> Nobody held a gun to their collective heads and said "You must produce cheap goods for western countries, and you must power your economy in the cheapest and

> Nobody held a gun to their collective heads and said "You must produce cheap goods for western countries, and you must power your economy in the cheapest and most polluting way possible." No, but experience has shown that that is the surest path to economic development - probably the only viable path for a country the size of China. A small city state might be able to develop by establishing itself as a financial or shipping hub, but for a giant country of 1.4 billion people to go from utter poverty to wealth, there's a good argument that it first has to turn itself into the world's factory.