First of all, if the Communist Chinese dictators decide that they want to pollute and destroy their country, then fine.  I know Chinese citizens don't have a voice, can't vote, can't protest, and can't do anything to stop them.  But I guess that's the consequences of placing dictators in power.

That being said, great, spread your filthy pollution all over China.  Knock yourself out.  Turn you country into a desert.  Spawn new disease. 

However, there's no reason that Korea and Japan should be paying the price for Chinese pollution.  As the satellite images clearly demonstrate, the Chinese are now polluting other countries.  What measures have the dictators taken to prevent that?  Right, nothing.

China is polluted not because it's developing - it's polluted because it's leaders allow it to be.

During the cultural revolution, the Communist dictators murdered millions of Chinese people.  They haven't changed a bit.  They don't have the citizenry's best interest at heart.  Just like any other military dictatorship, the Communists exist to preserve their own power by repressing the political freedoms of the people.  The pollution is simply a natural consequence of such power.

The "development" is slow.  For the first in 2007, the government of China participated in statistical findings by the World Bank.  The estimates of the Chinese economy have been greatly exaggerated.  When the World Bank benchmarked the Chinese economy against other nations according to its survey, the Chinese economy had to be reduced by 40% from previous estimates.  It remains at below 10% of the USA's per capita GDP.  The per capita income in China is $2,060 -- placing it in between the economic powerhouses of Swaziland and Angola.  Congratulations on climbing above Angola.  The US, by comparison, is right at $45,000.  Twenty times richer.

Feel free to "develop" all you want.  Beijing had 56 blue-sky days -- down from 100 two years before.  It's getting worse.  And now you're polluting other countries too.

Why does Japan have to suffer from the stench of Chinese pollution?  Why do they have to pay that price?  If you're happy with sandstorms and turning your country into a desert, go for it.  Don't make that choice for other countries.  Oh wait, it's a Communist regime.  They don't give a damn.

They would also have pollution with or without the party.  The question is unrelated to whether or not they are a democracy.  Development involves pollution, sadly.

Have any of you been to India? India is a democracy yet has equally as bad pollution, and its democracy has also done the square root of fanny adams for the many millions of indians trapped in hideous shanty towns, which even poor chinese would be aghast at.

This is false.  It really doesn't.  Studies have shown that it is the economic policy of the Chinese dictators that they lower environmental standards to encourage unsafe, unhealth manufacturing.  Thus, the Chinese produce sub-standard quality goods that poison the rest of the world.  You are mistaken to assume that the level of Chinese pollution and filth is a normal result of industrialization.  It is not.  It is the result of poor planning by the central government bureaucrats.


After being in China, there's no hovel, shack, mudhouse, or cave that make poor Chinese aghast.  They're pretty much at the bottom.

Read a newspaper.  Not a censored one like they have in China.  Not on the internet where the Chinese central government filters it.   Open your eyes.  The Chinese are brutal, thuggish dictators that repress their people into blind submission.  The only reason the Chinese people take it is because whenever they rise up against the government, such as at Tianament, they slaughtered by the hundreds or thousands.

But right, that's ok.  It's just democracy protestors.  They don't deserve to live.  Neither do the Uighurs, the Tibetans, or anyone else that challenges the governments chokehold on the populations.  They should all be summarily executed.

Students who dared to speak out...

I don't read the Chinese papers, only western news sites.  And my own eyes, my own life, in China.  I don't see people getting machine-gunned.

March 2006 - hundreds of Uighurs gunned down, indiscriminately.  Open your eyes.

You're right - it's about the same economically.  Probably worse in China by a measure because of the Communist economic regimes which chokes out competition.  The level of corruption, disease, poverty and pollution between China and third-world Africa is probably about the same.

I didn't say they had a choice. I just pointed out the reason.
Sure they have to develop and feed their ever-growing population.
India is in the same mess: over one billion of poors and counting...

It takes huge industrial zones built on the spot with minimal requirement just to have power for the machine, fuel for the ovens and a roof to protect the goods (not the workers) from rain.
Wether it's India, China or any other type of regime, a booming, unstopable demographic will always cause issues such as pollution, lack of drinkable water, lack of medical equipement, lack of everything except $2/day workers.

But the Chinese governement has no excuse with the western companies who have the money to afford for cleaner facilities.
Because having a lot of polluting factories will cost them more than they gain in the long/mid term and poeple when they will be sick or disabled due to polution will fall back into poverty and their kids will still play in the mud.

And if their population keep on growing and doesn't decrease, in 20 years they will be 2 billions, and still at the same stage as of today, with the same problems. Had third world countries stop breeding 20 years ago, they would far better off now.
Asia can't add the equivalent of the population of europe every 5 years and expect european living standards at the same time.