ChinaDialogue: Latest responses to China must say no to imported waste

[TRANSLATED] My arguments

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:07:42 +0000

These actions are actually interest-driven and the monitoring system in China is no more than a name. I once heard that the requirements of spies being sent to China are the lowest, for only knowing simple Chinese would do. Whether it is true or not, it explains that China overly emphasizes economic development but ignores supervision in many aspects. It is true that the environment for economic development needs to be flexible. Yet, we should learn the lessons from the development history of other countries, that developing economy at the the expense of the environment would only bring harms. Image and "face" building attempts are popular in Chinese officialdom, and officials tend to present one-sided data for the sake of rewards and promotions. Therefore, some Unscrupulous countries can take advantage. Translated by Ming Li

[TRANSLATED] reply to 15

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:18:54 +0000

I am outraged at the logic of comment 15. According to his logic, China sells plastic overseas then after foreign countries have consumed the value of plastic China should then recycle it. So with China being an oil importer and as plastic is manufactured using oil, according to his logic, oil producing countries have a responsibility to bear the burden of all the harm that oil brings? We not only export plastic, we import cars. China has virtually no true nationally-produced cars, so when a car is abandoned, shouldn't we have American and German car manufacturers recycle them. This is not nationalism this is a demand for fairness and a moral justness. Developed countries have money, but this does not necessarily mean that they can export what they want and import what they want. Translated by Mike Thomson

Food for thought

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:10:37 +0000

I stumbled upon this page through a Wikipedia citation. I find the text to be of a highly nationalistic bend, something that one could say has become something of a Chinese imperative in recent years. It takes away from objectivity and makes it difficult for people to take such statements at face value, breeding skepticism and mistrust. In that regard, I have one simple observation. The main problem here, as discussed, is the west taking advantage of China, with the author spending much time discussing the role of plastic waste. I would like the author and other readers to ponder this point: Can it not be argued that by selling the world most of its final plastic goods, China is in fact exporting vast amounts of unrecyclable plastic waste around the world with no consequence?

[TRANSLATED] Re:comment 13. I think over-translation leads to the misunderstanding of the author's idea.

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:58:09 +0000

Re:comment 13. I think over-translation leads to the misunderstanding of the author's idea.The original text is: "The average American discards 23.4 kilograms of plastic packaging a year. In Japan and Europe the figures are 20.1 kilograms and 15 kilograms respectively, and in China it is about 13 kilograms." However, the translation is:"The average American discards 23.4 kilograms of plastic packaging a year. In Japan and Europe the figures are 20.1 kilograms and 15 kilograms respectively, while in China it is a mere 13 kilograms." There is no intention of making any comparison using"merely" in the original text, and this is how readers are misled by translation, which should remind our translators and proofreaders of being more faithful and careful in translation.

Chinese "merely" throw away 13 kg per person

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:38:06 +0000

The author's nationalism is clouding his rational judgment. Did you notice that he says Chinese on average "merely" throw away 13 kg per person -- when Europeans throw away 15 (!) Thank God for Nuclear Weapons -- otherwise the rest of the world would soon be overwhelmed with nationalist Chinese.....

SEPA roused

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 15:32:12 +0000

I see that the State Environmental Protection Administration has issued a press-release in response to this issue: To summarise, it says it will be watching the matter closely and cracking down on any illegal imports. That's pretty much business as usual, I'd say.

waste

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 11:49:29 +0000

the only reason why so many waste goes to china is that china subventions all transports in to china because they not only desperately need new containers for their exports... the waste that is imported is in fact not waste ... china does not allow importing waste ... its plastic and other raw materials that can be recycled (so the waste is shredded here to count as raw materials) that bring more money to be sent to china then being recycled in the own country.

Waste Goes Wherever People Are Poor

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 16:27:04 +0000

This was a domestic problem before it was global--in a free market system, waste is always buried under the cheapest land. In the UK, waste and associated processing went to poor areas, so too in the U.S. (e.g. New York sends garbage to the American South) and in today's China. This is a prototypical issue for which a capitalist approach simply does not work. As for the Opium Wars, a strictly legal perspective is ludicrous. The British defined which laws should be honored and which could be broken. In every corner of the globe, a growing British empire used merchants as an advance guard. From the perspective of Qing law, they were simply smugglers whose goods the government had every right to seize.

Every country should clear up their own waste

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 15:26:10 +0000

China everyday produces waste than it could treat and dispose. So the country is already not able to take more rubbish. Moreover, to ship waste from England to China lead to CO2 emissions, so it is not an eco-friendly approach to do so. Whatever reasons before the rubbish trading, it must be stopped for the sake of our planet, by coordinated operation between countries. Every country is responsible to clean up their own waste.

The Opium Wars and waste dumping:　Ａ　Ｒｅｃｏｎｓｉｄｅｒａｔｉｏｎ

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:30:28 +0000

The author of comment #5 rightfully criticizes the Opium War analogy used in the article. However, as a student of modern Chinese history, I find it too simplistic to attribute the cause of the Opium Wars to malignant British imperialism. As with the current waste dumping problem, the opium trade in China was only made possible through Chinese participation: a class of merchants found it lucrative to smuggle the drug; corrupt Qing officials did not enforce imperial prohibition edicts; and a large part of the economy, both in services (opium dens, teahouses, brothels etc.) and in manufacturing (opium paraphernalia), profited from the increased demand of conspicuous consumers. In addition, the Opium Wars did not begin because of aggressive British foreign policy, but because British merchants had a legal right to seek reimbursement from the British government for the opium they had lost at the hands of the Qing government. The Wars must therefore be viewed in a legal rather than a foreign policy framework, even if the Treaty of Nanjing that resulted from it was manipulated for foreign policy ends. I do not wish to exonerate the British government: it was was a moral culprit in the opium trade. But the problem was multi-faceted. Ultimately, Chinese nationalist rhetoric should neither cloud our judgment of current issues such as waste dumping, nor of past events like the Opium Wars.