China's Environment

This article is discussing the growing concerns over the environmental problem that China is facing.  The first part of the article focuses mainly on hoe the Chinese government has been covering up many of its issues facing its environmental problems simply claiming them to be state classified.  It touches on the fact that although China has been growing economically, it has been doing so at a price with a great deal of strain being placed on the environment.  This is sort of what we touched on in class where as the economy grows people want more which in turn begins to cost the environment more in the long run as it produces everything people want.  The public according to the article has generally been outraged that so much is being kept from them on the state of the environment.  The second part of the article discusses a specific part of the environment that Chine needs to be concerned over and that is the soil.  China irrigates about 40% of its crops with groundwater but 90% of that groundwater is contaminated but despite these facts (gathered by  Liu Xin, a food and health expert) Dong Zheng, an attorney was denied being allowed to view information on soil samples taken around the country since around 2006 and into 2010.  The article is basically stating overall that although the Chinese government is aware of the environmental issues they do not want to disclose and information (supposedly to prevent public opinion).  They have however recently caved in response to public protests and have given out data for the amount of pollution in the air over Beijing.

I like this article for two reasons.  One is that although I was aware of the issues facing the pollution levels of the air in China, I was not aware that the soil quality was also a pressing issue. That being said I wish that the article had touched a bit more on the cause of that pollution (I can infer some reasons but do not know for certain).  The second part I liked about the article was that it touched on yet another reason why both environmental destruction and fighting environmental destruction are such an issue and that is because many countries are reluctant to admit that there is a problem for fear of what will happen if they do such as economic repercussions.  While China claims it was to keep the citizens from panicking the article pointed out that now that some of the information is out people are calmer as it was not knowing what was wrong that was causing some of the panic.

 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/51120861/ns/us_news-environment/t/china-public-anger-over-secrecy-environment/#.UUxzwDeWYng

March 22 3:07 pm