CHINA ON BRINK

China on the Brink Dear All, http://www.global-politics.co.uk/issue9/felipe2/ A very interesting article indeed.Things are not that hunky dory in China. With unrest in a number of provinces,China is also facing an ecological and environment disaster of epic proportions, which China may find it extremely difficult, if not impossible to overcome. We in India have many lessons to learn from China's environmental mistakes, by not blindly following China's methods of development, instead by pausing and giving the importance and attention that the environment deserves. Some important and relevant extracts from the article are reproduced below. Extract-.1."As air quality lowers and water becomes scarcer, many important environmental and political figures, including Pan Yue, Vice-Minister of the former Chinese State Environmental Protection Administration (now the Ministry of Environmental Protection), have claimed that the resulting damage will decisively end China’s economic successes. 1 With its population of 1.3 billion, China has an extremely small amount of natural resources per capita, including arable land, forest cover, and freshwater, that are put under tremendous strain by a government seeking to improve the quality of life of its citizens. The problem is not that it is an undesirable goal, but that the resulting political decisions to attain this goal have dangerous short and long- term consequences." Extract.2.China’s experimentation with market forces should also be extended to help solve urgent environmental concerns, particularly those based around pollution or water use. A failure to address these issues comprehensively will lead to increasing socio-economic pressures that will eventually begin to affect China’s political structures for the worse. It may already be too late, and in a few years time a present socio-environmental crisis will turn into a catastrophe, and the CCP will truly be driving itself into a brick wall