The Price of ‘Development’ in China
Consumerism, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor December 26, 2009
Christmas is supposed to be a time where we give some thought to people less fortunate. It is also a time of major consumeristic excess. The incongruity of these two thoughts is starkly demonstrated by the clip below. This is China, factory for the world. Here, to make room for industries and infrastructure that China needs to supply the world with barbies, bicycles and toy berettas, the common people are forcibly evicted from their homes before seeing them demolished.
It’s sobering to think, as we stand at the checkout – with our trolley overflowing with crap for little Tommy and Britney – that we are financing a tyrannical allegiance between governments and Big Industry.
Further Reading:
- Food Miles, or Fair Miles?
- The Peasants are Revolting
- Rich Nations Buying Up Land in Poor Countries at Escalating Rate
you would think this would make national news. Well it is pretty clear Americas National news is in on the tyranny.
Comment by Russell Berns — December 26, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
Hi Craig;
I really enjoy your posts. However, I am having a problem viewing the videos. I don’t even see the video box. I am using Mozilla Firefox v. 5.0 and IE v.6.0. Any idea?
Thanks and happy new year!
Comment by Pinar Kinikoglu — December 26, 2009 @ 6:38 pm
Hi Used to travel to different parts of China for development work. There are many of such injustice happening in the cities as well as villagers….more so when villagers flock to the cities to look for jobs and fortune, the issues link to central government as well as provincial government + corruption, culture etc Yet such things does not confine to just China alone, it happen even in so called “develop” nations as well, in different forms and of differing degrees.
Sylim
Comment by Sylim — December 26, 2009 @ 11:07 pm
Hi Pinar. The latest version of Firefox is v3.5:
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/
And the latest Internet Explorer is v8
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Internet-explorer/default.aspx
Install the latest browsers and it should be fine. The video is from YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/).
Comment by Craig Mackintosh — December 27, 2009 @ 2:03 am
This was heart-breaking but it needs to be known. Should we boycott goods from China? Would that helps cases like these or only make matters worse for them? I don’t know. But it’s outrageous and very sad. China has a population that most of us can’t really comprehend. At least I have trouble. The human rights situation there is still so bad.
renee
Comment by reneehc — December 27, 2009 @ 9:54 am
Informative video. Government is force; theft and murder mostly. This is why I enjoy watching the intersection of libertarianism and permaculture continue to grow…
Comment by JBob — December 27, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
Thanks, Craig. I will upgrade Firefox.
Comment by Pinar Kinikoglu — December 28, 2009 @ 4:59 am
Renee – the first link (Food Miles, or Fair Miles) in the ‘Further Reading’ section at bottom of the post above should answer your question.
Comment by Craig Mackintosh — December 28, 2009 @ 5:02 am
J Bob – I agree with you. I thought that most permies would be lefty type socialists but I have been pleasantly surprised to see a strong libertarian/anarchist side to the movement.
Comment by Cyrus — December 30, 2009 @ 4:21 pm
JBob,
you write:
“This is why I enjoy watching the intersection of libertarianism and permaculture continue to grow…”
Libertarianism is the answer. But to a very different question, which I would phrase as: “What belief system is most strongly influenced by a collection of ideas that are fundamentally in conflict with any sound concept of an earth care ethics.”
When I look at that aspect of various flavours of libertarianism, then what I see is outright catastrophic. It is hard to be as misguided about the inner mechanisms of the environment as quite a number of prominent and influential libertarians are.
So, just no. Libertarianism and permaculture won’t go together, and unless libertarians reform quite dramatically, never will.
Comment by Thomas Fischbacher — January 3, 2010 @ 9:32 pm
I live in China. I have lived here for the past 3 and a half years. From my experience the government here only knocks down the old decrepid homes and gives the people nice new homes to live in. The communities are kept together and the people normally benefit from the upheaval. It can be the best thing that ever happened to them. For some reason the western news only gives half the story when China is concerned. This is not a good enough reason to boycot chinese products.
Comment by jack — May 29, 2011 @ 10:30 am
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