Note fromBlog host — another example of East meets West through business and trade: On October 22, 2004, according to the Associated Press, “The beer is flowing, John Fogerty is singing on the stereo and six scantily clad young Chinese women are doing the hokey-pokey. Hooters in Shanghai is open for business.”
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Guest Post by Bob Grant — publisher/editor for Speak Without Interruption, an international online magazine.
I have been traveling to China since 1998. I would not consider myself a seasoned traveler to that country—making around twenty-five visits total. When I traveled there, I usually stayed between one and two weeks. Never during any of my visits did I ever see or meet a “Red” Chinese person. I saw no one wearing an “I am a Communist” sweatshirt, ball cap, t-shirt, sunglasses, button or anything else physically labeling them a Communist. I saw no street banners, bumper stickers, storefront displays, mass gatherings or any other public notice that I was among Communists. What I was among were just people—regular people.
All of my visits were for business purposes. I met with business people only and traveled to see their factories or offices. I did not take much time to “sightsee” which was a mistake in retrospect.
With my business, I tended to visit locations where I was the “only” non-Chinese person within miles. I never felt threatened or out of place. No one ever stared at me or pointed—“Look at that non-Communist person.”
I found “most” of the people with whom I came in contact during both business meetings and other activities to be very pleasant, warm, humble, honorable, respectful and charming. I will have to admit that I did have some dealings with business people who were other than honest; however, China does not hold a monopoly on those types of business people. As a rule, I found the Chinese people with whom I had my dealings to be extremely hard working, dedicated and honest.
I had no fear going out on my own in any part of China that I visited day or night. I was never threatened or accosted in any manner.
One day I was walking around a city on a Sunday afternoon—alone. I felt a tug on my shirtsleeve and turned to find two young girls at my side. One asked me if they could speak with me—in good English. I did not suspect their reasons for talking with me to be anything other than honorable, so I said, “Sure.”
The girls were students at the university and their English professor had given them an assignment to stop, interview and take a photo with any “Westerner”. They said they had been looking for hours and I was the only “Westerner” they had seen. I was happy to answer their questions—one of the girls took my photo with the other girl. They thanked me, and went on their way. These were just two young students with an assignment, and I felt honored that I was able to help them complete it.
Perhaps I am being a bit naive—I was obviously around Communists during my visits to China, but I never felt that I had really “met” one. I had been fortunate enough to meet people from another country and culture, and they had accepted me at face value. I enjoyed each one of my visits to China and care a great deal for China and its people.
I truly believe if people could meet and work with other people around the world that many of the world’s problems would be solved. Perhaps this is a bit Pollyanna of me but this is how I see things from my myopic point of view and experiences, with China and its people, and I will stand by them.
Note from Blog host – If you plan to do business in China, I recommend visiting the China Law Blog first.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
Note from Blog host — another example of East meets West through business and trade:According to Slate,, “The first Chinese eateries in America, known as ‘chow chows’, arrived in California in the mid-19th century to serve Cantonese laborers.” In addition, NPR.org says, “There are about 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the US (today) — more than the number of McDonald’s and Taco Bells combined.”
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Guest Post by Bob Grant — publisher/editor forSpeak Without Interruption, an international onlinemagazine.
How can you embrace an enemy of the USA? More important–why would you? If these questions have not been outright asked of me–they have been implied. Why I chose to speak highly of China, and its people, is something that I do willingly and with pride.
I am not the Manchurian Candidate. I was never brainwashed during my visits there. I was not tortured or forced into my feelings in any way. Subliminal messages were not piped into my hotel room at night. I did not have bamboo shoots shoved under my fingernails. I was not drugged or impaired in any way unless it was done willingly by drinking too much of that fine Chinese beer.
Within my small circle of business contacts, experiences, and associations I would say it is Western business people who are trying to brain wash the Chinese. As I developed my business relationships, I have read of those that experienced failures mainly because Western companies tried to “Westernize” their Chinese business partners rather than adapting to their Chinese partners way of doing business.
Maybe it has been different for others who have done business within China but for me, personally, my successes came from letting the Chinese conduct business in “their way”, and I tried to educate my customers in their methods and ways. I won’t say it was not frustrating at times—in fact, it was frustrating most of the time.
However, in the end, it was what worked best for me while others failed. Honor and “saving face” are very important to the Chinese—I tried not to put any of my associates in a position that threatened either.
Again, just from my experience, I have to say that people from any part of the world can work together to achieve a common goal if all parties can be flexible and understanding. From my perspective, this is the true receipt for success among the world’s population.
Note from Blog host – If you plan to do business in China, I recommend visiting the China Law Blog first.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
Note from Blog host — an example of East meets West through business and trade: General Motors and Ford captured four spots among China’s best-selling passenger cars in 2011, with the Buick Excelle commanding top spot with sales of 253,514 units. Source: Inside Line.com
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Guest Post by Bob Grant — publisher/editor for Speak Without Interruption, an international online magazine.
I have been traveling to China since 1998 and had a business and personal relationship there since 2003. I have a business that is based on these relationships built up over the years—they continue today.
I am not a young man—but even at 64, I know that the relationships I have made there are once in a lifetime treasures. I have found China and its people to be nothing like they are portrayed in the media.
I will—as best I can recall — write about specific experiences and places, I have visited. Unfortunately, the original computer that I had when I started my China business fried its hard drive, and although I was warned, I never backed up my material so I have lost many excellent photos. However, I have enough remaining pictures to tell a story or two.
One of our US government officials reportedly made a comment with the word “retarded” in it. There was also an attempt to make a joke using “Special Olympics” on a TV show in the past. Why do people say the things they do? Why have I said some of things I have said? When I have made comments at the expense of others, I thought either it was funny or it made me feel important in some perverse way. As I have gotten older, experience has taught me to think before I speak—at least a little more than I did in my younger years. What someone says as a casual statement—or an attempt to make a joke—can offend others on a multitude of levels.
There are a little over 1.3 billion people in China from the figures I have seen. I have had people say to me, “With that many people, how do you tell them apart? They all look alike.”
After having an association with specific Chinese people since 1998, I take great offense when someone says something like this to my face or within earshot. To me, they do not all look alike. They may all have similar physical features but I see each person I have met in my business dealings as a singular and unique individual just as I would feel about anyone I met throughout the world. As you meet people—speak with them—get to know them, I think everyone has personal features, mannerisms, personalities that make them different from other people in the world.
In terms of my feelings for China, and its people, it is only based on those who I have met personally. As I view it, there are values that I have found all Chinese possess—the reverence of family and respect for their elders. I wish these values were more evident in the US.
With 1.3 billion people milling around China, how can they have these values when there are so many of them? I once worked with a product that was to replace the toxic cleaner Nitric Acid. In most instances, the shipping tanks in the ocean liners have to be cleaned out after they are emptied.
They send “Chinese People” into these tanks to spray them out. One contact actually said, “There are so many Chinese that when one dies from being exposed to the Nitric Acid there are a million more to take their place.” It was all I could do to keep my hands from going around his neck or punching his lights out — being older at the time, I felt he was not worth the hassle.
I believe the respect for family—and elders—in China is not something just confined to my small group of acquaintances there. I think this is something that is countrywide, and I feel this is a virtue beyond description. During one of my visits, my friend and primary associate invited me to a party to honor his new young son.
We held this event in a large, private room within a very nice restaurant. There were many people there, and as I have written regarding other situations, I was again the only non-Chinese in the room. I felt completely at ease and extremely honored he would invite me to such an important “family event”. The photo above shows me with my associate, his wife, his mother, and his new young son. I did, and still do, feel like part of their family. To me they remain friends, family and associates, and they “certainly” do not all look alike to me!
Note from Blog host – If you plan to do business in China, I recommend visiting the China Law Blog first.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
Weir’s piece is a long one but there are some telling points I’m going to share before I launch into a series of guest posts from an American that did business in China successfully for a number of years. Each one of these guest posts stands alone but provides a glimpse into another person’s experience doing business in China.
However, in 2010, Apple was crucified in the Western media due to a number of suicide at Foxconn, which is the Taiwan owned company that assembles/manufactures about 90 percent of Apple’s products. If you were not aware of it before, many Taiwanese do business in China and Foxconn is an example.
In his piece, Weir said, “They (the suicides) went up during a three-month span in the spring of 2010, when nine Foxconn workers jumped to their deaths. A total of 18 Foxconn employees took their own lives, or tried to, in recent years and given the company’s massive size, it is a suicide rate well below China’s national average. But when people started jumping in a cluster, Woo tells me that Tim Cook rallied a team of psychiatric experts for advice. They suggested nets, on the chance it might save impulsive jumpers.
“But Foxconn wasn’t Apple’s only problem. The company says they stopped a supplier named Wintek from using a toxic chemical to clean iPhone screens after 137 workers were injured…
“Apple says they have been ordering audits of its suppliers since 2006, and since 2007 have been publishing the sometimes disturbing results…
“It is a Monday after a Chinese holiday, and since many overworked migrants will just stay home, the people who lined up before dawn know that the chances of getting an assembly line job are better than average. And in a country of 1.3 billion, where jobs are scarce, getting there first matters; especially for their families back in the village, where most of their paycheck will end up…
“Starting salary is around $285 a month or $1.78 an hour. And even with the maximum 80 hours of overtime a month, the Chinese government considers them too poor to withdraw any payroll taxes…
“We mostly found people who face their days through soul-crushing boredom and deep fatigue. Some complained of being overworked, others complained of being under worked and almost all said they were underpaid…
“We do have labor unions at Foxconn … but it’s not a freely elected labor union yet. I expect to see that in the next year or two, they will become more like a collective bargaining union, and they will be freely elected. In fact, I see that some legislations in more progressive provinces (of China) would require labor unions to be sitting on the board of companies…”
The exclusive full report from ABC’s “Nightline” will air Tuesday, February 21 at 11:35 p.m. US ET/PT. This link to Hulu is where much of the full episodes of “Nightline” are posted for online streaming the day after the original broadcast.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
I find it difficult to believe that a disabled American vet calling himself Chicomaniac would be posting comments from a remote location in China’s poorest province. However, that’s where two comments from this second cyber-bully assault (in recent months) may have come from.
I deleted the two comments from the posts they were intended for and added them to the appropriate location on this Blog – where the first cyber-bully attack is posted.
In fact, if you compare Chicomaniac’s two comments with those from the first cyber-bully assault, you may recognize similarities in the writing style and use of language, which is why I have posted them as a comment on the same page under the heading of Another Cyber Bully. If you visit this page, you may scroll up to see the comments from the first assault. This second cyber bully may be a copy cat.
Bully Online says, “The stalker exhibits a familiar pattern of behaviour. Stalking often starts as a result of rejection; rejection rage and abandonment rage motivate the stalker to seek revenge through a predictable pattern of stalking behavior. The stalker, usually a loner and socially inept, becomes obsessed with their target and bombards them with messages, emails, gifts, or abuse. The stalking behaviour can last for years and the intensity of abuse increases over time. The abuse, initially consisting of psychological violence, often escalates and culminates in physical violence…
“The Vengeful stalker is the most dangerous type whose mission is to get even and/or take revenge. Mostly male, he has a grudge and he’s going to do something about it…”
Chicomaniac said, “As a disabled vet I would like to add that the wrong guys made it out of ‘Nam and I hope when your time comes those who believe in America and what We stand for are allowed to have a chat with you.”
In an attempt to identify this cyber bully, I conducted several IP searches and traced the location to where those comments may have originated, and it turned out to be an organization that calls itself Xin Xin Ling located in northwest China.
The coordinates for the IP address were at Latitude 35 and Longitude 105 located near Lanzhou between Dingxi and Tianshui in the Ningxi Hui Autonomous Region northwest of Xian in a desolate region.
“This sparsely settled mostly desert region lies in the vast plain of the Yellow River in the north, which has been irrigated for centuries. Over the years, an extensive system of canals was built. Extensive land reclamation and irrigation projects have made increased cultivation possible.” Source: Wiki-Ningxia
Chicomaniac’s IP address was 118.194.218.153. The host, Yin Yin Ling, also used the same IP address, and I used My IP Test.com to trace the location.
To learn more about the people that live in the region, I did a bit of research and learned that the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region covers an area of 51,800 square kilometers.
Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is the unique provincial Hui autonomous region in China, and it had a population of 6.1265 million in 2007, among which, about 1.5 million were from the Hui, Muslim ethnic group — therefore, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is often called the “Province of Islam” and “Province of Muslims” by foreign travelers.
I learned that among the Hui, local activists have not called for complete separatism or absolute independence, but generally express concern over environmental degradation, which may explain the motivation behind the comment that mentioned Bosshard.
In addition, I traced Bosshard’s IP address [207.204.249.151] to California at an address off Oscedia Lane, Whitfield Ct., and George Ct. near Adam Roger’s Park in San Francisco at Latitude 37.7312 and Longitude -122.2836. Bosshard’s host is Reliable Hosting.com. Bosshard may be a conservative, evangelical Christian that spent some time in China.
This is what I discovered about Chicomaniac. He or she may live in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in China and might be a Muslim. There may be a connection to one of the Islamic separatist movements in China and/or with a group that is concerned about environmental pollution.
I doubt if Chicomaniac is a disabled American veteran that fought in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. However, maybe he or she is a disabled Chinese veteran that fought in Korea, Vietnam, India, Tibet or against Uyghur separatists in Xianjiang.
The reason I say this is that a disabled American veteran would have his or her medical care through the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as I do, which is only available in the US and its territories but not in China. The VA provides patient care and federal benefits to veterans and their dependents.
Chicomaniac also said, “ps Archie Bunker inc. just like they told you on the chinadaily forums, shorten your prolonged missives they do nothing but put us to sleep.”
I recall that the only person that said this was the first cyber bully , and he wrote it on this Blog.
I’ve never left a comment on the China Daily Forums. In fact, I cannot recall leaving any comments on any Blog forums in China. In addition, Archie Bunker was a character in a TV sitcom that went on the air in 1971 and went off the air in 1983.
Archie was a complex character. Along with his overt bigotry and ignorance – he had a paranoid fear of Black Power; Communists, and the Mafia. He was also portrayed as hardworking, a loving father and husband — basically decent and, rather than being motivated by genuine malice (as cyber bullies are), was merely a product of the era and working-class environment in which he had been raised.
Most Americans at least 35 or older should have known these facts.
I suspect that Chicomaniac was born after Archie Bunker went off the air and/or may never have seen the show. He may also be disappointed that Bosshard’s comment appeared in the previous series of posts several times, which focused on global environmental soil and water pollution instead of specifically on China.
If you decide to compare the two cyber bullies, you may find them at Another Cyber Bully.
I wonder what members of Al-Qaeda say about the United States on Internet forums. I doubt that there is much of a difference between them and this Chicomaniac. After all, Al-Qaeda’s goals are to destroy anyone that does not agree with them using any means possible.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
The CIA Factbook says of Russia’s ‘Environment – current issues’ that “air pollution from heavy industry, emissions of coal-fired electric plants, and transportation in major cities; industrial, municipal, and agricultural pollution of inland waterways and seacoasts; deforestation; soil erosion; soil contamination from improper application of agricultural chemicals; scattered areas of sometimes intense radioactive contamination; groundwater contamination from toxic waste; urban solid waste management; abandoned stocks of obsolete pesticides”
Toxic Dzerjinsk
The CIA says Russia’s land area covers 16,377,742 sq km. Arable land covers 7.17% of that area while permanent crops cover only 0.11% with irrigated land covering 43,460 square km.
As one of the most polluted cities in the world, “Dzerzhinsk, Russia’s toxic groundwater contamination has reduced the average life expectancy to 42 for men and 47 for women.” Source: World Resource Institute
Pollution Issues.com says says, “An area of Karabache, Russia, where soil has been poisoned by high concentrations of lead, arsenic, nickel, cobalt, and cadmium.”
The City That Kills It’s People
Wikipedia says of Russia’s environment and water, “While Russia possesses vast mineral and energy wealth, this does not come without some price both to Russia and to the greater globe. Particularly, oil and gas extraction exacts a heavy cost to the health of the land and people. Drilling waste water, mud, and sludges are accumulated, annual volumes have been estimated at 1.7 million tons of chemical reagents contaminating 25 million cubic meters of topsoil.”
Crude Oil Pollution Exposure Kills Whole Families with Cancer in Russia
Country Data.com says, “Russia devotes about 10 percent of its land to agriculture, but land quality is declining. Erosion carries away as much as 1.5 billion tons of topsoil every year. In the past twenty-five years, Russia’s arable land area has decreased by an estimated 33 million hectares, with much of that loss attributable to poor land management. Experts fear that agricultural land management may deteriorate further under Russia’s new land privatization as individual farmers try to squeeze short-term profit from their new property
“In Russia an estimated 74 million hectares of agricultural land have been contaminated by industrial toxic agents, pesticides, and agricultural chemicals. Considerable land also is lost in the extraction of mineral resources. Unauthorized dumping of hazardous industrial, chemical, and household waste takes land out of production. Flooding is a problem near the Caspian Sea and in Stavropol’ Territory, where the construction of reservoirs has removed land from use.”
Dear author, what we find most annoying in the behavior of others are those same behaviors of which we are equally guilty. You appear to dislike: lies, half truths and manipulation.
Regarding water-
You have much to learn. Boiling water is good for killing bacteria and the like but does nothing to stave off the ill effects of heavy metals like copper, lead and the like. According to the BBC, at least 10% of all Chinese land is contaminated with heavy metals, which are not rendered inert by boiling. Thus, boiling water in China does no good when these elements are present.
When you made your comment, were you engaging in ““willful deception and a refusal to play by the rules?” when you state that boiling Chinese water is an anti-dote?
And an aside, do you personally drink the same water as the folks in Guizhou or Gansu, or do you purchase bottled water, a thing many of them cannot do?
As for your forgone conclusion that the need for water is greater than that of religion, I would disagree. Freedom of religion is paramount to many souls, just ask the Tibetans who will take their own lives in order to achieve such an end. If I were forced to give up my religion for water, I would not do so.
Please do not pretend to know the mind of the masses when yours may not be as open as you may believe.
This site has much information, but the author, like the Jesuits of old appears to have conjured up a China that he wishes us to believe in. The brutal reality of the communist regime and havoc it brings to its people can best be understood by reading books like Empire of Lies, The Beijing Consensus, Poorly Made in China, The Party, and a host of others.
I will not return to this comment nor website but would like to offer this question:
If you have lived in China, and all of your readers, then you truly know the truth of this place. And if you truly know the truth of this place, then do you think it’s right to knowingly deceive the people about it?
God bless and keep all His children safe and informed.
_____________________________________________
Note from Blog Host: And when China announced that 10% of its agricultural land was contaminated with heavy metals and the CCP plans to do something about it, the critics (such as Bosshard) condemn and criticize. It is a shame!
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
The Arlington Institute says, “Given that India does not regulate water usage, it should come as no surprise that there is also little regulation on pollution and even less enforcement of what regulations do exist. Millions have been spent on pollution clean-up, but no one knows where it went (most likely into the pockets of corrupt government officials) because no changes have been seen.
Contaminated Water Sickens Villagers in Eastern India
“In 2005, a government audit indicted the Jal Board for having spent $200 million on pollution clean-up achieving essentially no tangible results. A combination of sewage disposal, industrial effluents, chemicals from farm runoffs, arsenic and fluoride has rendered India’s rivers unfit for drinking, irrigation, and even industrial purposes.
“New Delhi alone produces 3.6 million cubic meters of sewage every day, but, due to poor management less than half is effectively treated. The remaining untreated waste is dumped into the Yamuna River…
India Water Pollution
“Every river in India is polluted to some degree. The water quality in underground wells violates the desired levels of dissolved oxygen and coliform, the presence of which is one measure of filth, in addition to having high concentrations of toxic metals, fluoride, and nitrates.” Source: World Bank Report on Water in India.
“India is facing a looming water crisis that has implications not only for its 1.1 billion people, but for the entire globe. India’s demand for water is growing even as it stretches its supplies. Water infrastructure is crumbling, preventing the government from being able to supply drinking water to its citizens. Pollution is rampant due to unfettered economic growth, poor waste management laws and practices.”
India’s sanitation crises
The CIA Factbook says, India’s land surface covers 2,973,193 square km. Arable land covers 48.83% of this area and permanent crops cover 2.8%.
The CIA says, ‘Environmental – current issues’ are, “deforestation; soil erosion; overgrazing; desertification; air pollution from industrial effluents and vehicle emissions; water pollution from raw sewage and runoff of agricultural pesticides; tap water is not potable throughout the country; huge and growing population is overstraining natural resources…
“Little economic reform took place in 2011 largely due to corruption scandals that have slowed legislative work…
“India has many long-term challenges that it has not yet fully addressed, including widespread poverty, inadequate physical and social infrastructure, limited non-agricultural employment opportunities, and insufficient access to quality basic and higher education, and accommodating rural-to-urban migration.”
Dear author, what we find most annoying in the behavior of others are those same behaviors of which we are equally guilty. You appear to dislike: lies, half truths and manipulation.
Regarding water-
You have much to learn. Boiling water is good for killing bacteria and the like but does nothing to stave off the ill effects of heavy metals like copper, lead and the like. According to the BBC, at least 10% of all Chinese land is contaminated with heavy metals, which are not rendered inert by boiling. Thus, boiling water in China does no good when these elements are present.
When you made your comment, were you engaging in ““willful deception and a refusal to play by the rules?” when you state that boiling Chinese water is an anti-dote?
And an aside, do you personally drink the same water as the folks in Guizhou or Gansu, or do you purchase bottled water, a thing many of them cannot do?
As for your forgone conclusion that the need for water is greater than that of religion, I would disagree. Freedom of religion is paramount to many souls, just ask the Tibetans who will take their own lives in order to achieve such an end. If I were forced to give up my religion for water, I would not do so.
Please do not pretend to know the mind of the masses when yours may not be as open as you may believe.
This site has much information, but the author, like the Jesuits of old appears to have conjured up a China that he wishes us to believe in. The brutal reality of the communist regime and havoc it brings to its people can best be understood by reading books like Empire of Lies, The Beijing Consensus, Poorly Made in China, The Party, and a host of others.
I will not return to this comment nor website but would like to offer this question:
If you have lived in China, and all of your readers, then you truly know the truth of this place. And if you truly know the truth of this place, then do you think it’s right to knowingly deceive the people about it?
God bless and keep all His children safe and informed.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
Bosshard said in the comment, “According to the BBC, at least 10% of all Chinese land is contaminated with heavy metals, which are not rendered inert by boiling. Thus, boiling water in China does no good when these elements are present.”
I question who reported that China’s contaminated land was 10% of all the land or just the farmland that is irrigated. Often, the way a story about China is reported, may taint the public’s opinions.
Tree Hugger.com reported on this topic and says, “Though no doubt much is lost in translation, this story just out of China, carried by AFPand other outlets, asserts that, “About 10 percent of China’s farmland contains excessive levels of heavy metals due to contaminated water and poisonous waste seeping into the soil, state media said Monday, citing a government survey.
“Accuracy of the 10% assessment is probably quite low; but, point taken. I doubt it possible for consumer product factory emissions to have created a situation where 10% of the land surface was evenly contaminated by heavy metals. A very different interpretation makes more intuitive sense.
“It’s Coal.
“Lead mercury and cadmium are commonly found in coal, and Chinese coal is notoriously heavily laced with toxic metals.”
So, the answer to my question was that this was reported by China’s state media and then the Western media ran with the story until Bosshard says that 10% of all of China’s land was contaminated when it fact it was only 10% of the farmland.
If you watch this video, you will discover that water pollution is no secret in China.
Then the next question I have is where is most of this pollution taking place. Well, the CIA Factbook says China’s land area covers 9,569,901 square km. Arable land covers 14.86% of that and permanent crops are on 1.27% of the land. Irrigated land covers 641,410 sq km.
For ‘Environment – current issues’, the CIA says, “air pollution (greenhouse gases, sulfur dioxide particulates) from reliance on coal produces acid rain; water shortages, particularly in the north; water pollution from untreated wastes; deforestation; estimated loss of one-fifth of agricultural land since 1949 to soil erosion and economic development; desertification…”
What is China doing about ground water pollution control? So far, only the United States and Europe are working on this challenge. However, according to the CCP, China is joining the battle to clean up contaminated ground water.
On November 8, 2011, the Ministry of Water Resources of the People’s Republic of China made public that “China has introduced the country’s first national plan on groundwater pollution control, urging a combination of legal, economic, technological and administrative measures for groundwater protection.”
“The ministries of environmental protection, land and resources, and water resources announced Friday at a press conference that the State Council, or China’s Cabinet, has already approved the national plan on groundwater pollution control for 2011-2020.
“China will invest a total of 34.66 billion yuan (around 5.48 billion U.S. dollars) on the prevention and treatment of pollution in the country’s groundwater in 2011-2020, according to the plan.
“The money will go to six categories of projects, including survey, prevention, remediation of groundwater pollution, control of pollution in underground drinking water sources, agriculture-related groundwater pollution control, and underground water environment monitoring capacity building.
“Currently, municipal sewage, household garbage, industrial wastes and seepages of fertilizers and pesticides have caused glaring pollution to groundwater in some parts of China, seriously affecting economic production and people’s lives, according to ministry officials at the conference.”
That doesn’t sound like some sort of dirty CCP secret to me. The reason the Western media knows about China’s ground water contamination, is because China announced it. The China Daily also reported this story October 29, 2011.
However, public knowledge of ground water contamination in China goes back twenty years. In addition, “According to a scientific sampling, 150 million mi (100,000 square kilometers) of China’s cultivated land have been polluted, with contaminated water being used to irrigate a further 32.5 million mi (21,670 square kilometers) and another 2 million mi (1,300 square kilometers) covered or destroyed by solid waste. In total, the area accounts for one-tenth of China’s cultivatable land, and is mostly in economically developed areas.” Source: Wikipedia – Soil Contamination
Zhou Shengxian, director of State Environmental Protection Administration, announced on July 2006, “It is estimated that nationwide 12 million tons of grain are polluted each year by heavy metals that have found their way into soil. Direct economic losses exceed 20 billion yuan (about 2.5 billion U.S. dollars). Soil pollution has worsened. According to incomplete statistics, about 150 million mu (10 million hectares) of arable land in China has been polluted.”
In addition, China has joined with Alterra to coordinate a major national multidisciplinary programme to map and contain the environmental risks in the Yangtze delta and the Pearl River delta… The goal of this collaborative project is to link together the various projects and enhance the scientific input. Joint research is being conducted into the use of crops to reduce the risks posed by areas of land contaminated with heavy metals.”
The partners in this project are:
Soil Science Centre, Soil Chemistry and Nature team, Alterra (coordination)
Soil Quality chair section, Environmental Sciences Department, Wageningen University
Institute of Soil Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISSCAS), Nanjing, China
Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic (informal participation with own national budgets)
Bosshard was wrong when he claimed there was deceit here.
Dear author, what we find most annoying in the behavior of others are those same behaviors of which we are equally guilty. You appear to dislike: lies, half truths and manipulation.
Regarding water-
You have much to learn. Boiling water is good for killing bacteria and the like but does nothing to stave off the ill effects of heavy metals like copper, lead and the like. According to the BBC, at least 10% of all Chinese land is contaminated with heavy metals, which are not rendered inert by boiling. Thus, boiling water in China does no good when these elements are present.
When you made your comment, were you engaging in ““willful deception and a refusal to play by the rules?” when you state that boiling Chinese water is an anti-dote?
And an aside, do you personally drink the same water as the folks in Guizhou or Gansu, or do you purchase bottled water, a thing many of them cannot do?
As for your forgone conclusion that the need for water is greater than that of religion, I would disagree. Freedom of religion is paramount to many souls, just ask the Tibetans who will take their own lives in order to achieve such an end. If I were forced to give up my religion for water, I would not do so.
Please do not pretend to know the mind of the masses when yours may not be as open as you may believe.
This site has much information, but the author, like the Jesuits of old appears to have conjured up a China that he wishes us to believe in. The brutal reality of the communist regime and havoc it brings to its people can best be understood by reading books like Empire of Lies, The Beijing Consensus, Poorly Made in China, The Party, and a host of others.
I will not return to this comment nor website but would like to offer this question:
If you have lived in China, and all of your readers, then you truly know the truth of this place. And if you truly know the truth of this place, then do you think it’s right to knowingly deceive the people about it?
God bless and keep all His children safe and informed.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
The CIA Factbook says the total land area of Canada is 9,903,507 square km and arable land covers 4.57% of that area with permanent crops on 0.65% of that land or 64,372 square km.
For the ‘Environment – curent issues,’ the CIA says, “air pollution and resulting acid rain severely affecting lakes and damaging forests; metal smelting, coal-burning utilities, and vehicle emissions impacting on agricultural and forest productivity; ocean waters becoming contaminated due to agricultural, industrial, mining, and forestry activities”
Tar Sands Oil Extraction – The Dirty Truth
“Once the bitumen from the Tar Sands has been mined out and Fort McMurray becomes the,” Detroit of the North” The Cree will be left with the effects of polluted rivers, Tailings Ponds, a naked landscape that was once Boreal forest and the steam injection operations that have polluted the groundwater, not to mention the health complications brought by all of this pollution.” Source: The Tar Sands video
In a piece titled. North America Shifts Pollution from Air to Land, the Environmental News Service says, “Factories, electric utilities, hazardous waste management facilities and coal mines in the United States and Canada generated almost 3.4 million metric tonnes of toxic chemical waste in 1999, shows an annual report from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America. The wastes included 269,000 tonnes of chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive problems…
“The five year trend shows a slight overall change in the total of toxic chemicals generated, but big changes in how those pollutants are handled. The North American manufacturing sector’s 25 percent (153,000 tonnes) reduction in releases to air was offset by a 25 percent (33,000 tonnes) increase in on site releases to land and a 35 percent (58,000 tonnes) increase in off site releases, mostly to landfills.”
EcoJustice says, “Right now Canada has no national standards for keeping our drinking water safe. Unlike other countries such as the United States and Australia that have adopted legally binding federal standards to protect every citizen’s right to safe drinking water, Canada continues to leave it up to each province and territory to set their own.
“The result? Canadians are subject to a patchwork of standards that range from excellent to abysmal. This means that how safe your water is depends on where you live.”
Dear author, what we find most annoying in the behavior of others are those same behaviors of which we are equally guilty. You appear to dislike: lies, half truths and manipulation.
Regarding water-
You have much to learn. Boiling water is good for killing bacteria and the like but does nothing to stave off the ill effects of heavy metals like copper, lead and the like. According to the BBC, at least 10% of all Chinese land is contaminated with heavy metals, which are not rendered inert by boiling. Thus, boiling water in China does no good when these elements are present.
When you made your comment, were you engaging in ““willful deception and a refusal to play by the rules?” when you state that boiling Chinese water is an anti-dote?
And an aside, do you personally drink the same water as the folks in Guizhou or Gansu, or do you purchase bottled water, a thing many of them cannot do?
As for your forgone conclusion that the need for water is greater than that of religion, I would disagree. Freedom of religion is paramount to many souls, just ask the Tibetans who will take their own lives in order to achieve such an end. If I were forced to give up my religion for water, I would not do so.
Please do not pretend to know the mind of the masses when yours may not be as open as you may believe.
This site has much information, but the author, like the Jesuits of old appears to have conjured up a China that he wishes us to believe in. The brutal reality of the communist regime and havoc it brings to its people can best be understood by reading books like Empire of Lies, The Beijing Consensus, Poorly Made in China, The Party, and a host of others.
I will not return to this comment nor website but would like to offer this question:
If you have lived in China, and all of your readers, then you truly know the truth of this place. And if you truly know the truth of this place, then do you think it’s right to knowingly deceive the people about it?
God bless and keep all His children safe and informed.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
I’ve known about heavy metals, pesticides, drugs/medicine, chemicals, etc. in America’s water supply for some time, which is why we distill the water we drink at home. However, when I wrote Water, the Democracy versus the Authoritarian Republic, the focus was on which country was doing a better job supplying drinking water to its people—India or China—the topic wasn’t about water contamination, which I knew to be more of a global challenge due to our modern lifestyles.
Before I turn to America’s contaminated soil and fresh water , I want to point out that China’s enemies and/or critics only want to focus on China because their goal is to demonize China and the Chinese and they cannot achieve this when we compare an issue in China such as contaminated soil and fresh water with the same issue in other countries.
Clean Water Act in America
The total land area of America is 9,161,966 square km. and arable land covers 18.01% of that. Irrigated land covers about 230,000 sq km.
The CIA Factbook says of ‘Environment – current issues’ - “air pollution resulting in acid rain in both the US and Canada; the US is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels; water pollution from runoff of pesticides and fertilizers; limited natural freshwater resources in much of the western part of the country require careful management; desertification.”
The New York Times reported in 2009, “Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the E.P.A. An estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria, including those stemming from human and animal waste, according to a studypublished last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.”
Supreme Court Restricts Clean Water Act in the United States
Red Orbit.com, which is an education reference site, says, “Today’s soil contamination is a direct result of man-made chemicals or other changes in nature’s soil environment. This contamination most commonly occurs from underground storage tanks bursting, use of pesticides, discarding oil and fuel illegally, leakage of dirty surface water, draining of wastes from landfalls and knowingly dumping industrial wastes into the soil. The most widespread chemicals found are petroleum hydrocarbons, solvents, common pesticides, lead and additional heavy metals. This development of contamination is compared with the quantity of industrializations and the severity of chemical usage… Most of the contaminated land has been identified in North America and Western Europe. A legal foundation has been put in place to recognize and handle this environmental issue in many of their countries.
The Truth about Bottled Water – if you are not watching the videos, you are not getting all the facts.
“The United States may have one of the most massive soil contaminations, but is a leader in outlining and executing standards for cleanup. While other industrialized countries have an abundance of contaminated sites, they do not have the remediation the United States has put into place. Thousands of sites undergo cleanup in the U.S. each year. Cleanup is performed by using microbes, excavation and a more costly extraction or air stripping.”
“The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that there are more than 450,000 polluted sites like these existing in the U.S… Applications of intensive agricultural techniques, which involve the continuous overuse of fertilizers in any form, have been proven to cause salinity in soil quality due to an imbalance in the soil’s nutrient contents. Accordingly, more than a million hectares (10,000 square miles) of agricultural land have become unfit for the growth and production of agricultural crops.” Source: Bright Bulb.com
Contaminated Drinking Water in California
“In USA, there are 600 000 brown fields which are contaminated with heavy metals and need reclamation (McKeehan, 2000). According to government statistics, coal mine has contaminated more than 19 000 km of US streams and rivers from heavy metals, acid mine drainage and polluted sediments. More than 100 000 ha of cropland, 55 000 ha of pasture and 50 000 ha of forest have been lost (Ragnarsdottir and Hawkins, 2005).” Source: Pub Med Central, Journal of Zhejiang University Science, China, March 2008
For a better understanding of what is going on in America, I turn you over to Erin Brockovich for a sampling.
The real Erin Brockovich [Julia Roberts played her in the 2000 movie, Erin Brockovich] has been an American consumer advocate for 19 years and in her own words says, “She is still fighting!”
Brockovich says, “As early as 1965 this company knew that the facility in Hinkley, California was contaminating the ground water with high levels of hexavalent chromium and they chose to cover it up.”
Her current work includes the Gulf Oil Spill. She says, ” I am very concerned about the Oil Dispersant “Corexit” that is being used because some reports are coming in about people getting very sick.”
For the Environment, she says, “There is a new twist in the Cameron, Missouri cancer clusters and activist, Erin Brockovich. Families of cancer patients are now suing a hide tanning plant 37 miles away in St. Joseph.”
You may also want to see “America’s Top 10 Worst Man Made Environmental Disasters” at Earth First.com, or this CBS report on A Toxic Cover Up? by Rebecca Leung at 60 Minutes.
Leung says, “It happened in October of 2000, when 300 million gallons of coal slurry – thick pudding-like waste from mining operations – flooded land, polluted rivers and destroyed property in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. The slurry contained hazardous chemicals, including arsenic and mercury.”
Dear author, what we find most annoying in the behavior of others are those same behaviors of which we are equally guilty. You appear to dislike: lies, half truths and manipulation.
Regarding water-
You have much to learn. Boiling water is good for killing bacteria and the like but does nothing to stave off the ill effects of heavy metals like copper, lead and the like. According to the BBC, at least 10% of all Chinese land is contaminated with heavy metals, which are not rendered inert by boiling. Thus, boiling water in China does no good when these elements are present.
When you made your comment, were you engaging in ““willful deception and a refusal to play by the rules?” when you state that boiling Chinese water is an anti-dote?
And an aside, do you personally drink the same water as the folks in Guizhou or Gansu, or do you purchase bottled water, a thing many of them cannot do?
As for your forgone conclusion that the need for water is greater than that of religion, I would disagree. Freedom of religion is paramount to many souls, just ask the Tibetans who will take their own lives in order to achieve such an end. If I were forced to give up my religion for water, I would not do so.
Please do not pretend to know the mind of the masses when yours may not be as open as you may believe.
This site has much information, but the author, like the Jesuits of old appears to have conjured up a China that he wishes us to believe in. The brutal reality of the communist regime and havoc it brings to its people can best be understood by reading books like Empire of Lies, The Beijing Consensus, Poorly Made in China, The Party, and a host of others.
I will not return to this comment nor website but would like to offer this question:
If you have lived in China, and all of your readers, then you truly know the truth of this place. And if you truly know the truth of this place, then do you think it’s right to knowingly deceive the people about it?
God bless and keep all His children safe and informed.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
