China

Chinese food quality a concern as 2008 Olympics approaches

In 2000, when Beijing made its bid for the 2008 Olympics, it promised to get all cleaned up if it could please, pretty please, be the host. Its wishes came true, but China's goal of throwing a green Olympics seems ever out of reach. To quote ourselves:

China has promised to throw a "green" Olympics in Beijing in 2008 -- but simple livability may be the megacity's bigger challenge. Beijing has 15.2 million inhabitants; if current trends hold, that number could grow to 21 million by 2020. Gridlock is endemic, as the number of cars more than doubled in the past six years. Already-bad air quality is deteriorating. The city's water supply is so overtaxed that some experts are calling for rationing. City officials are racing to replace thousands of old, stinky public toilets, while over a hundred construction projects related to the upcoming Olympics are hurtling forward. Critics blame decades of bad urban-planning policy for the city's problems. "In the past, we never thought of the capacity of resources," said Huang Yan, Beijing's deputy director of planning. "We only focused on development." She's introduced a master plan that includes the bold goal of rendering Beijing "a city suitable for living."

Sarah K. Burkhalter Food

The Times a bit too flowery on China’s growing rose industry

China is positioning itself to take the lead in world rose production. Government leaders hope investing in the flower industry will bring capital and jobs to southwestern China, and florists in the U.S. see it as an opportunity to obtain cheaper products, thereby increasing profits.

Workers in the burgeoning rose industry are mostly young women, earning an average of $25 per month, which the NYT article at least points out. Missing from the piece, though, is any thought to the health, labor, and environmental effects of the flower industry, or to how China's flower project could engage with fairer standards.

Kate Sheppard Food

While demand for frozen food booms, processing plants head to China and Mexico

Farmers markets may be fashionable, but the U.S. appetite for convenience food remains insatiable. "Retail sales of frozen foods in the U.S. in 2005 reached a record $29 billion, up from nearly $26 billion in 2001," declares a news report.

Meanwhile, the U.S. food-processing giants are shuttering domestic plants and heading to Mexico and China, where labor and produce costs are cheaper than California's central coast, once the U.S. frozen food capital.

In an age of broad energy and climate uncertainty, market forces are conspiring to make our food system ever more energy intensive. How can this be? How can it make economic sense to not only haul food from China and Mexico, but to keep its temperature below the freezing point throughout the process?

Tom Philpott Food

As China’s exports boom, its farmland shrinks and food imports rise. Coincidence?

The philosopher Slavoj Zizek once remarked that the United States does still have a working class -- it's simply in China.

With the U.S. manufacturing base shriveling (Ford Explorer, anyone?) and imports from China booming (set to surpass a quarter trillion dollars this year), it's hard to contradict that trendy Slovenian academic.

China's manufacturing miracle means (among many other things) that even in a period of stagnant wage growth, U.S. consumers can march into Wal-Mart and fill their carts with lots and lots of stuff.

The most famous environmental impact of China's boom has to do with crude oil: As China's economy surges (it grew at an annualized 11 percent in the second quarter), it burns more and more crude, burdening the environment with greenhouse gases. While we ramble from strip mall to strip mall in SUVs stuffed with Chinese goods, Chinese factory smokestacks send plumes of black gunk into the air.

But here's another way to look at the situation: While China expands its industrial base to supply the world with everything from mops to electronics, it's cutting drastically into its farmland. Might some wag soon be moved to remark, "China does have farmers -- they're just in Brazil"?

Tom Philpott Food

Move Thyself: “Kingdom of bicycles” experiencing identity crisis

So, in case you haven't heard, China's economy has been growing a wee bit. The boom has fueled growth in incomes and is largely responsible for the attendant explosive growth in auto sales and use. Huge growth. The number of cars has grown over 20 times since 1978 and is expected to balloon another five times still by 2020.

Meanwhile, bicycle ridership has fallen at roughly the same rate as auto use has grown, and city planners and officials, eager to keep the boom booming, even at great public cost, have been planning to welcome the auto's continued growth and popularity with more roads.

And though the U.S. still out-cars (and out-roads) China by a wide margin, China's rapid growth has led to bicycles literally being left by the wayside. Urban planning has turned them into seeming second-class forms of transport. (This sounds familiar, America. As Ginsberg might have said: "America, you've given cars all and now cyclists are nothing.")

But back to China. As the Guardian puts it:

Having spent the past decade pursuing a transport policy of four wheels rich, two wheels poor, the Chinese government has suddenly rediscovered the environmental and health benefits of the bicycle.

As described in the state media, apparently the government is finally trying to do something about the unhealthy shift to autos.

China's Vice Minister of Construction, Qiu Baoxing, has lashed [out] at city authorities for making it harder for cyclists to get around, saying the country should retain its title as the "kingdom of bicycles."

Todd Hymas Samkara Cities

Sorry, not really panda porn.

Given pandas' population difficulties, "getting it on" probably isn't something they engage in very often, but don't tell the world's eager panda-philes that.

China has set up voyeur-friendly web cams that stream panda content live from the mountains of Sichuan in four 20-minute segments every day (except for weekends) so that, as Reuters says, "people around the world can spy on pandas doing what comes naturally to them."

If you're thinking "hot panda sex!," don't.

Even when conditions in the "fog-shrouded mountains" permit, panda voyeurs can witness largely sedate bears munching on bamboo shoots, sleeping, (and slowly going extinct).

Wolong Giant Panda Reservation and Research Centre, home to 154 wild and about 80 artificially bred giant pandas, launched the service on its Web site (www.pandaclub.net).
"PandaCam" will go live for four 20-minute periods a day, giving the animals a bit of privacy at weekends, Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

Uncomfortable spying on pandas in China? Try the U.S. version!

Yep, we have our very own PandaCam, already in action, trained on the bears at the National Zoo. Cute in the way that only captive, pacing pandas can be. (Is it on a loop or is that the third lap in the last ten minutes?) Fun!

Todd Hymas Samkara Uncategorized

Going to Hell in a Sandbasket

North central China being slowly swallowed by desert Two deserts in north central China are rapidly expanding, burying 1,500 square miles of grasslands, lakes, forests, and villages under sand every year. Government-led deforestation and water-engineering projects are largely to blame. A giant reservoir near the town of Minqin diverts all available water resources into an […]

Grist staff Uncategorized

Move Thyself: Deer avoids car, hits man on bicycle

D'oh, a deer ...

In other bicycle news, it seems the Chinese masses are increasingly trading in their classic cruiser-style Flying Pigeon bikes for cushy mountain bikes and higher tech road bikes (oh, and cars).

Not a huge surprise, as an increase in affluence often leads to a transportation upgrade. But nonetheless, the state-owned bike company has noted the changing demographics of its riders as well as a dip in sales.