A global economic downturn is happening. Because China. Because pollution.

[DetlefK]

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/10/what_the_media_hides_about_chinas_economic_slowdown_greed_has_corporate_elites_turning_blind_eye_to_nations_environmental_destruction/

After all, wasn’t that the whole rationalization for outsourcing to begin with? Leave it to the Chinese to sweat out the manufacturing details, and the global investor class from the golf course gets to figure out what to do with the profits they extract. But now, with so much of their water polluted and their air so contaminated China’s people and its ecology have been stressed to the breaking point.

“I think in the West there is confusion in part on how this is reported,” says Barbara Finamore, senior attorney and Asia director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There is more than one reason for the slowdown. Part of it is they can’t rely on heavy manufacturing anymore. So much of the reporting makes the assumption that there is an unlimited carrying capacity for the natural resources base but there are limits.”

...

According to the “State of the Planet” 2014 analysis published by the Columbia University’s Earth Institute, less than 1 percent of China’s 500 largest cities meet World Health Organization’s air quality standards.

Of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, 16 are in China.

Contaminated air is only part of it. The United Nations World Water Report issued last year reported the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources had determined that in 118 of the country’s cities tested, 97 percent of the sub-surface groundwater was contaminated, and in 64 percent of the places surveyed the drinking water source was seriously contaminated.

...

China is feeding 20 percent of the world’s population with just 7 percent of the farmland, of which 20 percent is contaminated. As far back as 2001, international experts warned that the aquifer that supports the North China’s Plain, which produces half of China’s wheat and a third of its corn crop, was dropping to the point where it could not be replenished. Tens of thousands of irrigation wells in the region dried up as farmers had to drill deeper and deeper to get the water they needed.

...

“Imagine a thousand Flints in a country without a free press,”

...

For years now the Chinese people have been also taking to the streets, at great risk to themselves and their families, to protest labor conditions, systemic corruption and environmental degradation on a horrific scale. Between 2006 and 2010 protests doubled to 180,000 a year.

...

The Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin reports that the number of labor actions has spiked from 529 in October and November of last year to 774 in December and January. You would not know it from the Western business press, but labor protests and organizing have been on a major upswing for years. In 2015 this social upheaval culminated in 2,774 labor actions as compared to 1,379 the year before. Two thirds of last year’s labor actions were prompted by non-payment of wages primarily in the manufacturing and construction sectors.

“Many factories have not paid their workers and this is the time of year migrant workers traditionally go home and bring gifts for their families to show they have done well,” says Kwong.

...

There’s no doubt that China’s downshifting away from heavy industry, its push to reduce its over-capacity in steel production, will make China’s air more breathable and water less at risk from further degradation. Yet, this reset is already causing economic dislocation both domestically and internationally. Both China’s excess manufacturing capacity, and the commodity producing capacity in the world’s emerging markets that supplied it, were all built with a mountain of debt that’s all coming due, even as demand continues to decline.

“The slowdown in China associated with the transformation of its economy has been an especially important factor for the global economy as a whole,” said Jamie Caruana, the general manager with the Bank of International Settlements, at a speech he gave at the London School of Economic earlier this month. “It has weakened demand for commodities and has added further impetus to the downturn in commodity markets that has depressed the outlook for commodity exporters.”

Caruana says energy companies alone racked up $3 trillion in debt over the last decade alone. And there’s more, according to Caruana. “The debt of non-financial companies in emerging market economies (EMEs) has grown so rapidly that in 2013 it overtook that of advanced economies, as a proportion of GDP. Since then, the corporate debt of EMEs as a proportion of GDP has pulled ahead of that in the advanced economies even further.”






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Just how bad is air-pollution in China? Look at these photos from Beijing and tell me:
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2140-5-realities-smog-so-bad-it-blots-out-sun.html

[ladjf]

1. ..... and because the super rich are in the process of stealing most of the

wealth from EVERYONE else. This is a form of depravity as bad , if not worse than the decaying Roman Empire.

[jwirr]

2. So what area of the globe is going to be the next lucky

recipient of our corporate greed?

[DetlefK]

3. Eastern Africa maybe.

They have ressources, they have agricultural land, big investments are already made, the rulers are corrupt...

About a month ago I saw a documentary how Saudi-Arabia had set up a HUGE agricultural operation in a country in eastern Africa (whose name I forgot). They bribed the government, the government chased the small farmers from their land with guns and then the government sold the land to the saudi-arabian investors.
And it's a huge operation, with all the agricultural machinery you could possibly need.

[pampango]

4. Perhaps. China has been trading with and investing in East Africa for many years.

They often bring many workers from China but do employ Africans too. They have built many roads connecting mining and other operations with ports or large cities and other large-scale infrastructure projects. Corruption and support for repressive but 'friendly' government's has been a continuing problem.

IF both China and the West traded with and invested in Africa to an extent similar to the trade and investment between China and the West over the last 30 years, Africa's economic gains could be faster than China's have been.

I had not heard that Saudi operation. Thanks for the information.

[jwirr]

8. That was my thought - Africa is extremely vulnerable. And

they are the least likely to fight back due to history. This has to stop. We are all part of what our nation is exporting and especially when we do nothing about it.

[bemildred]

5. Stable growth is an oxymoron. nt

[pampango]

6. And if/when it happens the far-right in Europe and elsewhere is ready for it.

If there is another economic crash, Europe’s far right is ready for it

... already the populist, anti-immigration right is in a strong position, from Sweden to France, Greece to the Netherlands. So when Greece’s motorcycling former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis warns that Europe could be falling into “a modern 1930s”, it is time to sit up, listen – and prepare. And now the economic ghosts of 2008 appear to be doing a comeback tour. Global growth has become ever more dependent on a slowing Chinese economy.

And who is waiting, preparing and consolidating? Europe’s far right, already feeding off the despair of economic crisis and a backlash against refugees fleeing violence from the Middle East. Where once the principal target was Jews, now it’s Muslims.

And so it falls to the left to offer an alternative outlet. It is possible. Spain has been hammered more than most, but so far has not endured the rise of a similar, far-right anti-immigration party. Instead, popular discontent has been funneled in the direction of Podemos, a progressive party arguing for an alternative to austerity.

The left – including the British left – has a lot to learn. A convincing, coherent alternative to slash-and-burn economics, not least if another economic crisis is on the way, is desperately needed too. But there should be much greater urgency in leftwing ranks, for the far right is stronger, better organised, and well-positioned to benefit from any impending crises. The history of Europe should be warning enough. Time to prepare, and quick.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/11/economic-crisis-europe-far-right-left-alternative-austerity

Indeed the "history of Europe" with the far-right taking advantage of a global meltdown to seize power, should be 'warning enough'.

The European far-right (like the US') "doesn't offer solutions so much as they offers villains."

[jwirr]

9. And we have idiot politicians here in the US egging them on.

I am really afraid of the future. Especially if we cannot make this revolution work. We are building a path to hell all over the world.

[earthshine]

7. What happens in China doesn't stay in China!

That air pollution blows all over the world. The stuff that hasn't diffused yet -- well, that's what we call smog.

All of it contributes to global warming.

But, it's not unique to China.

I live in the mountains in North Carolina. There's a Duke energy plant near our local lake that spews this stuff out of huge smoke stacks.

Have you noticed just how much air pollution is produced by our airplanes? Seems in just the past few years, the planes put out so much visible stuff, and it just hangs in the sky. Didn't used to be that way.

We can't just keep taking stuff from underground and putting it in the sky and waterways.