What is the purpose of any division? A molecule of CO2 is fundamentally identical regardless of its country of origin. It's a worldwide problem, and ultimately our inability to cooperate as one world will be the undoing of us.
The purpose of this is to absolve China of any and all responsibility, and put maximum blame with the West. Apparently the West is in complete control of China.
To put the blame in the right place, perhaps? Obviously China (and its government) has its own responsibilities as well, but it all started with Western companies (and the Western lifestyle)
China said yes to all those things for Western money. They could've said no, they could've put in restrictions to lower their profits and improve conditions. Don't act like China is some poor puppy bullied around by the West.
>China said yes to all those things for Western money. They could've said no
Terrible argument. If it's not gonna be China, it's gonna be Vietnam, or Bangladesh, or Pakistan, or Sri Lanka, or whoever the rich west will deem fit to host their dirty industries at the most rock bottom prices so they can make a profit.
So again, is really all China's or $POOR_NATION fault, or the West's fault for constantly bidding the poor countries against each other in a race to the bottom in terms of human rights and environmental destruction for the sake of profit?
Just blaming the poor countries claiming that "well, the poor countries should just say NO to hosting the west's dirty industry", is incredibly stupid and short sighted.
Do you really think that China would not have industrialised if not for Western companies? Nothing about China's history shows that that's remotely true.
In fact, outsourcing was only possible because of the various industrial plans that China had put in place in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, all of which prioritised building equivalent capacity to what existed in the West and the USSR.
Moreover, China was destroying its environment in the 1950s already, long before it even allowed real trade with the West.
Let's treat countries as responsible actors in their own right, not as mere non-independent reactors to Western actions.
Not quite to the same extent, or nearly as late. China's Four Pests campaign, for instance, ran from 1958 to 1962 and was ecologically disastrous.
Meanwhile, in the US you already had strong conservationist movements starting up, leading to the creation of the EPA by 1970.
While China finally adopted some environmental protections in 1979, it wasn't until the late 1980s/early 1990s that they could override industrial development in key situations
While Ranch Hand was indefensible and US leaders should have been prosecuted for it, the scale of it is minuscule compared to the ecological damage of the Four Pests campaign.
You could say the same about Western countries. They could've said no, put in restrictions to lower their profits and improve their conditions. They are richer, so they're more capable of doing all those same things than a poor developing country like China used to be.
