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 Inside Look at China |
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December 2007 Book Review
Inside Look at China China Road
A Journey Into the Future of a Rising Power Reviewed by Helen Brandt
When we were kids, neighbors were the people across the street. Now we are adjusting to the reality that our neighbors are on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Rob Gifford takes us on a 3,000-mile journey by bus, truck and taxi along Route 312 westward from Shanghai across the Gobi Desert to China’s border with Kazakhstan. Gifford, fluent in Mandarin, strikes up casual conversations along the way with truck drivers, farmers and factory workers. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of China’s average citizen. Gifford intersperses his conversations with interesting descriptions of Chinese history and culture. The lives of Han Chinese and ethnic minorities are dramatically changing as the government pushes for economic development in remote areas. And millions of poor rural people migrate to the cities to work in factories of the fourth largest economy in the world. China is constructing its western regions in ways similar to the United States did a hundred years ago when it was opening up our West. New buildings are going up, modern four-lane roads are being built. Chinese Amway salesmen turn up in Gobi desert towns. The government has banned logging in China so it obtains needed lumber from forests in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. Environmental Impacts
Gifford gives us a look at what is going on beneath the pall of smog in China, whose pollution from coal-burning power plants periodically arrives in Washington state. China produces around 35 percent of the world’s coal. And it is second only to the U.S. in consumption of petroleum products. The made-in-China label on haze over North America is partly due to increased production of consumer goods ranging from patio furniture to CDs to toys. But it also is a result of deforestation, over-grazing and intensive cultivation of fragile soils. Researchers at universities on both sides of the Pacific have been tracking the haze for a number of years along its 6,000-mile journey, In one severe dust storm in spring 1998, particle pollution levels in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia soared. In Seattle, air quality officials could not identify a local source of the pollution, but measurements showed that 75 percent of it came from China. (See http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/ITCT/2k2/news.shtml.) Dust storms in the Gobi Desert can drive tons of dust particles high into the atmosphere. Online satellite images by the United States Geological Survey in November 2006 showed dust from the Gobi Desert reaching the western United States. The desert is expanding, moving toward Minqin, a town of 300,000 in the south, at the rate of 10 to 15 feet each year. Pollution and degradation of natural resources in China is extreme. In north China the water table is dropping by an average of seven feet per year. The underground aquifers are being drained to supply water to the cities. The Yellow River, the world’s fourth longest river, does not reach the province it is supposed to pass through to reach the sea. The river is so overexploited in its upper reaches that no water is left. On a bus in western China, Gifford meets a pleasant middle-aged grandmother who works as a doctor and performs eighth-month abortions because “China has too many people.” China’s Future
The stability of China’s government and Communist Party are uncertain because economic progress could undermine the party’s control. On the other hand, the historic tradition of autocratic rule, could reassert itself. But the populace, grown accustomed to more opportunity and freedoms, may be reluctant to return to historic forms of governance. Citizens worldwide are connected to China’s people in practical, inescapable and multiple ways. If China continues its economic growth, worldwide environmental effects will multiply. If it implodes, the world economy, dependent on cheap goods, will decline. Coming toward the end of reading this book, I slowed down, savoring the last few chapters, not wanting the journey to end. Gifford gives us an invaluable, fascinating portrait of our western neighbor. § |