Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Blog 10:China's challenges: political change, pollution and protest



People are getting more and more serious about their social rights and political rights in China. Fifteen years ago, the air quality in Beijing was probably even worse than today, but it did not become issues until recent years. Nobody saw good air quality as an entitlement; now people's ideology has changed.
Because china developed fast after opening up, problems have accumulated over the past 20 years. In the coming decade, environmental problems have affected ordinary people and they deserve our attention: issues such as poor air quality causing lung cancer and heavy-metal pollution resulting in birth deformities. The minister of environmental protection said earlier this year that China had seen more than 30 major incidents of heavy-metal pollution since 2009.

Even the weather has been affected by the pollution that china has imposed on the country. Continuous droughts and floods in the south. If you do not fix these problems soon, the climate itself will be changed and then many different problems will arise. Global warming has been increasing as well. in  the past fifty years, glaciers in northwest china have shrunk by twenty one percent. Some lakes relying on melt water from glaciers are shrinking and that leads to water shortages in northern western areas. Supervision should be enhanced; reporting and emergency measures are needed. When accidents happen, enforcement and strict punishment should be implemented.

This is very important because the pushing for freedom of speech is building. This means that the government is playing a very delicate balance between maintaining power and legitimacy. If these new ideas and changes take place within the next couple of years, things will not often be in the government’s control. I think this article is a little bias. The writer uses "I" in a lot of examples and for the most part I think news articles should not include your personal opinion. This article is very informing, I never would have thought that people were being demanding and the government is having a hard time making sure everything goes smoothly.





http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/18/china-challenges-next-generation

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