Now everything I read in the papers or online is about Oil and Global Warming... and of course in all of them mentions somewhere that CHINA is a big contributor to this excessive production of CO2 in the air. Even this random article I thought was going to be about chinese modern marriage or something is not about that but especially regarding the situation of lack of environmental/foreign affair/political concerns in the young chinese generation. I would have been one of his students paying him for private english lessons if I was not fortunate enough to immigrate to america.
The perception of the chinese youth is based on media, movies, television that shows Las Vegas, New York City, Chicago... yet they don't see or really care to hear about the polygamy reservation in the middle of the mid-west! They don't hear about the hooker life in Vegas, they don't hear about the smell of chemical pollution in Port Elizabeth, NJ when you pass through it on I-95. To be chinese and not to be there for the last decade makes my awareness of changes in china much more acute than if I was still that upper-middle class school girl in the bustling city of Beijing.
I too make the mistake of having been brainwashed in my earlier childhood years to hate the Japanese regardless if they were even born in Japan. I too am guilty of not caring about politics, china's foreign affairs, who the new leader is, who is the new president? (Not trying to make a pun here) but it is certain something I have not paid much attention to, also attributing to this are my parent's lack of interest in such affairs and my whole family being very hands-on technical people. I sometimes still can't bring myself to read the chinese newspapers online, at least the english versions. Like me, the young chinese generation needs to become AWARE of the environmental threats and results if nothing is done to stop more gigantic non-eco-friendly coal factories, or new pollutant sources that the chinese government is sanctioning just so that our economic GDP is reaching its annual 10% quota.
It is definitely hard being overseas and hearing all the rumor going around about the chinese communistic way of governing a nation that has 25% of the planet's population. The people will make a difference once information can be passed along to them. Just a recent example, when the 7.8 degree earthquake hit ChengDu, how many chinese civilians dropped whatever they were doing, left whoever was precious to them at home and gave themselves to saving other people underneath the rubbles of the quake's aftermath. Today on CCTV-4 it showed an award and recognition ceremony in which the government mentioned many unsung heroes who have given their own lives to saving the victims of this, literally, earth shattering disaster. Many of them were as young as new soldiers only in their early 20's. The military leaders and reporters gave speeches that left the audience in tears, even the soldiers in their full uniforms began sobbing for the dead, the survivors, the people who've lost everything (family, shelter, life... ).
How, if LIFE can be saved after a disaster like this, then why can't the chinese people work together to better the LIFE of humanity? The factories and coal-burning power plants are emitting into the atmosphere carbon dioxide resulting in the highest levels ever recorded in 800,000 years. This increase in greenhouse gases around the globe is causing the atmosphere to trap in more heat, in turn this rise in almost 3/4 of a degree in average temperature just in this past few decades, has caused the melting of polar ice caps. Not only this, the pollution from chinese factories, power plants, car exhaust, among a million other factors is causing the desertification of inner mongolian grasslands to turn into dust and sand.
The desert outside of northwest skirts of Beijing has been expanding towards the city and is now only 71km or 150 miles from the city border. All this dust, sand, pollution mixed together gives the city of Beijing more frequent sand storms about 20 times a year, risen from only once or twice a year in the past decade. The pollution is in the atmosphere and therefore has no borders. Japan, North Korea, and South Korea have all been victim to "acid rain", which is a pH level below 5.6. Acid rain causes soil to become infertile, trees to slowly die, plants to not produce, fish to literally die in the ponds because they're soaked in acid water. Other parts of the world even including Canada and Colorado has experienced increased pollution and "chog" chinese smog casting over their beautiful cities as well. I mean Chinese certainly falls victim to even worse than these other places due to it caused by many industrial centers all over.
This is not just a Chinese issue but a global concern, which requires immediate attention. How can anyone foresee having grandchildren growing up in a sky that's forever smoggy, never can see the sun, having an epidemic of lung diseases and asthma attacks, and overall age beginning to decrease. I sure can't. I mean what's the point, to give birth to life so that it can be easily taken away during infancy? NO WAY!
Referenced statistics from the book The Coming China Wars
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