The Warning

This statement should fill us with foreboding:

Years of increasingly choking smog have sparked public anger and even led to protests. In 2013, a government survey of 74 Chinese cities found that all had pollution levels that exceeded levels the World Health Organization deems safe.

“We will resolutely declare war against pollution as we declared war against poverty,” Premier Li Keqiang said in March. The plan calls for the closure of old and dirty steel, cement, and coal plants: An estimated 1,725 small-scale dirty coal plants are expected to be shuttered. The government also declared it would spend $275 billion in the next three years to reduce pollution.

According to the World Bank more than half of China’s people live on $4 or less per day. A quarter live on $2 or less per day. 10% live on $1.25 or less per day. And that’s after 35 years of modernizing their economy.

3 comments… add one
  • ... Link

    This is a predictable consequence of the first world outsourcing it’s manufacturing, just as surely as diminished prospects for working- and middle-class workers.

  • That’s basically the argument I’ve been making over the period of the last 30 years. Not that it convinced anyone.

    European claims to the contrary notwithstanding most of their gains in becoming green are due to outsourcing manufacturing to China.

  • Guarneri Link

    China produces about 6-7 times the steel as do the usual list of suspects next in line. Yet they only export less than 10% of it. A similar but less dramatic pattern exists for cement.

    China is dirty and smoggy not because the first world exported all their manufacturing to China, but because being GDP business’s, they have been growing and using so damned much cement and steel. Consider also petrochemicals.

    Keep in mind also labor intensity of different manufacturing businesses.

    You could make a better case for coal and energy in general.

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