This could amuse me, but it saddens me, of course. The reason this could almost amuse me is that I remember a conversation in 1982 in Taipei, soon after my firs

This could amuse me, but it saddens me, of course. The reason this could almost amuse me is that I remember a conversation in 1982 in Taipei, soon after my first visit to China, with a student from France. He too had just been to China, and he thought China was a wonderful place, "Because it has no air pollution." (Compared to 1982 Taiwan, yeah, the P.R.C. had very little pollution because it had very little industrial production. I have never been to France, so I don't know if he was also making a comparison to 1982 France by that comment.) I wish that China (and, for that matter, India) had made it a national development goal to grow in an environmentally friendly way. Once, we didn't know technologies for producing industrial output and raising prosperity without producing quite a bit of pollution along the way, but China (and, again, India) could have learned from the mistakes of other countries and the new technologies they developed to build up output without adding so much to pollution. Today, Taipei is remarkably clean. I was stunned in 2001, when I last lived there as a permanent resident, by a visitor from Ukraine who arrived in Taiwan after visiting Hong Kong. He commented that he liked Taiwan better than Hong Kong because it was cleaner. I was stunned by that comment because the last time I visited Hong Kong (before retrocession to China), no one would have said so. Hong Kong is downwind of China, and maybe is not as cleaned up anymore now that it is under Chinese rule. Taiwan under democratization has become very clean indeed (although it too is downwind of China). Politicial pluralization through a free press and free elections (an advantage India already has) and effective rule by law (an advantage India is developing) seem all over the world to help countries prosper in a more environmentally sustainable manner. I wish China well in developing democracy and rule by law, and in any event to enjoy clean air sooner rather than later.