A very damning, very long article. China is fucked environmentally, economically and politically.

[DetlefK]

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31478-china-s-communist-capitalist-ecological-apocalypse

Very, very long article.

It starts on China's environment, where gigantic swaths of agrarian land, rivers, groundwater and air are polluted due to rampant corruption and environmental laws simply aren't enforced.

It continues with gigantic investment boondoggles. China is building stuff like crazy, although it doesn't need it. China is building surplus houses, hospitals, stadiums, skyscrapers, bridges, highways, ports, air-ports, rail-ways, sub-ways, shipyards, auto-plants, shopping-malls, "financial centers"... that nobody needs and that lie around unused.
China has 64 million empty apartments.
To repeat:
China has 64 million empty apartments.
And they keep building and building.

It continues with China's rampant political corruption. Those in power aren't in power because they were elected. Or because they are competent or otherwise noteworthy. China is ruled by a mafia-like network of protection and favors (guanxi).
For example: President Xi Jinping is worth $2.7 billion. He never owned stocks or shares or made investments or received any other salary than that of an ordinary politician. So how did he get $2.7 billion?
A chinese author wrote a tell-all book about Xi Jinping and wanted to publish it in Hong Kong. The first publisher was kidnapped and never seen again. The second publisher received a phone-call from Beijing with a friendly reminder that he and his family will be killed if he publishes that book.

The article wanders on to the economy. All of China's economic key-sectors are dominated (and in some cases monopolized) by state-owned entities. These aren't corporations! There is no board of directors! These pseudo-corporations are ultimately tools of the communist party and their purpose is not to make money. Their purpose is to further the interests of the communist party. Even if such a state-owned entity is shoddily run and loses money, it doesn't matter. It won't get you fired as long as it serves the interests of the communist party.

If chinese state-owned entities don't have shares, where do China's millionaires and billionaires come from?
Corruption and theft.
Everybody embezzles government-money left and right as much as he can and as fast as he can and he can do so with impunity because he shares the loot with a network of other influential people.

China isn't communist. China is ruled by a warring feudal network of mafia-like circles, vying for influential positions where they can fleece China for even more money. (Sometimes one of them gets sacrificed, like Bo Xilai, to pretend that China is fighting corruption.) At the very peak are China's economic and political elite, the 26 descendants of 8 communist politicians who inherited their positions of power from their fathers.

The police! The courts and the police could do something about this! Actually, No, they can't: Sometimes they get bribed, sometimes somebody along the route of enforcement gets bribed or is already part of the network that protects the embezzlement or the company that dumps toxic waste squarely on the ground, right next to a village-school.
1,575 corruption investigators were busted for corruption in 2014. And Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign smacks more of a purge of rivals.
Recently the question was raised on the internet: Why have no 'big tigers' (big criminals) been found in Fujian and Zhejiang? The message was almost immediately deleted.
China has even cut back on its campaign of rooting out corruption: Finding too much corruption would make the communist party look bad.

The Chinese Communist Party is locked in a death spiral. It can't rein in corruption because the party is built on corruption, thrives on corruption and can't police itself. It can't rein in ravenous resource consumption and suicidal pollution because, given its dependence on the market to generate new jobs, it has to prioritize growth over the environment like capitalist governments everywhere. It can't even discipline its own subordinate officials to enforce and obey the government's environmental, food and drug safety, building codes and similar laws because in this system subordinate officials aren't necessarily subordinate and can often mobilize their family and guanxi-based backers to defend their interests and thwart Beijing.

[Oneironaut]

1. China is the closest country to pure Capitalism.

The entire country lives (and dies) by money. The entire culture is one big cesspool of corruption, bribing, and apathy to social justice and welfare. This is what unchecked Capitalism does. Money poisons everything.

If you want a good metaphor, remember that little girl who was run over in China, and everybody just walked by her? That's the mentality there - "I've got mine - fuck everybody else!" We have people here (far right) that would love to turn the U.S. into the same thing.

[get the red out]

7. Exactly!

And Donald Trump thinks they are better than us. Dear God.

I have been to China, there are beautiful things there, but the pollution stench took over all my sense of smell from the time our plane touched down. It would settle over whichever city we were in like morning fog that didn't go away. It simply has to be poisoning everybody. Sad and horrible.

[randys1]

20. Mitt Romney wanted to model the US after China, remember!

But the LAST group of people who should point fingers are Americans who are actually considering electing, as President,

ANY of the clown car.

[get the red out]

29. The clown car appeals to the brainwashed

I would bet a lot of people supporting the clown car has been affected in some way, themselves or family, by jobs lost to China. The brainwashing ability of these clowns and their media minions is astounding.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

19. It's also one-party rule

Some of the most corrupt cities and states were or are essentially ruled by one party.

I give you Louisiana as a shining example - the state has gone from extremely Democratic to extremely Republican, and the state was a cesspool of corruption under the democratic party and is a cesspool of corruption under the Republican party.

Imo, democracy works best when there are at least two parties - assuming one party isn't bat-shit crazy.

[former9thward]

28. Adam Smith would disagree with you.

China is the total opposite of "pure capitalism". All of the large companies are totally state controlled. That is not capitalism, regulated or not.

[rufus dog]

2. During the Bejing Olympics Bob Costas did a segment on building ....

The stat that blew my mind, they have more EMPTY office space compared to TOTAL office space in Manhattan. Ponder that! A stroll through Manhattan with every building empty. MSNBC also did a segment on China ghost towns. These things looked exactly like developments you would see in Irvine, CA, or Bay Area/San Diego developments. (Because they used the same architects) Huge, sprawling shopping malls, high rise condos, single family homes. And they were friggen empty. Locations and infrastructure to cover one half million people, empty.

So money spent to build, contractors and govt officials making cash, while infrastructure must be maintained and paid for.

It was only a matter of time before the house of cards started to crumble.

[Cosmocat]

30. VICE on HBO

did a piece on this, too ...

Just bizarre, complete small cities, built brand new, with countless high rise apartments, very fancy, completely empty.

[procon]

3. Is another Soviet style collapse in their future?

The ussr failed under the crushing costs of it's military expansion. Could China fail economically due to financial waste, fraud and corruption? What happens then I'm scared to imagine.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Looks like they're about a hundred or so years behind us.

[Wellstone ruled]

5. When the head Honcho of Vanguard Funds

states he would not touch China with a ten foot pole. As well as any ETF's. Both are a train wreck that is happening real time. Both are a creation of the Wall Street Money Changers.

[appalachiablue]

6. K & R. Can we have our factories back?

[GummyBearz]

8. There is an obvious fact that refutes this whole piece

There are no white males in positions of power in the Chinese government.

This piece is obviously western biased propaganda, as the Chinese are an ancient people in tune with nature, who would never do anything mentioned in the article. Take this anti eastern, xenophobic piece else where, we don't believe it.

[KamaAina]

9. In the words of the immortal Sheldon Cooper, "Is that sarcasm?"

You can indicate sarcasm by typing a colon, then 'sarcasm', then another colon, producing this:

[Johnyawl]

11. Sometimes sarcasm is so obvious it doesn't need a tag

[KamaAina]

13. Not around here!

You might be surprised how many DUers are sarcasm-impaired.

[ncjustice80]

17. Well, that is a good point, actually.

I have to be somewhat leery of any hit piece on China, since it

1. Smacks faintly of xenophobia/rascism

2. Also may be an attempt to trumpet capitalism over socialism/communism.

[Dont call me Shirley]

24. Mafia Capitalism...

the bushes wet dream.

[RobinA]

31. Exactly

I just read an piece on Salon that argued that the "West" is responsible for all ills of mankind since the beginning of time. This article cannot be true about the peace-loving utopia that is China. Unless.....wait....it's somehow the "West"'s fault that China is having problems. Yes, that must be it. The "West" came along and ruined meditative shangri-la that was China.

[MattSh]

10. And the USA isn't?

Hey, look over there! The problem is China, not us!!!

[GreatGazoo]

14. yes, from Love Canal to fracking to the Kochs blocking solar power

the same shit goes on here. The specifics of the corruption are different, especially after Citizens United which legalized corruption.

[hunter]

16. Yep. Calls to shut down the car industry and fossil fuel power plants don't sell here.

They won't in China either.

Further complicated things here in the U.S.A. is the fantasy that wind and solar will somehow magically displace fossil fuels, and we'll all buy electric cars, and business will go on as usual. There's no evidence at all that wind and solar can support the high energy society we are accustomed too.

A solar and wind powered economy looks nothing like the economy we have now.

The problem is that the thing we now call "economic productivity" is a direct measure of the damage we are doing to the earth's natural environment and our own human spirit.

We should probably be paying people not to work, paying people to experiment with minimalist lifestyles with low environmental impacts, paying people to rework our cities and suburbs into walkable places where automobiles are unnecessary and undesirable, flooding communities with sex education and birth control.

But that goes against both American and Chinese "work ethics" and it goes against traditions where sex isn't openly talked about, especially with children.

[Baitball Blogger]

12. Sounds like Supply side economics leads to bankruptcy.

Who knew?

Maybe that was the Republican's big strategy. Maybe they intentionally baited China into following a failed economic policy, with the intention of bankrupting them.

They're geniuses!

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. What's the difference between building empty apartments and building bombs and warships?

I guess the difference is that we hide the produce of our make-work out in the desert.

[Rex]

18. Was just wondering about that, so millions of empty apartments vs

untold numbers of planes sitting out in nowhere land that cost billions and billions to make and maintain. All out rusting in the desert.

[FrodosPet]

21. Aren't they in the desert so they DON'T rust?

My understanding is that they are used either for spare parts or eventual recommission.

[onethatcares]

22. how many of those could be recommissioned?

or used for spare parts. Especially when new ones are being built day in day out.

That looks like a hell of a waste of money to me.

[GliderGuider]

23. Contents: One Global Apocalypse. Made in the USA; Assembled in China.

This long, sobering article gives the clearest description I've read so far of how China is destroying itself and taking the world along for the ride. As if we hadn't created enough of a planetary predicament on our own, China's irresponsible, intransigent industrialization is now resolutely tightening the global garrote.

Over the last decade I've become inured to the emotional impact of report after article after story detailing the shape, size and speed of the ecological tsunami that is now lapping over our knees. This story is the first one in a year or more than has broken through my carefully maintained defensive dike of detachment, and allowed the murky grey waters of despair to flood in.

You know how we doomers say it's always worse than we thought? It's even worse than that. Far, far worse.

[ErikJ]

25. Corruption is the #1 problem in the 3rd world AND the US, which has legalized it.

[KT2000]

26. One thing they have going

is they have copied all the plans for the products they make for American businesses.

As a young Chinese man said when he was tormented by having to deal with the corruption (he was raised in America for most of his childhood) - a fish that lives in dirty water learns to live in dirty water.

[Major Nikon]

27. When I visited China, Bejing and Singapore had construction cranes as far as you could see

...in all directions. I've never seen anything like it.