Some Thoughts On China

I have been talking to someone who is preparing to move to China. Because of that I have been watching YouTube videos about China. While moving there certainly will be an adventure, I also started looking at long term odds for China as a nation and they are not good. That is what I want to discuss.

In the early 1970s Nixon opened China to change. By the 1980s we began sending our manufacturing over there. As a consequence of sending manufacturing to China, it has become a wealthy nation and a much more advanced place in some ways. China in the 60s and 70s was a nightmare, repressive and poor. Hunger was common. American companies were happy to go there because they could avoid taxes in the United States and more importantly, environmental laws. In the 70s, America began cracking down on pollution. In fact, President Nixon (a Republican) created the Environmental Protection Agency.

China gladly ignored all environmental protection to increase their standard of living; but, those chickens are now coming home to roost. Lets start with water. 90% of China's water is polluted to the point where it cannot be drank. 90%. In fact, you are advised not to drink tap water in China. The water is polluted because they dump raw sewage and industrial waste into their rivers to keep manufacturing costs down. Over 1/4 of their land is polluted and cannot be used for growing crops without making the crops toxic. Their air is polluted because they burn coal for energy and do not clean the smoke coming out, this has also caused acid rain to fall. When you make your air, water and land toxic, it is only a matter of time before people start dying younger and younger. That is what is happening in China, cancer is skyrocketing.

China is responsible for more pollution than any other nation. China accounts for about 1/3rd of all CO2 emissions in the world. It accounts for more CO2 than the whole of the European Union, India and the United States combined. Now, you can add to this the fact that China has a population in steady decrease. China' population rate is .59. Let me explain that, a society with a birth rate of less than 2.11 has never recovered. China is depopulating and killing it's people through pollution. It may take 10 or 20 years; but, the results are unavoidable at this point.

30 years from now, China will be a wasteland. It will not be able to feed itself because it's land will not produce edible food and heavy metals are real hard to remove from soil and water. It's infrastructure will merely crumble because they do not bother maintaining what they build. Long term, China is in a death spiral and cannot get out of it's own way. In 60 years, China's population will be reduced by 3/4s. It's current population is 1.4 billion, with it's rising cancer rate and miniscule birthrate, it will be down to 350 million people in 60 years and there is not a thing they can do to stop this long term trend.