Dear Friends,
image from shanghaiist.com
Today The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 60th birthday. It is a spectacular, comparing the moment Chairman Mao Zedong declared the birth of the PRC and how far China has come to achieve against the various odds.
Some people have tried to explain that “中国” is short-form for ”中华人民共和国 ”, which of course is utterly rubbish. “中国” has evolved over a few thousand years, geographically and culturally. It is also interesting to know that while there are 56 ethnic groups in China, non Han Chinese only make up about 8% of the total population. The Tibetan Government in exile in India is demanding a self-ruled area that will be 1/4 of China land area. That gives you some perspective on the dynamics between PRC and Dalai Lama.
By the way, I talked about Chinese calendar before. Please see posting Red Underwear & Your Birthday in Anno F.X. ?
So today, the PRC has completed one basic cycle of 60 years (一甲子, “yi zia-zi”) and threw a grand birthday party.
If you imagine the birth of a new government as that of a baby, then you can similarly conclude the behaviour of the government as per cosmic forces at play when it was formed. I leave it to you to conclude its characters.
Now a more serious issue, what’s one of the greatest challanges facing China today ?
We see China grabbing for natural resources globally, energy, minerals, soft commodities, you name it.
Actually, the MOST serious threat is CLEAN water in China.
For water is the basic elementsof life. About 60% of our body mass is water.
Now these are some hard facts :
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about 70% of Earth is covered by ocean,
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but about 98% of total water on Earth is sea-water, which is unsuitable for drinking,
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therefore only 2% of water to be shared by all living things on land, recycled over and over again.
Also think about the following questions/facts :
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how many times has the human population grown over the last 2 thousand years ?
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as society gets more affluent, everybody uses more water per day,
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as society gets more affluent, they consume more proteins. 100 tons of water produces about 1 ton of grain. How many tons of grain is needed to produce 1 ton of protein ? As China gets richer, its people will consume more proteins, indirectly means more water recycling.
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China is now the world’s factory, which uses a lot of water.
If you add up all above, then this 60th birnthday actually marks a huge chahllenge to the Chinese People in China.
The water system on Earth is a closed system, i.e., it gets recycled over and over again. We drink the water that has been recycled zillions of times over the billions of years. That’s why we are all inter-connected, through space and time and water is just one of the bridge.
Now the serious issue. The water system in China now is getting tougher to be recycled clean and fast enough for its people, the plants/vegetables, grains and all the food sources etc. You get the picture.
You can even safely say that China is becoming the filtering ground for poluted water, which is costly to clean up. The developed world “understands” this, buy cheap stuff from China and let China picks up the heavy bill of environmental issues, including the health of its people.
Will talk about water again in future.
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Filed under: All, Environment, Health
xy2,
The 中国was for the “center of the world”. The Chinese then and the Chinese today (including all the people in the world of Chinese descent) think that we are the center of the world! This is evidence in the language and culture of the Chinese people.
Now, here comes the part that my spouse likes to tell the people living in the Land of the Rising Sun and they get sort of miffed!
Korea is known as 朝鮮and Japan 日本.
Now, these names were probably GIVEN to these lands (probably no country yet at that time) by the Chinese, using “China as the central part of the world” perspective. That is also why Europe is known as 西洋 (from the perspective of China again).
Now, the names for Japan and Korea can only be given if you are naming the lands from China’s side, and it is not possible to name your own country 朝鮮(meaning land of morning freshness) and 日本(land of the rising sun).
When we tell the Japanese that the name Japan (pronounced Nippon or Nihon) is a name given to them by the Chinese, we usually get a rather puzzled look!
“about 98% of total water on Earth is sea-water, which is unsuitable for drinking, therefore only 2% of water to be shared by all living things on land, recycled over and over again.”
- I am not sure if that’s true. Actually, the best recycling technique on the water is the nature itself. I thought where all water (sea water included) exposed to heat/Sun evaporate and some clouds float to land hence probably only a small amount (2%?) ended up as non-salt water; other rains ended on sea. Ultimately part of land water flow to sea again. So, it isn’t really that only the 2% got recycled.
The living things can survive for so long with enough clean water as much more than 2% of the water got recycled by nature each time. Just probably 2% ended up not with the sea/ocean…
Ct,
You are correct that part of water cycle involved the sea, that’s been the case for millions of years.
What I am trying to say is that the human population has grown a lot and not evenly spread out, add to that we have a lot more factories than in the past.
You are in US so you probably do not have a direct feel of the seriousness of water problem in China.
There are 2 issues :
1. Area with insufficient water,
2. Area with enough water but not clean.
During Beijing Olympic people realised that the water in the pool is much cleanner than the water supply at home.
More serious but not obvious is the food chain, the water they use in agriculture, animal feed etc, it is all in the food chain.
As 60% of human body is water, its impact on health is immeasurable.
That’s one of the big price China is paying for progress and earning foreign exchange with export, it is really money earned with blood and sweat.
I got what you meant now. As China manufactures goods exported to the US, this indirectly exported the needed water to produce those goods as well. I can imagine that the manufacturers will probably add cost of materials from “raw materials” and “labors” but water (and its associated cleaning (=polutions) will be the last and most trivial cost that manufacturers will add to the price of finished goods.
There is always a price to pay for development.
China wants to join the “big boys”, the industralized nations.
Japan paid the price way back in the 60s and 70s. The courts are still fighting Minamata’s disease (mercury poisoning) etc.
This is part of the cycle of life. Europe paid the price earlier than Japan, and the grandparents and parents of today’s generation worked very hard and sacrificed. My European clients tell me that they no longer work hard, they work for what is enough, because taxes are very high. I see a similar trend among the Japanese, the older generation worked very hard after the war and to rebuild the nation, but now the younger ones think they have a birthright and that the good times will last forever.
A similar cycle is probably happening in China, this generation went though really hard times just 20 years ago, hard labor, lack of food and material things. Then all of a sudden, they are all available, the price is to work 20 hours a day and use up all our resources. Money is the name of the game.