Also agree.. Pictures were kinda missing... The deadly smog. :rukidding:

Without a true democratic society, it will be very difficult for them to catch up. What has China really done to drive global development other than providing cheap manufacturing?

shopped photo's.....China is Fucked when it comes to Smog in that dirty forbiddin country

How about researching why they are not considered an industrialized nation ?

E.g. Look up why the Financial Minister of China still says that they are a developing nation and their high level plans

Damn OP, so lazy at looking up trivial information.

It would be an insult to citizens of those nations to classify the OP as the same rank as them.

In his Timpo theory, with all the mainland Chinese moving to Vancouver, Vancouver is now a second world city lol
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SkinnyPupp: I can't believe those pictures. It looks post-apocalyptic :ahwow:

They're still a third world country cause they never made the GTR.

Record high levels in Shanghai last week. They told people not to go to the city if you don't have to. They are destroying their country before having the chance to achieve Ulic's utopian goal

Going to Shanghai next week. I'll let you guys know if my boogers turn black from the smog.

Pics or GTFO!

Made a note on my phone to take pictures of my black boogers. Just for you.

tits or gtfo

All that economic growth for the past 10-15 years is literally built right on top of a complete and wanton disregard for the environment. And now their entire population is paying for it... :okay:

I still can not tell whether Timpo is a troll or not.

I hope you are joking? What do you think North America and Europe was doing during it's own industrial revolution? Do you think they were at all concerned about polluting the environment when they were pumping out factories? It's hypocritical to say that China isn't allowed to push it's economy through industrialization when Western countries did exactly that to propel it's own standards of living... Don't get me wrong, pollution is terrible, but industrialization is the only way for these countries to catch up on the global economy. As China turns it's economy more towards commerce,finance, and retail sales industry, it will push factories further and further inland or outsource to even poorer countries such as Vietnam or Philippines until it's no longer feasible to produce in China anymore, or just stick to high end consumer products. And the government has been coming down hard on environmental pollution - it's getting harder every year to run a factory in China.

Timpo's classification of country status is based on # of GTRs/capita

Your above rhetoric has always been what the pro-China camp touted, and to a great extent, I understand where that is coming from. The fallacy I see is, with China's economic rise, it isn't like they didn't have any options, nor it isn't like they didn't know what the entirely predictable consequences would be. History, through the western world's past actions, has already shown what would happen to the environment and the health of the population when you follow that pollution-driven path of economic gains. The costs of those are not easily repairable, if at all repairable, whether it is environmental damage or the loss of health / human lives. Of course, those in power are far more concerned with "short term" (10-15 years as we have seen) gains and lining the own pockets while doing so.

It's kind of cool to see what China would look like without the smog.
Looks Vancouveresque

But what would you have them do? This is two folded - for those in power, would you let your country lag 50 years behind in economy, with no chance at all in catching up?

And for the commoners, watching the extravagance of western spending on Hollywood television, with no opportunities of attaining the same type of lifestyle... Without a stronger economy, there are no sales/service/retail/commerce type jobs like the US. What are all those people going to do for a living? Continue to be farmers and herders? It's a very complex situation...

And for the record, I'm don't see myself as pro-China. I just don't view the environment as fragile as most of you do. We humans have only been on planet Earth for a fraction of the time that it has been spinning, and it has gone through massive changes and transitions that we haven't been a part of. I see pollution as a natural progression of in-habitation, the same as if an animal shits in the forest. If we fuck around too much with the environment too much, Earth will easily just push back and wipe us out. It's all part of the natural process. Everything we do is "natural", because humans are part of nature. Extinction through over hunting, deforestation, even if the human race eventually dies out because we screwed up our environment so much that we no longer can live here anymore - all of that is just part of the circle of life.

A more long term vision would be to balance the economic gains against the environmental and human costs. Of course, those in power in China view human lives -- that is, the life of your typical peasant and average citizen -- as almost dispensable since there are 1.3B of them around. (And naturally, they view their own lives worthing a lot more.)

But even when human lives are worthless in the Chinese top brass' eyes, the economic benefits of the pollution should have been accounted for in their "economic plans" (since it is a "planned economy" they always tout). The factory closures do not bring any economic benefits. Sick people cannot produce any GDP gains even if their lives are considered worthless.

All this talk is no different than people recommending living a healthy lifestyle. If you are poor, do you work 3 jobs and eat nothing but fast food? Or do you work 1.5 jobs while trying to cook your own meals and give up a little leisure time? Or do you work that 1 job while trying to study for something that'll pay better? There may not be a definitive "best" way out of these options, but what China has been doing is the equivalent of working those 3 jobs, having nothing but fast food, and not getting any sleep -- all because he wants to have some bling bling ride, a McMansion (bought on mortgage), and look baller because that's how the Jones are... :badpokerface:

LOL!

I am just going to add that mos tof the pollution we have today is within the last 100 to 200 years or so...... While thousdand of years ago human still around. There isn't anyone or any country to blame, as humans we are lazy and selfish and want things does the simple way.

The way I see it, we would die from not having enough food rather than from pollution....... Even as we speak there isn't enough food to feed everyone on earth. Yet we waste them every single day.

Wow that was difficult to read... I guess I should have expected that going into a China thread

Actually the ratio is around 4 chickens to 1 person on earth. There's plenty of food around, it's the distribution that's the problem.