coming soon to an administration near you

largely free of grotesque manifestations of poverty (and) one of the most successful countries in tackling income inequality.

Who, outside the certifiably ignorant would ever think this is true?

The most basic understanding of China and one understands the vast vast level of poverty in many areas.

Though maybe this is the answer.

Scholars insist this is the unavoidable consequence of a country being run by the Chinese Communist Party -- an extreme version of the Republican Party that couples Genghis Khan's intolerance with Hank Paulson's authoritarian capitalism

It's takes a special kind of person who compares a Communist State with the Republican party. Perhaps the concept of STATE owned production escapes the writer. That is a belief of the left, not the right.

Maybe our writer simply didn't want to believe that utopia Communist China has vast wealthy disparity, then confronted with that fact, retreats to calling the expanded Socialism model a Republican concept.

It's bizarre.

just curious..

What always strikes me about Sirota's writing is his virtuosity at stringing together so many phony populist truisms, glued together with a minimum of evidence. So, he took a trip to Hong Kong and looked at skyscrapers; then he took a side trip to a Chinese slum and saw pollution and poor people. He looked up a couple of figures on wikipedia, and voila!, out pops an article.

Since when does this kind of writing pass for journalism? I really hope Salon wasn't footing his travel bill.

"Tragedy of the commons" is what awaits the new, amoral, non-Constitutional People's Republic of America under BHO's iron fist.

hey david, say something we don't already know!

I thought he was a united, not a divider.

That should have been uniter.

Would someone at Salon explain how this piece meets their standards, for the front page no less?

the planet has already been looted, china, and india and brazil, are just mopping up the rest of the resources.

the effluent of the human race may kill us before the resource failure, both ends of looming ecological catastrophe beyond human capability to control.

humanity was smart enough to overrun the planet, not smart enough to control itself.

interesting times coming, best of luck with that.

Salon already has an excellent "China correspondent" in HTWW's Andrew Leonard.

What isn't needed is more crud like this article.

I find you can, without any loss of information, routinely dismiss the opinion of anyone who starts "I've only been to China once..."

What the author evidently completely missed in his visit to a dump site in China is the startling and commendable way nearly everything that can be recycled in China is.

Now, it is true that much of that recycling is done in less-than-optimum health and safety conditions -- but those conditions are less than optimum anywhere in the developing world.

The point is that the recycling is done. Comprehensively, and aggressively. China is extremely aware that it has a rapidly diminishing number of years to transition its economy.

And, of course, what the author evidently completely missed in his visit to China's "gleaming cities" is the vast number of economic migrants who build those cities and make them run. And no, you don't see them walking around downtown. They're not allowed in the shopping malls.

So in both of his examples, Sirota misses the forest for the trees.

Pitiful. No more, please, Salon.

I have been a student of China and the Chinese since the mid- 1980s. When I first flew into Shanghai it was dark and the city below me was invisible. There were no street lights and the few cars and trucks that were moving about kept their headlights off to conserve energy. It's not dark in Shanghai anymore. The economic miracle is manifest everywhere in mirrored skyscrapers, death-defying overpasses, and seemingly constant gridlock--the good life. And yet, while the Gold Coast of China's eastern seaboard dazzles with 21st century dynamism, the interior of the country is becoming an uninhabitable wasteland. The choking coal smoke is acrid, the ground water is polluted with heavy metals and low level radioactive waste. Everyday, children are kidnapped from the cities and sold into private households or brothels. Corruption at all levels of officialdom is endemic. The Party elite, in bed with power capital, are ravaging the landscape and sacrificing the lives of untold thousands of Chinese citizens. Never before has a people affected such a massive destruction of the natural environment, and done it in such a short amount of time. Makes you think the Chinese can do just about anything, which is why we're always hearing that the 21st century is the Chinese century (the 20th century belonged to the U.S.) But is this necessarily the case? For China to succeed it will need to use everyone's resources, and this includes ours. True, the Chinese are far more canny than the Japanese, who bought real estate; the Chinese are buying mining rights. During the global economic downturn China has begun to fray around the edges across a broad spectrum factory wage earners,and itinerant laborers. Last year there were literally 1000s of uprisings (large and small) against petty officials, police, courts, and the nouveau riche who live beyond the law. For the power elite to keep the masses from becoming too restive they need an economy that is growing at 8% to 10% per annum. To sustain this level of growth they will need resources, everything from oil to molybdenun. Think about it. Do you really want the 21st century to belong to the China? Do you want Chinese corporations owning the ground you walk on? Do you want your children and grand-children working for such a ruthless and despotic criminal gang? I think not. Do your part. Buy local.

practically everything we buy in america is made in china. buying cheap shit has its cost.

I feel the article was too general. I am interested in pollution and waste in China. My interest is more personal though. The factory behind my last apartment here in Suzhou sometimes spewed noxious smelling gas. But I would like to get a more comprehensive picture of the problem.

On the other hand, letter writers got it wrong too.

There is income in-equality. However, the Poor in China, for the most part, are far better off than poor people in the United States. They have cheaper health-care (but not good health-care IMHO). They have families for support. They don't have crime like we have in the US. The don't have isolation. And the rural poor can grow their own food. Hunger is rare in China. And the government tries very hard to mitigate and decrease the income gap. However, for various reasons, so far the government is failing.

Another thing, 2ndGenerationPilot said:"nearly everything that can be recycled in China is." Almost. Should say anything that can be recycled for a profit in China is recycled. Plastic (non-PET plastic that is) and paper are not recycled to my knowledge.