Reason Number 16 – Mt. Rubbish
Senin, 11 Agustus 2008
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‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 31
In the year 2000, China produced 100 million tons of rubbish. By 2004, this had risen to 190 million tons in its urban areas alone. By 2020, it is predicted that the nation will produce 400 million tons annually. The quantity, in millions of tons, cannot possibly be understood. So, to put it another way, in 2020 it is predicted that China will produce as much rubbish as all other countries in the world did in 1997. China’s mountain of waste must of course be added to the rest of the world’s rubbish, exacerbating its global impact.
While China’s richer cities can afford to build high-tech rubbish treatment plants, this is not an option for the many less wealthy cities in the nation. And even in the wealthier cities, there is strong opposition to paying rubbish disposal fees. In Shanghai, for example, a 2004 survey found that most people over 35 found it hard to accept the fees being levied for waste collection. Even those under 35 who were more accepting of fees only wanted to pay between 3 yuan (US$0.36) and 10 yuan (US$1.2) a month per household. The trouble is, the city government factors the price out at between 10 and 20 yuan a month for efficient waste collection.
ChinaBounder comments:
An odd concatenation of circumstances that the day after I should speculate about the murder of Chinese citizens overseas, a story breaks about two Chinese students in Newcastle upon Tyne, Zhou Qian and Yang Zhenxing, who were murdered. At least, those are the names Xinhua (which should be more reliable) gives them; other media, such as the Guardian, names them as ‘Xi Zhou’ and ‘Zhen Xing Yang.’
Reaction is, naturally, spreading through other Chinese students in the UK and would-be students still in China. Xinhua quotes one Xin Yang, studying in the same city, as saying that “he received some emails from China telling him that some of the students who are preparing to study in Newcastle have stopped their process, and are considering shifting to other cities or even countries for their overseas education.”
But I suspect that it will turn out that Zhou and Yang were murdered by another Chinese student.
I say this because reports indicate there was no sign of a break-in, and no sign of theft. Yang, say reports, was wearing nightclothes. This suggests (as police have said) that the unfortunate couple knew their killer.
And so I feel it is most likely the killer was a fellow Chinese citizen.
I say this because the Chinese student community is just that – Chinese. Chinese students overseas, overwhelmingly, do not mix in with locals. They hang out with other Chinese students – eat Chinese, speak Chinese, think Chinese. Indeed I saw exactly this today, when I met a couple of Chinese friends for lunch in a university town in the country where I now write. As I waited for my friends, various other Chinese students passed, all speaking Mandarin; and not one of them was accompanied by a person of a different nation. China all the way.
Indeed, the Daily Telegraph reports another student in Newcastle upon Tyne, ‘Ishaopeng Wu,’ as saying “I am very shocked, I cannot see if we should live in this area any more. It is a tough area, but convenient for the university. As Chinese students we do not have any affairs with other people. I want to know why this happened. Sometimes local children attack us, I don't know whether it is because we come from another country.”
This says it all. “We do not have any affairs with other people” – that’s exactly the attitude for most Chinese students. They are notably more insular than students from any other nation (except, perhaps, Japan, also a nation with seemingly little interest in interacting with other cultures).
But the rest of what Mr. Wu says is equally telling – “Sometimes local children attack us.” Xinhua, in their murder report, cover the same tack, quoting Xin Yang as saying “the security situation is ‘not satisfactory’ as quite a number of students have been harassed by local teenagers.”
I know this to be true; I have heard it time again from my Chinese friends overseas. While physical violence is rare, many have told me of other forms of abuse, from “Bloody Chinese, why don’t you go home?” to casual, belittling treatment in the regular course of the day.
Indeed, both the Guardian and the Telegraph show their casual attitude towards Chinese people by making such a hash of their names. ‘Ishaopeng Wu’ is, presumably, meant to be ‘Wu Shaopeng,’ and the Guardian (which, to be fair, is generally sensitive to Chinese culture) has made a mess of given names and family names.
The sad fact of it is that Britain remains a racist country. Most of the racism is of the casual, careless kind, devaluing or ignoring anyone who is not perceived as ‘British,’ but a certain slice of it is also straight-up abuse and even violence. And while the latter type of racism is worse, it is all deeply objectionable and morally repugnant.
Now I am not my country; I am not responsible for the actions of such fellow citizens, even as I condemn them wholly. To feel shame is the wrong emotion. I am not ashamed, because I am not guilty of it. To feel shame is to think with a group mind, and I reject that. I am not tarred with the racism of other Brits simply because I am a Brit. That is not how it works.
I say this because many commentators to this blog have whaled on Britain today for the sins of its past. Those sins are real, indeed; but the British people are not to blame. Their duty is to be aware of that past and know what it means. In the same way, today’s young Chinese are not to blame for the many crimes against humanity of the Communist Party, but they are to blame for being ignorant of it. And, likewise, today’s young Japanese are not to blame for the crimes of Japan in the past (even though many Chinese feel they are), but they are to blame for ignorance of it.
But the racism of many of my fellow Britons, be it overt or covert, is only part of the story.
Chinese students overseas are not, in fact, isolated because of racism. After all, their direct community, the student community, is explicitly anti-racist. Anyone who has spent any time on most any Western campus will know this – most (sure, not all) students pride themselves on their liberalism, their color-blindness. And the universities themselves take racism very seriously, and generally will be quick to punish students or staff guilty of it.
The problem is that Chinese students are simply not good at interacting with non-Chinese students. The reasons behind this are many and complex, a mix of education (that is, poor education that fails to teach social skills), pride, shyness, inflexibility, misunderstanding and much more besides. Culture plays a big role in it, on both sides of the gap – Western students misunderstand Chinese students and wrongly feel they are aloof and proud, and Chinese students simply do not understand the ways in which Western students socialize.
I’ll give a good example that crystallizes this. A close friend of mine, Zhou, from central China, has been studying in Europe for several years. Zhou enjoys life in Europe, and most of his friends are European. He does what all students going overseas should do – he integrates with the local community. Zhou’s friends are drawn from all over the world, though naturally most are European. And because he has this wide circle of non-Chinese friends, the Chinese students on his current campus look down on him. They think he is a snob. It’s a bizarre reaction.
This same friend told me recently that he was studying in his room one evening when there was a knock on the door, and he opened it to find a Chinese person outside. This person explained he’d recently arrived on campus and he had gone from door to door looking at names. And when he found a name that he recognized as Chinese (that is, Zhou’s name), he knocked on the door. He assumed that Zhou would be his friend merely by virtue of their shared Chineseness. Now if this chap had been smuggled into Europe as an illegal worker, alone, afraid, I could understand it. Yet he was highly educated, fluent in English and perfectly capable of integrating in the wider community. But, no; he chose to seek out Chineseness.
And that is why, so often, the Chinese community overseas remains isolated. Chinese people take their Chineseness with them, wherever they go, and seldom look beyond it, seldom add to it.
And that is also why, even though I fully accept Chinese students face a tough time studying in the West, this murder in Newcastle upon Tyne will most likely have been committed by a fellow Chinese student. And the motive will have been love or money.
An odd concatenation of circumstances that the day after I should speculate about the murder of Chinese citizens overseas, a story breaks about two Chinese students in Newcastle upon Tyne, Zhou Qian and Yang Zhenxing, who were murdered. At least, those are the names Xinhua (which should be more reliable) gives them; other media, such as the Guardian, names them as ‘Xi Zhou’ and ‘Zhen Xing Yang.’
Reaction is, naturally, spreading through other Chinese students in the UK and would-be students still in China. Xinhua quotes one Xin Yang, studying in the same city, as saying that “he received some emails from China telling him that some of the students who are preparing to study in Newcastle have stopped their process, and are considering shifting to other cities or even countries for their overseas education.”
But I suspect that it will turn out that Zhou and Yang were murdered by another Chinese student.
I say this because reports indicate there was no sign of a break-in, and no sign of theft. Yang, say reports, was wearing nightclothes. This suggests (as police have said) that the unfortunate couple knew their killer.
And so I feel it is most likely the killer was a fellow Chinese citizen.
I say this because the Chinese student community is just that – Chinese. Chinese students overseas, overwhelmingly, do not mix in with locals. They hang out with other Chinese students – eat Chinese, speak Chinese, think Chinese. Indeed I saw exactly this today, when I met a couple of Chinese friends for lunch in a university town in the country where I now write. As I waited for my friends, various other Chinese students passed, all speaking Mandarin; and not one of them was accompanied by a person of a different nation. China all the way.
Indeed, the Daily Telegraph reports another student in Newcastle upon Tyne, ‘Ishaopeng Wu,’ as saying “I am very shocked, I cannot see if we should live in this area any more. It is a tough area, but convenient for the university. As Chinese students we do not have any affairs with other people. I want to know why this happened. Sometimes local children attack us, I don't know whether it is because we come from another country.”
This says it all. “We do not have any affairs with other people” – that’s exactly the attitude for most Chinese students. They are notably more insular than students from any other nation (except, perhaps, Japan, also a nation with seemingly little interest in interacting with other cultures).
But the rest of what Mr. Wu says is equally telling – “Sometimes local children attack us.” Xinhua, in their murder report, cover the same tack, quoting Xin Yang as saying “the security situation is ‘not satisfactory’ as quite a number of students have been harassed by local teenagers.”
I know this to be true; I have heard it time again from my Chinese friends overseas. While physical violence is rare, many have told me of other forms of abuse, from “Bloody Chinese, why don’t you go home?” to casual, belittling treatment in the regular course of the day.
Indeed, both the Guardian and the Telegraph show their casual attitude towards Chinese people by making such a hash of their names. ‘Ishaopeng Wu’ is, presumably, meant to be ‘Wu Shaopeng,’ and the Guardian (which, to be fair, is generally sensitive to Chinese culture) has made a mess of given names and family names.
The sad fact of it is that Britain remains a racist country. Most of the racism is of the casual, careless kind, devaluing or ignoring anyone who is not perceived as ‘British,’ but a certain slice of it is also straight-up abuse and even violence. And while the latter type of racism is worse, it is all deeply objectionable and morally repugnant.
Now I am not my country; I am not responsible for the actions of such fellow citizens, even as I condemn them wholly. To feel shame is the wrong emotion. I am not ashamed, because I am not guilty of it. To feel shame is to think with a group mind, and I reject that. I am not tarred with the racism of other Brits simply because I am a Brit. That is not how it works.
I say this because many commentators to this blog have whaled on Britain today for the sins of its past. Those sins are real, indeed; but the British people are not to blame. Their duty is to be aware of that past and know what it means. In the same way, today’s young Chinese are not to blame for the many crimes against humanity of the Communist Party, but they are to blame for being ignorant of it. And, likewise, today’s young Japanese are not to blame for the crimes of Japan in the past (even though many Chinese feel they are), but they are to blame for ignorance of it.
But the racism of many of my fellow Britons, be it overt or covert, is only part of the story.
Chinese students overseas are not, in fact, isolated because of racism. After all, their direct community, the student community, is explicitly anti-racist. Anyone who has spent any time on most any Western campus will know this – most (sure, not all) students pride themselves on their liberalism, their color-blindness. And the universities themselves take racism very seriously, and generally will be quick to punish students or staff guilty of it.
The problem is that Chinese students are simply not good at interacting with non-Chinese students. The reasons behind this are many and complex, a mix of education (that is, poor education that fails to teach social skills), pride, shyness, inflexibility, misunderstanding and much more besides. Culture plays a big role in it, on both sides of the gap – Western students misunderstand Chinese students and wrongly feel they are aloof and proud, and Chinese students simply do not understand the ways in which Western students socialize.
I’ll give a good example that crystallizes this. A close friend of mine, Zhou, from central China, has been studying in Europe for several years. Zhou enjoys life in Europe, and most of his friends are European. He does what all students going overseas should do – he integrates with the local community. Zhou’s friends are drawn from all over the world, though naturally most are European. And because he has this wide circle of non-Chinese friends, the Chinese students on his current campus look down on him. They think he is a snob. It’s a bizarre reaction.
This same friend told me recently that he was studying in his room one evening when there was a knock on the door, and he opened it to find a Chinese person outside. This person explained he’d recently arrived on campus and he had gone from door to door looking at names. And when he found a name that he recognized as Chinese (that is, Zhou’s name), he knocked on the door. He assumed that Zhou would be his friend merely by virtue of their shared Chineseness. Now if this chap had been smuggled into Europe as an illegal worker, alone, afraid, I could understand it. Yet he was highly educated, fluent in English and perfectly capable of integrating in the wider community. But, no; he chose to seek out Chineseness.
And that is why, so often, the Chinese community overseas remains isolated. Chinese people take their Chineseness with them, wherever they go, and seldom look beyond it, seldom add to it.
And that is also why, even though I fully accept Chinese students face a tough time studying in the West, this murder in Newcastle upon Tyne will most likely have been committed by a fellow Chinese student. And the motive will have been love or money.
‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 32
"Today, China has around ten million junk collectors, who are, in truth, the only ‘green’ recyclers in the nation. They traverse the streets of China’s cities, often on tricycles ringing handbells. They collect bottles, glass, paper, cardboard, pots and pans, old electrical goods, clothing – in short, anything that has even the smallest cash value based on its recyclability. They are, in effect, recycling ‘road warriors.’
In May 2007 a new law came into force. The Regulation on Recycling Resources stipulated 'that scrap collectors should not only obtain a business license, but also register with their local commerce bureaus.' The reason these millions of people work as junk collectors is, of course, that they have only received the most basic (if any) education. Most of them are among the poorest levels of society. How can such disadvantaged people as these recycling road warriors be expected to enter into and negotiate the complex labyrinth of Chinese bureaucracy?
'If they’re driven out of business by strict enforcement of the regulation many scrap collectors would be left with nothing to do as most are from the countryside and have had little education or skills training' noted media. Collecting recyclable material on the roads and streets of China is not a career choice. It is, however, a logical choice brought about by desperation. The Chinese government, by restricting them, is pushing them down rather than helping them up, seemingly not realizing that the road warriors are the first soldiers of the Green Army."
So China faked the 'footprint fireworks' in the Olympic opening ceremony. Don't forget China's equally fake claims to 'own' Tibet and Xinjiang. 'T' and 'X' for those occupied nations, whenever you get the chance!
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Judul: Reason Number 16 – Mt. Rubbish
Ditulis oleh Unknown
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