I was reading about the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and thought I'd start a thread about what is likely to happen in the future, where China is going, and related subjects like Tibet, the environmental impact of such huge growth, the political implications and human rights concerns, and my personal fear that as the USA's power gets eclipsed both politically and economically it will lead to greater tension between two global superpowers.
First some facts (mostly from wikipedia);
China is the largest country in East Asia. With over 1.31 billion people, it is the world's most populous country. The country is the world's largest consumer of steel and concrete, using, respectively, a third and over a half of the world's supply of each. It is also the second largest importer of petroleum, as well as the second largest exporter and third largest importer in the world.
Environmental concerns- I have been told that China is building a nuclear reactor every month but I found this from world-nuclear.org;
Mainland China has nine nuclear power reactors in commercial operation, a further two units grid connected, four more under construction, and at least four more about to start constuction in 2007. Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world's most advanced, to give a fivefold increase in nuclear capacity to 40 GWe by 2020. On Taiwan six nuclear power reactors operate and two advanced reactors are under construction
Most electricity is produced from fossil fuels (about 80%, mainly coal)
There's still a weapons embargo- The United States and European Union embargo on weapons sales to the PRC, put in place as a result of the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, still remains in place.
Censorship- Currently, due to the strong Chinese government censorship including the Internet censorship, the news media is forbidden to report anything related to the Tiananmen Square protests.
In January 2006, Google agreed to censor their mainland China site, Google.cn, to remove information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre,[19] as well as other topics such as Tibetan independence, the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and the political status of Taiwan. When people search for those censored topics, it will list the following at the bottom of the page in Chinese, "According to the local laws, regulations and policies, part of the searching result is not shown." The uncensored Wikipedia articles on the 1989 protests, both in English and Chinese Wikipedia, have been attributed as a cause of the blocking of Wikipedia by the government in mainland China.
Tibet of course is a huge issue, which is possibly too much of a distraction for this thread, see Tibet.org etc.
So, I want discourage too much hyperbole and try and get a realistic view of where China is going and how it will impact the rest of the world. So no 'OMG we'll all be forced to learn Mandarin!' or red-menace posts please, having said that what do you think? What pressing issues around China's development concern you, or give you cause for hope (e.g. the reduction of poverty from over 50% to 8%, the planned dark side of the moon moonbase for astronomical observations and so on) what do you hope or fear is going to happen?
What about China, then, eh? |
