I don’t know whether you’ve been following this story. Last Sunday a huge manmade mountain of soil and waste collapsed in the Chinese industrial city of Shenzhen, taking out more than three dozen apartment buildings. At least 81 people are dead or missing.
After the port explosions in Tianjin earlier this year, a lot of people, especially Chinese people must be wondering why these things are happening. Let me speculate with some answers.
- China is a very big country. Its mere size means that this stuff will seem to happen more frequently there. China’s increased openness (and the omnipresence of cellphones with cameras) means that the news gets out. That’s the change.
- China has grown very quickly and the growth has come at the expense of caution.
- China’s construction standards are poor. Anywhere else might’ve had less damage.
- China isn’t a democratic country. In a more democratic country the people would be less likely to stand for these kinds of disasters.
- China’s system is incredibly corrupt. That means that even when you improve the building standards there’s no way to enforce it.
- China doesn’t have a robust system of civil law. You can’t just sue somebody the way you would if something like this happened here.
Murder rates in China are about one-fifth the rate in the United States,
so Obama’s pivot to the east is another misplaced if not dysgenic imperialism.