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While China's pollution is among the worst you can get, the country does have the advantage of being run like a corporation, and when they decide to clean it up

While China's pollution is among the worst you can get, the country does have the advantage of being run like a corporation, and when they decide to clean it up, they will do it very quickly. I guess, I hope, that within 30 years, many parts of China that are currently "horribly polluted" will be as clean, or cleaner, than cities in "the already developed places" such as Europe or N. America which themselves had horrible pollution at one time.

illumen 12y ago
It's run like a meritocracy, not like a popularity contest. The corporations are not in control there, the people are.
- pjc50 12y ago
  Good morning, China state propaganda commentator! It's a country that does not have free elections or free media. The "people" are not in control. The self-appointed people's representatives are, exercising power through state-owned businesses as well as direct legislation.
  - illumen 12y ago
    Good afternoon NSA plant (yes, this is just as ridiculous as your assertion). Does the USA have free elections, and free media? I thought most people didn't vote and they only had two choices. Lawyer man number one who went to Harvard, or lawyer man number two who went to Harvard. I thought the corporations owned most of the media in the USA? The USA ranks very low on freedom of the press rankings. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'd be very interested if you knew how their society worked, or if you had visited the country? If you don't then you are ignorant. But, I'd love to hear your opinion anyway (assuming you aren't locked up without a fair trial), since that is the American way. A country with 45% illiterate people sure does have a lot of loud opinions. Sure - it's a society with many(many) issues, but it does have elections. With more people voting in them than in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_People%27s_Re...
    - lispm 12y ago
      The typical communist fake voting system.
    - xiaq 12y ago
      Come on. Use common sense. Ask people around you whether they consider their government as a democracy. And Wikipedia can range from inaccurate to outright wrong about China. Use it as an academic reference and only believe what you actually see when it comes to the real-word stuff. It's normal for China to have problems, including problems with elections. But denying the existence of problems is hardly a good way to fix it.
    - smt88 12y ago
      This is so utterly, laughably wrong, it almost seems pointless to respond. No one outside of China sincerely believes China is a democracy[1]. And implying that US media is anywhere near as restricted as China's media is utter nonsense[2]. You might as well be trying to tell us the sky is made of marshmallows. 1. https://www.google.com/search?q=is+china+a+democracy https://www.google.com/search?q=is+china+a+democracy 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index#Rankings_and_scores_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index#Rankings_an...
    - Igglyboo 12y ago
      Does the USA have a national firewall that blocks access to dissenting opinions?
    - konmik 12y ago
      [offtopic] Yep, lawyers is USA is a real problem. Seriously, I don't get why somebody in USA believe that they have a choice to elect a president. Just think: if elections would be free how many candidates would they really get? Every second person would like to be a president! :D They elect somebody who scream aloud and has a lots of connections, but they will never elect somebody who is smart and have good political skills. So there is no freedom of choice, just a stupid illusion like Santa or something. I don't think that we have fair elections on this planet at all. Sorry, but communists are the same shit - they do not give you real choice, I'm from ex-communist country, I know that for sure. How they can agree to lose power?
wanderingstan 12y ago
Why would it be in a corporation's best interest to reduce pollution levels below that of the west, or any further than nevessary? I agree that the top down control structure means that change can come fast, but I don't see how it means the change would go beyond the minimum. Environmental cleanup is something desired more for people's quality of life, so it seems that long-term improvement would be more likely with democratic pressure than too-down command and control.
dheera 12y ago
Personally I think the pollution in China is one of the biggest finger-pointing games in history. The main reason for the pollution in China, and Asia in general, is, above all things, consumer demand. In other words, it's us as a world population, taking up consumerism so fast, from wasting energy at home to rampant manufacturing of useless consumer products (for the whole world, which demands them!) at under-market prices, to meat production, to added to a a local increase in car-centric culture in China built on an unsustainable fuel source. While all this was fine for the USA to some degree, which, mind you, is driven on 39% coal and 67% fossil fuels, this model of energy production simply does not scale and that's why it's failing in Asia. Every time you take a car over public transit in Beijing, every time you leave an electronic device or light on, you are contributing to the pollution problem. Which is, unfortunately, pretty much everyone nowadays. As much finger pointing happens at the Chinese government, in my opinion the true solution lies with scientists and engineers, not politicians. We need to completely re-visit even the most basic aspects of how we design cities, how we achieve mobility, how we live, work, and everything else, from the ground up. This is the first time the world has had 7 billion people, so history will not teach us how to cope with high population densities. Some kind of game-changing, modernized thinking on the most basic levels of civilization needs to happen. This isn't to say the government is completely absolved of fault. However, their job isn't to "fix" the pollution issue -- what do you expect them to do? Cut everyone's electricity? Force everyone to use only Tesla cars overnight? Cut all manufacturing exports to USA? Doing any of these would fix a good chunk of the pollution issue, but will cause quite a lot of upheaval and unrest. Rather, their job and focus should be in empowering those scientists and entrepreneurs with funding, space, tools, and freedom to come up with fixes that are sustainable in both environmental and business senses of the word.
- khepin 12y ago
  Well engineers and scientists already have solutions that are sadly not already put in place in China. A district heating company from the EU I worked for in China replaced 19 coal plants with a single one in a smaller city in the north of China. So good engineering and management already exist for that, but the government owns all the existing plants and you can't replace them without their "OK". Same goes for cars. Chinese manufactured cars are not the most energy efficient, but mostly, there's lot of very old poorly made cars. Not the same very old as you'd get in other countries. Pretty horrible crap. The type of oil used there for cars is also decided by government standards. The current one is "not great".
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
> the country does have the advantage of being run like a corporation This thinking has been used to "justify" many totalitarian regimes and is almost universally wrong (trans on time, etc). It turns out that establishing property rights, workers rights, class mobility, democratic institutions where people can rightfully petition their government, etc gets results. For example, in the West we had things like the EPA and other agencies so we didn't have this problem. Why does your ultra-efficient Chinese "corporation" not have these things yet? They're literally decades late and this small token act (Just shutting down plants literally in the city limits) looks more like the corrupt face-saving moves that define the Chinese communist party. Not to mention, that a lot of top-down decrees in China look good on paper, but end up being implemented by corrupt local governments. Yes, its impressive the CCP can say "Built a city here by next year," but its done with massive building code violations, cheap concrete, and scary safety and pollution violations. A lot of these cities are falling apart only a few years after being built or are just one moderate earthquake away from disaster.
seanmcdirmid 12y ago
The government isn't really that efficient or centralized. The top bosses in Beijing say X, and that gets filtered down and translated through 10-20 Confucian layers of beaurcracy, at the bottom, the emperor is far away, as they say. And corruption...if everyone breaks the law, you are at a disadvantage if you don't also, and will simply go out business. China will have to improve their governance significantly if eg have any chance of cleanup the air. Xi jinping is treating corruption and pollution as two sides of the same coin at least. LA in the 70s is nowhere near as bad as hebei/Beijing is today. Maybe London in the early 50s....it's hard to say.
- khepin 12y ago
  London in the 50's was indeed in a situation similar to Beijing today. Worse at times.
- soperj 12y ago
  that sounds like a lot of corporations really.
- BurningFrog 12y ago
  The fact that the top bosses do breathe the Beijing air is the biggest reason to be confident it will be cleaned up.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    They send their families to Europe and the US, becoming "naked officials." I doubt many of them spend much time in Beijing these days; they all have retreats where the air is clean, as well as very good air filters when they are Beijing (official use was used as an advertising point until the CCP shut that down).
analyst74 12y ago
I don't know how you concluded top-down management is effective from this piece. The decision was clearly driven by public pressure, and efficiency of execution is still to be seen.
rodgerd 12y ago
> have the advantage of being run like a corporation, and when they decide to clean it up, they will do it very quickly You've never worked for a large corporation, have you?

illumen 12y ago

It's run like a meritocracy, not like a popularity contest. The corporations are not in control there, the people are.

pjc50 12y ago
Good morning, China state propaganda commentator! It's a country that does not have free elections or free media. The "people" are not in control. The self-appointed people's representatives are, exercising power through state-owned businesses as well as direct legislation.
- illumen 12y ago
  Good afternoon NSA plant (yes, this is just as ridiculous as your assertion). Does the USA have free elections, and free media? I thought most people didn't vote and they only had two choices. Lawyer man number one who went to Harvard, or lawyer man number two who went to Harvard. I thought the corporations owned most of the media in the USA? The USA ranks very low on freedom of the press rankings. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'd be very interested if you knew how their society worked, or if you had visited the country? If you don't then you are ignorant. But, I'd love to hear your opinion anyway (assuming you aren't locked up without a fair trial), since that is the American way. A country with 45% illiterate people sure does have a lot of loud opinions. Sure - it's a society with many(many) issues, but it does have elections. With more people voting in them than in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_People%27s_Re...
  - lispm 12y ago
    The typical communist fake voting system.
  - xiaq 12y ago
    Come on. Use common sense. Ask people around you whether they consider their government as a democracy. And Wikipedia can range from inaccurate to outright wrong about China. Use it as an academic reference and only believe what you actually see when it comes to the real-word stuff. It's normal for China to have problems, including problems with elections. But denying the existence of problems is hardly a good way to fix it.
  - smt88 12y ago
    This is so utterly, laughably wrong, it almost seems pointless to respond. No one outside of China sincerely believes China is a democracy[1]. And implying that US media is anywhere near as restricted as China's media is utter nonsense[2]. You might as well be trying to tell us the sky is made of marshmallows. 1. https://www.google.com/search?q=is+china+a+democracy https://www.google.com/search?q=is+china+a+democracy 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index#Rankings_and_scores_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index#Rankings_an...
  - Igglyboo 12y ago
    Does the USA have a national firewall that blocks access to dissenting opinions?
  - konmik 12y ago
    [offtopic] Yep, lawyers is USA is a real problem. Seriously, I don't get why somebody in USA believe that they have a choice to elect a president. Just think: if elections would be free how many candidates would they really get? Every second person would like to be a president! :D They elect somebody who scream aloud and has a lots of connections, but they will never elect somebody who is smart and have good political skills. So there is no freedom of choice, just a stupid illusion like Santa or something. I don't think that we have fair elections on this planet at all. Sorry, but communists are the same shit - they do not give you real choice, I'm from ex-communist country, I know that for sure. How they can agree to lose power?

wanderingstan 12y ago

Why would it be in a corporation's best interest to reduce pollution levels below that of the west, or any further than nevessary? I agree that the top down control structure means that change can come fast, but I don't see how it means the change would go beyond the minimum. Environmental cleanup is something desired more for people's quality of life, so it seems that long-term improvement would be more likely with democratic pressure than too-down command and control.

dheera 12y ago

Personally I think the pollution in China is one of the biggest finger-pointing games in history. The main reason for the pollution in China, and Asia in general, is, above all things, consumer demand. In other words, it's us as a world population, taking up consumerism so fast, from wasting energy at home to rampant manufacturing of useless consumer products (for the whole world, which demands them!) at under-market prices, to meat production, to added to a a local increase in car-centric culture in China built on an unsustainable fuel source. While all this was fine for the USA to some degree, which, mind you, is driven on 39% coal and 67% fossil fuels, this model of energy production simply does not scale and that's why it's failing in Asia. Every time you take a car over public transit in Beijing, every time you leave an electronic device or light on, you are contributing to the pollution problem. Which is, unfortunately, pretty much everyone nowadays. As much finger pointing happens at the Chinese government, in my opinion the true solution lies with scientists and engineers, not politicians. We need to completely re-visit even the most basic aspects of how we design cities, how we achieve mobility, how we live, work, and everything else, from the ground up. This is the first time the world has had 7 billion people, so history will not teach us how to cope with high population densities. Some kind of game-changing, modernized thinking on the most basic levels of civilization needs to happen. This isn't to say the government is completely absolved of fault. However, their job isn't to "fix" the pollution issue -- what do you expect them to do? Cut everyone's electricity? Force everyone to use only Tesla cars overnight? Cut all manufacturing exports to USA? Doing any of these would fix a good chunk of the pollution issue, but will cause quite a lot of upheaval and unrest. Rather, their job and focus should be in empowering those scientists and entrepreneurs with funding, space, tools, and freedom to come up with fixes that are sustainable in both environmental and business senses of the word.

khepin 12y ago
Well engineers and scientists already have solutions that are sadly not already put in place in China. A district heating company from the EU I worked for in China replaced 19 coal plants with a single one in a smaller city in the north of China. So good engineering and management already exist for that, but the government owns all the existing plants and you can't replace them without their "OK". Same goes for cars. Chinese manufactured cars are not the most energy efficient, but mostly, there's lot of very old poorly made cars. Not the same very old as you'd get in other countries. Pretty horrible crap. The type of oil used there for cars is also decided by government standards. The current one is "not great".

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

> the country does have the advantage of being run like a corporation This thinking has been used to "justify" many totalitarian regimes and is almost universally wrong (trans on time, etc). It turns out that establishing property rights, workers rights, class mobility, democratic institutions where people can rightfully petition their government, etc gets results. For example, in the West we had things like the EPA and other agencies so we didn't have this problem. Why does your ultra-efficient Chinese "corporation" not have these things yet? They're literally decades late and this small token act (Just shutting down plants literally in the city limits) looks more like the corrupt face-saving moves that define the Chinese communist party. Not to mention, that a lot of top-down decrees in China look good on paper, but end up being implemented by corrupt local governments. Yes, its impressive the CCP can say "Built a city here by next year," but its done with massive building code violations, cheap concrete, and scary safety and pollution violations. A lot of these cities are falling apart only a few years after being built or are just one moderate earthquake away from disaster.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago

The government isn't really that efficient or centralized. The top bosses in Beijing say X, and that gets filtered down and translated through 10-20 Confucian layers of beaurcracy, at the bottom, the emperor is far away, as they say. And corruption...if everyone breaks the law, you are at a disadvantage if you don't also, and will simply go out business. China will have to improve their governance significantly if eg have any chance of cleanup the air. Xi jinping is treating corruption and pollution as two sides of the same coin at least. LA in the 70s is nowhere near as bad as hebei/Beijing is today. Maybe London in the early 50s....it's hard to say.

khepin 12y ago
London in the 50's was indeed in a situation similar to Beijing today. Worse at times.
soperj 12y ago
that sounds like a lot of corporations really.
BurningFrog 12y ago
The fact that the top bosses do breathe the Beijing air is the biggest reason to be confident it will be cleaned up.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  They send their families to Europe and the US, becoming "naked officials." I doubt many of them spend much time in Beijing these days; they all have retreats where the air is clean, as well as very good air filters when they are Beijing (official use was used as an advertising point until the CCP shut that down).

analyst74 12y ago

I don't know how you concluded top-down management is effective from this piece. The decision was clearly driven by public pressure, and efficiency of execution is still to be seen.

rodgerd 12y ago

> have the advantage of being run like a corporation, and when they decide to clean it up, they will do it very quickly You've never worked for a large corporation, have you?