Slavery and indentured servitude has hold of a greater number of people than any other time in human history. That women and girl children make up the greatest percentage of the enslaved is normalized through the pictures presented along with the article. I guess gender-based slavery is okay.
1
how long will it be before the nyts, Obama and ms Clinton will be calling for a massive airlift to bring all the displaced Chinese to the u.s.? That is the extent of their options ever time anything involving refugees happens. And of course, Anybody who disagrees will be automatically labeled a "xenophobic racist".
2
Soon, the US government will start relocating ecological migrants. They should start with the East Coast NYC and Washington DC areas and move them away from the rising seas to, say, Utah. It would solve the housing shortage and traffic problems. Each family can get a golf cart for transportation. Along with a coal fired electricity generator to power the golf carts. The relocated families will feel like they are in China.
Your concerns shouldn't be restricted to China. We have our own ghost cities in the desert sw. Subdivisions that will never be finished due to a lack of water. As we rush to add as many people as possible, for some unknown reason, we will come to look more and more like China. We're just further down the curve
When compared with the village in South Sudan, the refugee camps provided and our own disgraceful policies, the Chinese seem quite sophisticated & humane. It doesn't see that anyone is starving, though they are a bit crowded. The walls are substantial unlike the slums of Rio. The choice to not hire a self taught Dr. may be a healthy choice. Free education would probably help just as it would in the US where we allow our children to rack up unconscionable debt. It seems that all the world will need to discover a way to encourage productive ways of using the energy of the unemployed that will allow them to achieve. Funny how it's considered beneficial when we build horrid big public housing in the US and terrible when the Chinese make such a humane commitment to build substantial villages that look like our subdivisions.
2
It's stories like this and ones about the Ghost Cities that make you realize something is very wrong in China.
4
Read DiKotter, about the famine in 1958-1962. Things have been very, very wrong.
Edward Abbey on human economic systems:
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell."
It doesn't matter is one claims to be religious, a capitalist, a communist or a fascist, or some combination of the four.
Humankind's war on the environment is, by far, the most important war we are fighting...and we are losing badly.
Like domestic sheep left unattended in a fenced pasture, we humans are eating and defecating and overpopulating the very ecosystems that support life.
When the Good Shepherd of the Good News Gospels held up the lowly sheep as his model for ideal human behavior, he knew us humans well.
Unfortunately he was as clueless as the rest of us, preaching an "The end is near" ideology...rather than being playful or ironic.
I'm actually glad I won't be here for more than about 20 more years.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell."
It doesn't matter is one claims to be religious, a capitalist, a communist or a fascist, or some combination of the four.
Humankind's war on the environment is, by far, the most important war we are fighting...and we are losing badly.
Like domestic sheep left unattended in a fenced pasture, we humans are eating and defecating and overpopulating the very ecosystems that support life.
When the Good Shepherd of the Good News Gospels held up the lowly sheep as his model for ideal human behavior, he knew us humans well.
Unfortunately he was as clueless as the rest of us, preaching an "The end is near" ideology...rather than being playful or ironic.
I'm actually glad I won't be here for more than about 20 more years.
4
329,000 people whom the government had relocated from lands distressed by climate change, industrialization, poor policies and human activity to 161 hastily built villages.
As much as we'd like to blame the climate and God for all our woes, based on this statement, the real culprit is ourselves. Climate change is probably only just speeding up the inevitable result of our presence on this planet. Maybe it's really a blessing in disguise.
As much as we'd like to blame the climate and God for all our woes, based on this statement, the real culprit is ourselves. Climate change is probably only just speeding up the inevitable result of our presence on this planet. Maybe it's really a blessing in disguise.
2
So it looks like this muslim culture is based on the slavery of women.
Here's what life is like with too many humans. The real life science fiction movies is starting.
Here's what life is like with too many humans. The real life science fiction movies is starting.
Just imagine how much worse the situation would have been had the 'One-child policy' not been implemented.
3
@Ned Kelly - China phased out its one child policy by the end of 2015. Looks like they think they had made a mistake there. The problems in rural China are not related to overpopulation, but lack of investment by the government. They've chosen to invest only in cities and industry (mostly polluting types like coal and steel) at the expense of the health of their people. China has the worst pollution globally according to the World Health Organization, killing over 1 million of its people annually.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/27/more-than-million-di...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/27/more-than-million-di...
1
The photo stream shows the large housing complex and not a single vehicle in sight. Despite the raw and monotonous appearance it is not unlike many suburban communities in this country. Functional, cost effective and lacking soul.
Too many people, having too many babies, scrambling for too little housing and food, with too little resources to support the exploding population. This is what China has created. It's nobody's fault but their own.
7
Cut them some slack. At least their 'One-child policy' has held off what is a much worse population roblem in India, etc.
2
Great piece, portraying the conundrum of relocating people from their familiar setting to unfamiliar and sterile establishments without proper support structures and counseling. And this is what's been happening in various parts of China, most possibly at staggering costs both at mental and economic levels.
2
China's one child policy can be credited with diminishing a lot of the problems like the ecological migration, it will have faced and would have faced in the future. All the 25 most populated countries in the world should adopt the Chinese success story in population control. No amount of economic growth can ever offset excessive population growth and ensure that the nation is healthy and prosperous.
4
How quickly we forget. If I remember, the left, the right, and everybody else howled about the one child policy. We even had Chinese women seek asylum here so they could have more (that's in addition to the birth tourism they've done all along). Like it or not the human race is fouling the only home we will ever have. In the process we will drag virtually every other species with us. We seem to value quantity over quality in almost everything.
I see that the engineers are still designing communities. What a waste.
4
I have worked in China and have seen the 1984 mindset of the " whatever they are calling the Communist Leadership", these people are being treated like domesticated animals. In the next century they will be Soylent Green.
1
And yet THEIR government makes all of the products that WE import because WE want everything "faster, better, cheaper."
Meanwhile brainless plants like the opium poppy and the coca bush control a very large number of US.
Meanwhile brainless plants like the opium poppy and the coca bush control a very large number of US.
1
So Ms. Wang and the women of village work hard in the hot, dusty fields from dawn to dusk while Dr. Ma sits around and gives the occasional injection and other men retreat to the mosque and pray all day as their wives are probably slaving away to put food on the table.
Dr. Ma refuses a job he is offered to implement his wife's starvation wages, because the work is beneath him and it is a matter of pride.
The government abuses its people. Men force women to bear the burdens of living.
Sadly, it's the way of the world. Some years ago I read a United Nations study estimating that women did 76 percent of the work in this world. Travel anywhere across the planet and check out the gender of those crowded into the coffee and tea houses, the cafes and the bars, and you will believe that estimate.
Women hold up a whole lot more than half the sky.
Dr. Ma refuses a job he is offered to implement his wife's starvation wages, because the work is beneath him and it is a matter of pride.
The government abuses its people. Men force women to bear the burdens of living.
Sadly, it's the way of the world. Some years ago I read a United Nations study estimating that women did 76 percent of the work in this world. Travel anywhere across the planet and check out the gender of those crowded into the coffee and tea houses, the cafes and the bars, and you will believe that estimate.
Women hold up a whole lot more than half the sky.
25
We know that NYT cherry-picking a lot. I wonder whether a majority of the millions migrants are actually did so happily. Gallup polls historically show extraordinary large portions of the Chinese are happy with their life and their future direction. Am I a commie or we are brainwashed all the time?
6
@David - So where was the information from the "Gallup poll" on "Chinese"? Who exactly were they interviewing? The forced migrants in the article do not seem happy. They are given very small houses ill-suited for the size of their families (after paying a fee of $2,100 U.S.), are not given the land promised to farm but made to "lease" it to commercial farming concerns and are not paid the paltry $29/year fee in the end. How exactly do you surmise they are happy with their circumstance?
3
Private industrial concerns scorch the earth and the government picks up the tab for relocation. It's a win-win situation for everyone!
6
Those private industrial concerns are chartered by the Chinese government to their cronies, who are then able to lease plots of land from the peasants for zero annual rent.
The process is similar in the US. The BLM refuses to renew grazing permits for a family that has sustainably grazed the land for generations. BLM starts fining the family until they have a big debt to the government. They send in armed federal agents to remove the cattle from the fields. [All of this is to protect the land tortoise.] The feds kill a couple of tortoises and some of the cattle. Wacko states' rights wing folks show up with long guns and a weeks long standoff ensues.
The back story: The regional BLM manager went from Harry Reid's congressional staff to BLM, and then declined to renew the grazing permits. Harry Reid's son, agent of a Chinese oligarch, wants the land to lease for a Chinese solar farm, for which the US taxpayer will pay 30% credits and for which the Chinese owner will pay lower leasing fees than the US family would pay in grazing fees. The solar power will cost more to US consumers than the fossil fuel generated electricity it replaces. The desert tortoise is worse off with acres of solar panels compared to one or two cows per acre grazing.
Government sharpshooters go home. The story disappears.
Free speech influences the US government, even when the NYT declines to report on the corruption of their fellow travelers. Obama wants the UN to regulate the internet.
The process is similar in the US. The BLM refuses to renew grazing permits for a family that has sustainably grazed the land for generations. BLM starts fining the family until they have a big debt to the government. They send in armed federal agents to remove the cattle from the fields. [All of this is to protect the land tortoise.] The feds kill a couple of tortoises and some of the cattle. Wacko states' rights wing folks show up with long guns and a weeks long standoff ensues.
The back story: The regional BLM manager went from Harry Reid's congressional staff to BLM, and then declined to renew the grazing permits. Harry Reid's son, agent of a Chinese oligarch, wants the land to lease for a Chinese solar farm, for which the US taxpayer will pay 30% credits and for which the Chinese owner will pay lower leasing fees than the US family would pay in grazing fees. The solar power will cost more to US consumers than the fossil fuel generated electricity it replaces. The desert tortoise is worse off with acres of solar panels compared to one or two cows per acre grazing.
Government sharpshooters go home. The story disappears.
Free speech influences the US government, even when the NYT declines to report on the corruption of their fellow travelers. Obama wants the UN to regulate the internet.
In general, the majority of chinese impoverished population lives in Ningxia, Gansu provinces, and they have less option to become rich or get rid of their bad destiny, but migrate to better places with livable conditioins. So i think, the poverty alleviation initiatives waged by the central goverment and subsidized by it, have effectively lifted millions of people out of poverty. The question is how can the maintain their better off status quo? Will they fall back into poverty again once government scales back its investment on povertiy reduction?
Actually, places in Gansu and Ningxia were very fertile and productive even in Tang Danysty, over 1000 years ago, it is the overdevelopment on this place that have deprivted the the living rights of later generations. It is high time to revive living conditions in this place, but it may take at least 100 years.