do it.”

Indeed, Mirsky says, Westerners have all the while been complicit in this cycle of environmental destruction. “We love ourselves for recycling, but where do you suppose all those obsolete computers and plastic bottles go?” he asks. “Why, to China, at so much per ton.” He is appalled by Watts’ finding in his book that American companies “claim to be recycling domestically while actually shipping e-waste to China and elsewhere using shell companies in Hong Kong and Singapore.”

Read Jonathan Mirsky’s “Many Poisoned Rivers” in the Literary Review now!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jonathan Watts is the Guardian’s Asia environment correspondent and recently covered the Copenhagen Climate Conference. He was short-listed for Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the 2006 British Press Awards, and he and his research assistant were awarded the One World Media Award for best press story in 2007. In 2009, he was a co-winner of the environment prize at the One World Media Awards for a series on the global food crisis. When a Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind—Or Destroy It? is his latest book.

RELATED READING:
Given where and how people live, global warming due to carbon dioxide buildup on our planet will have a tremendous impact on humans all over the world, so we really should be thinking right now how to prevent and prepare for these changes. A basic guide to the facts of global warming is offered by Francis L. de los Reyes III, an associate professor of Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University, in an article that he wrote recently for the Philippine Star. Engr. de los Reyes conducts research and teaches classes in environmental biotechnology, biological waste treatment, and molecular microbial ecology.

Read Francis L. de los Reyes III’s “A hitchhiker’s guide to a warming earth” in the Philippine Star now!

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