Has anyone seen the BBC's China documentaries? Very sobering ...
China is trying to feed 20% of the world's population on 7% of the world's arable land. And a third of the world uses water from China's rivers
and rapid industrialisation and climate change have led to bad air, polluted rivers and drought. And rather than clamping down on polluters, local government often protects local industries.
Along the Huai river's main tributary, 50,000 people suffer from cancer and in one village alone, 118 people have died. Huo Daishan is trying to save a river into which millions of tons of raw human sewage and untreated waste water are tipped daily. But he's up against corrupt local officials who protect local industries rather than clamp down on polluters.
China has one of the highest suicide rates for women in the world, running at 150,000 a year. It is the only country in the world where more women kill themselves than men. Mostly rural women; and mostly aged between 15 and 35. Most of them swallow pesticides.
As if that wasn’t enough, the bias against girl babies (cultural conditioning means parents tend to prefer sons, who will look after them in old age; whereas a daughter becomes part of her husband’s family) leads to many female foetuses being aborted. The result is that, by 2020, China is expected to have a shortfall of about 40 million women.
And do you know what that will mean? Rural Women Magazine’s Xie Lihua does. It will mean that “women will face an even more terrible future in 20 years’ time. Abduction and trafficking women will increase. So will prostitution, as well as sexual violence against women, and rape.”
For economic growth, as in Japan, China may be realising that climbing the economic ladder while denying smart women better education and challenging jobs is like entering a boxing ring with one hand tied behind your back. The demand for labour from factories is giving women some financial emancipation and economic clout. So, too, is economic migration within China: women are leaving the family home to earn money, or else earning kudos for running the family farm while their husband moves to a city for work. It’s reminiscent of the way the role of women in Britain changed when, during two world wars, they took over jobs their husbands and sons had left to fight on the Continent.
Is China going to implode on itself ? Does economic boom have to come at the cost of environmental degradation? Will China ever put its house in order as regards human rights?
