How It Was Fed to Them

The winter is off to an interesting start.  There hasn’t been any significant pollution.  Nothing in a while.  The government has touted the fact that they have banned all coal sale for burning in private homes.  They have closed all factories within a certain radius of the city and not just one or two but every cab driver talks about it.  It is framed as something marvellous the government has achieved and in as much as that is how it is fed to me one can be sure that this is how it was fed to them.  And that is concerning. 

The Beijing, I know has perfect feng shui, surrounded on three sides by mountains and open to the sea.  This is something the current government at least, cannot change.  Neither can it change the capital’s proximity to the desert.  The dust storms of the Gobi Desert will still blow and dust will, as always, since before the Industrial Revolution, become settled in the bowl of Beijing.  And when it does what do people say?   Perhaps some will rightly say that it is just a dust storm like the city has always had.  But most people will simply think the infallible government has let them down. 

Similarly, as I told a driver this morning, my concern is that Beijing’s pollution is not a civic problem.  It is a continental problem.  And even if you close every factory for one-hundred miles or two-hundred miles, there is still the rest of China beyond.  They cannot close every factory in Shanxi and Henan as well.  And so the pall, when it comes continental, as it does, will be all the more symbolic. 

I don’t mean to nitpick.  It’s great that there is less pollution.  We’re on a roll.  I marvel as humans do, at the opportunity and threat associated with autocracy and absolute power.  You can do some remarkable, powerful things, quickly.  And the foundation is brittle and power transfer always remains the Achihiles-shank of the nation.  In the short term though the CCP are continuing to deftly profile benevolent side of benevolent-dictatorship.  Zhong Nan Hai has pollution by the throat!  Be careful trying to sublimate mother nature to your rhetorical imperative though.  She's always fickle with her heavenly mandates.

Tuesday, 01/09/17