More propaganda from British newspapers [you know you've been in China too long when... is below]

Just seen this gem of propoganda in the Guardian...

"As the stage lights were turned on for Shanghai's Live Earth concert yesterday, 200,000 residents of Shuyang county in Jiangsu were getting used to water again after a chemical spill halted supplies for 40 hours. There are reports of riots, demonstrations and petitions in China, reflecting its people's anger at living with pollution.

Meanwhile, Live Earth itself has been an extraordinary success; hundreds of millions have watched, heightening awareness that we must act to protect the planet. For decades blame has been heaped on the United States - 5 per cent of the world's population causing 20 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions - but now China has grown into the world's worst polluter.

In 2006 China sent 6.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere compared with the US's 5.8 billion tonnes. By comparison Britain emitted 600 million tonnes. The truth is that despite the exhortations of Al Gore and all yesterday's charismatic rock stars, unless China changes its ways, the planet will continue to get hotter.

The problem is that, as Ma Jun, China's top environmental campaigner tells The Observer today, there are no independent courts, no free media and no system of political accountability, and China's companies have no sense of corporate responsibility. Unless the communist political system changes, the Chinese people, like the rest of us, can expect its economy to remain filthy. The next Live Earth Day will have to campaign for democracy in China - to save the planet."

I draw your attention to the last paragraph in particular, which Herr Goebbels [Nazi propaganda minister] himself would have been proud of. There first sentence implies that China has none of the listed things, but Britain (and Western countries) do. England has independent courts? What about the BAE affair? Free media? How can a media be 'free' when it's primary function is to maximise profits for shareholders (not necessarily report accurately and appropriately), and when it is funded by adverts from budget airlines, car manufacturers and the like?

Political system of accountability? It takes a really well indoctrinated 'journalist' to write this rubbish and not see the problem. What does Tony Blair get for assisting the killing of thousands of people and ignoring issues people are most concered about? A job as peacemaker. And the last one shows, I think, the incredible stupidity induced by being an white middle/upper class elite. 'Corporate responsibility'. Anyone who has studied any basic economics, or even has just common sense, can see that this is a nonsense. Corporations exist to maximise profit, that is what they are. If 'being responsible' fits in with this goal, they will act accordingly. If not, they won't. Bemoaning Chinese companies for lack of responsiblity, while probably true, is a waste of time.

The last sentence means only democracy in China can save the planet. Maybe a genuine democracy, yes, but presumably the idiot writing this drivel was referring to the glorious democracy that exists in Britain, where you have one vote every 5 years from a hopelessly limited range and have no say at all on the vast majority of matters. This democracy is, also, presumably the democracy that we enjoy spreading to other countries, like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, Morocco, Uganda, Hong Kong (before 1997), etc.

And there are some more obvious problems. China has the world's biggest population, so it being the biggest polluter is hardly surprising. Also, if you took China away and put it on the Moon, the planet would still continue to get hotter. And where do a lot of the polluting factories' products go? The European market.

The article shows the usual zero understanding of local conditions. Most Chinese people over 40, and even today hundreds of million more, grew up in poverty, where getting enough to eat was the main concern. Now the country is enjoying prosperity for the first time in a long time. Yes, it's filthy and dirty, but getting a decent standard of living comes first - look at European cities' development. Do you really expect the Chinese leaders to jeopordise that?

And the idea that China needs to do something about it, but Britain doesn't really because it only produces 600 million tonnes or whatever. This is an abject shirking of responsibility. How many Chinese leaders and common people are sitting in their teahouses reading The Observer or Guardian on a Sunday morning? I suspect the answer is near to nil, thus making the exhortation within the article - 'Hey, China, clean up your act' - absolutely worthless. What would be more useful would be writing something that can have an effect i.e., something directed at the people who are reading it, i.e., British people.

Of course China should change it ways, but this sort of blame-shifting article is a) pointless and b) an example of the subtle propaganda present in Western reporting.