If the Chinese government can pull this off effectively, without doing anything too stupid (splitting up families, letting people starve to death, destroying their inner city economies), then I would see this as a good thing. The most efficient farming and food-production systems today produce a unit of food using far fewer resources (people, labor, energy, etc) than were required in previous decades.
The people who continue to live in rural areas should focus on farming efficiently for large populations rather than for subsistence. If you can move the subsistence farmers into cities, and if (this is a big "if") they can work and earn a decent wage without obliterating the current economy, then they will more than likely be better off personally, and will consume fewer resources globally.
I happen to think that this is a very difficult thing to do, and that their timeline is probably way too optimistic, but I don't think China should be criticized for trying. They stand to gain tremendously if they can pull it off.
I'm glad to see someone with this point of view. A lot of people don't seem to realize that there is a huge difference between the idealized American farmer and the lives of real peasants living in rural China. It's extremely difficult to run roads, electricity, and water to all these villages, or to provide them with modern schools and clinics (and corresponding staff) necessary to implement social welfare that extends beyond the cities.
A tour of some of the planned urban areas of China (Chengdu, mentioned in the article, is a fine example, plus pandas!) along with some of the smaller villages makes it very clear that the 'average' Chinese farmer is far worse off than one might expect.
I'm not really sure I have an example for the contemporary United States that even comes close. I suspect you'd have to change the definition of 'farmer'. Perhaps a family living in a dilapidated trailer, unemployed, growing cheap, starchy foods in what little land they can rent, in an area with poor or nonexistent utilities, would be a more accurate comparison.
Comparing a planned city such as Chengdu with a similar effort elsewhere, say in India, is another surprise. Ahmedabad is a pretty good example.
I have come to the conclusion that communism is an impediment to human excellence.[1] However, seeing the extreme levels of poverty that the central government is trying to resolve, and has resolved to a certain degree, I can understand the difference in prioritization.
There was a link to a book on cooltools years ago http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/461 that I just noticed was available on the Kindle. Poverty is so outside the understanding of most of us that it's not just about not having nice things. Poverty in the developing world and in the undeveloped world is so much worse that it's almost as if an impartial, uninformed observer would wonder if we are the same species, and I don't base that on skin color, eye shape, gender, etc.
[1] I don't care if you disagree on this point. I grant you a perpetual, irrevocable, license to do so.
> It's extremely difficult to run roads, electricity, and water to all these villages, or to provide them with modern schools and clinics (and corresponding staff) necessary to implement social welfare that extends beyond the cities.
Better cage them up in modern labor camps to produce smartphones for fat Americans. Free market, baby!
anyone who criticizes this kind of thing has never been to the chinese countryside.
it. fucking. sucks. it's not the US countryside. there aren't red barns and guys riding Indian motorcycles and nice roadside cafes to check out the shots you took on your DSLR.
there's a reason that during the mao era people were sent there for punishment. these poor people want jobs and money not open ditches full of cow shit and 7-day a week hard farm labor.
You are all missing the point, China is in a construction boom, construction is the best way to achieve double digit GDP growth, construction and sale of apartments and houses also lines the pockets of the Party
But of course all of the comments so far have been about the environment, the Chinese do not give 2 shits about pollution and sustainability, the motive is clear
KEEP THE PARTY IN CONTROL AT ALL COSTS
Oh I'm glad there is now a spokemen for "The Chinese People". Didn't realise you had a single voice, who frequented HN.
In all seriousness, some tips:
- Stop being racist
- go and learn a little bit about Chinese political landscape, and modern history
- Reduce your ignorance.
The Chinese (government) care greatly about the environment and the people, and that is why they have year-on-year improved hundreds of millions of lives in both health and wealth for the past 60 years.
Yes, they are a 1 party communist political system... but so what, judge by action, not ideology.
Don't mind Volpe, he calls everyone who talks about China a racist. Its his way of being friendly on hackernews.
Parent is wrong though, the CCP most definitely cares about the environment; it has gotten so bad that they are in crisis mode right now. Xi just made a speech about it this weekend, the gov is taking it very seriously and people do care, especially here in Beijing.
Corruption, economy, and pollution (include food safety) are the biggest threats to the CCP's grip on power.
I was talking about the Chinese government, if its people do care about the environment but try to do something about it they would get labelled as dissidents and prosecuted. Thats what you get for living in an authoritarian state keeping its people under thumb in order to further the party
And stop with the "racist" crap, in light of news of widespread NSA surveilance and changes over last year the USA ain that far behind.
It didnt take long for members of the Ministry of Truth to popup and try to "reeducate" readers regarding my earlier comments.
> in light of news of widespread NSA surveilance and changes over last year the USA ain that far behind.
Oh I see, so we can just generalise about any country because the US is doing horrible things.
> It didnt take long for members of the Ministry of Truth to popup and try to "reeducate" readers regarding my earlier comments.
More wumao bullshit. Just because someone doesn't buy into the US constructed narrative of "US is good, cares about it's people and the environment, China is evil and just wants to control the world" they have to be Chinese shills...
How about showing me some data that proves I'm wrong?
I never made such an argument, you are the one building strawmen and going off on a tangent trying to deflect from my point which hits the bullsye
The "Party" (calling them Communist is a bit of a joke by now) only cares about its own survival and continuing grip on power and control of 1/6th of the worlds population.
You do realize that Chinese is not even an ethnicity right? I mean, you have Kazakhs, Uighurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, Koreans and even some Russians who all are born in China and have Chinese citizenship.
Saying "the Chinese think blah" is the same as saying "the Americans think blah". So stop with the racist crap.
If he said "the Han do no care about pollution or the environment" then fine, you'd have a great point.
So blacks/whites are in the same boat? Could never be used to say anything racist because multiple ethnicities exist within those categories... riiiiight.
While I would word things more carefully, I somewhat agree with you. Talking to people in Beijing, both laowai and Chinese, it seems that the economical growth of China is the main power base of the party. As long as living standards keep improving, people are generally happy with the way things are run. This is of course a somewhat dangerous state of affairs, since double-digit growth numbers are never sustainable in the long run. To my outsider's eyes, this plan looks like an attempt at keeping the economical boom going, and in the process ensure the party's survival.
The pollution in Beijing was really bad this winter, its not something that the government can ignore anymore. We will definitely see some changes next year, its only matter if they go far enough.
Some of my poorer relatives still live on subsistence farms. When I visit my grandmother she would kill a chicken and cook it for us.
as land values rise in these rural areas some people have become rich very quickly. People in my hometown have started to fence up land that was previously unmarked (and worthless). It's an interesting phenomenon.
Not sure what conclusions to draw from the video, just an interesting anecdote. Things are happening quickly in China, for better or worse - there are huge differences every time I visit.
if people thought Beijing was polluted, wait till this happens. It will be a permanent fog/smog cloud hovering indefinitely over this plane. If the focus is on making sure that there are long term "green" goals of making sure people use human-powered transportation w/ large public transit systems like subways, trains, bussing systems, then there is potential for this to happen and be maintainable. Generally speaking the Chinese have done much better than than Indians have with their supposed democracy in moving their economy along. India on the other hand has been a general failure, especially in raising the general population into a better life-cycle. If china does this, and is successful, it will be a foundation for other large countries to follow.
I'm presuming they are doing something good, and not considering all the cons that will ensue.
I doubt those people are coming to Beijing, it just can't take anymore people, and you have only a limited capacity for jobs and such. More likely they are going to 2nd/3rd tier cities where crowding/pollution issues are still severe, just not as bad as Beijing.
Cities -can- be more environmentally friendly than the equivalent population living in a more rural setting -IF- you're comparing roughly equivalent standards of living.
And there lies the rub. A) It is entirely possible that China will screw up something in their planning resulting in poorer environmental outcomes. B) This demographic shift will almost certainly come matched with an economic uplifting, and regardless of efficiencies of scale and density (which is what a city gives you), the increase in standard of living (and therefore energy and other related 'products') can result in increased environmental damage.
For starters, what are these people currently burning to keep warm and cook their food? And how will that change if they become middle-class city-dwellers?
It depends. Coal, charcoal, wood. The house where my father grew up vented smoke/exhaust from the fires in the kitchen under a hard clay bed built into the house to keep the family warm in the winter.
You can see the effect of years of exposure to soot on the faces of people who live in rural China (and, I daresay, anyone who lives in similar circumstances). These people are not living particularly environmentally clean lives right now (although, to be fair, they probably do consume far fewer manufactured goods than their city-dwelling brethren).
Something of interest is the prevalence of solar water heaters, both in urban and rural areas. They are surprisingly common, much better than heating water using fire or electricity, and affordable even to those outside the cities.
That video doesn't tell us much, but I think this could be an incredible opportunity to rethink what cities are. If they're making them all anyway, why not create them sustainable? It's a bunch of farmers, so give them plots of land to feed themselves with. Make self-sufficient earthships instead of houses that require utilities.
Sadly, the video says this is meant to increase the economy, get them buying more stuff. I imagine that there will be a very efficient system for shipping all these people into massive factories to make plastic crap, so that all these newly converted consumers can buy more plastic crap, 98% of which ends up in landfills within 2 years, which I suppose is what they'll be using their old farmland for! lol.
Education of girls and urbanization are the most effective ways to slow the birth rate. Without doing that, environmental preservation is not going to be possible.
In fact it has the other kind of birth-rate problem, a looming demographic crunch due in large part to the one-child policy. And of course a mysteeerious gender imbalance to go with it.
The people who continue to live in rural areas should focus on farming efficiently for large populations rather than for subsistence. If you can move the subsistence farmers into cities, and if (this is a big "if") they can work and earn a decent wage without obliterating the current economy, then they will more than likely be better off personally, and will consume fewer resources globally.
I happen to think that this is a very difficult thing to do, and that their timeline is probably way too optimistic, but I don't think China should be criticized for trying. They stand to gain tremendously if they can pull it off.