« PlayStation 3 madness: blame Sony | Main | New Chris Mooney book »
Saturday, November 18, 2006
China in the NY Times
China is my latest pet interest. Never before have we seen such an important and immense expansion of population, economics, and influence. The "Waking Giant" is not only being thrust into the global economy, perhaps before it is fully prepared to, but it is having drastic effects on the natural environment as well. Related to China's entrance into the global economy are its cultural and historic resources. China is perhaps the most culturally rich yet understudied regions of the world in terms of archaeology and many predict that in the coming decades, the most important discoveries will occur within its borders. There's no reason to doubt that and now is as good a time is any to take notice.
This weekend, two great pieces from the New York Times:
China’s African Adventure
Angola is a very, very poor country, but it is also an extremely rich one, for immense deposits of oil lie under the South Atlantic Ocean within its territorial waters. Thanks to the growing appetites of several developing nations, China in particular, that need oil to sustain the furious expansion of their economies, last year Angola, which otherwise has almost no economy, had more than $10 billion to play with. And it has used that money to pay more advanced countries to rebuild its infrastructure. This vision — call it “Development by China” — looks like a catastrophic mistake to the Western experts and institutions that have scrutinized, invested in and at times despaired of Angola.
And yet Development by China looks more like Africa’s future than its past. Angola is not alone in having choices, for the high price of oil has begun to transform the prospects of African countries once viewed simply as basket cases. Earlier this month, Nigeria, the continent’s oil giant, signed an $8.3 billion agreement with China to build an 1,800-mile railway. Oil production in Africa is expected to double over the next 20 years while it stays flat or declines in much of the rest of the world. And China has already begun, in myriad ways, to serve the interests of these emerging clients, while the United States, preoccupied with terrorism, has seen its dominant status slip. Angola, once a cold-war pawn, can now serve as a kind of test case in the latest struggle to shape Africa’s destiny. Call it Chinese-style globalization.
The following story has two videos and a slideshow:
A Troubled River Mirrors China’s Path to Modernity
The source of the Yellow River, itself the water source for 140 million people in a country of about 1.3 billion, is in crisis, as scientists warn that the glaciers and underground water system feeding the river are gravely threatened. For the rest of China, where the economy has evolved beyond trading rings for sheep, it is the latest burden for a river saturated with pollution and sucked dry by factories, growing cities and farming — with still more growth planned.
For centuries, the Yellow River symbolized the greatness and sorrows of China’s ancient civilization, as emperors equated controlling the river and taming its catastrophic floods with controlling China. Now, the river is a very different symbol — of the dire state of China’s limited resources at a time when the country’s soaring economic growth needs more of everything.
Posted by Will at November 18, 2006 10:56 PM in In the News