Problems in China & India


PROBLEMS IN
CHINA
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POP RANKINGS, NOW AND 2050
In 2000 In 2050
CHINA: 1,200MINDIA: 1,600M
INDIA: 1,000MCHINA: 1,300M
U.S.: 275MU.S.: 403M
INDONESIA: 212MINDONESIA: 312M
BRAZIL: 170MNIGERIA: 304M
PAKISTAN: 151MPAKISTAN: 285M
RUSSIA: 145MBRAZIL: 244M
. . BANGLADESH: 128MBANGLADESH: 211M
JAPAN: 127METHIOPIA: 188M
NIGERIA: 123MD.R. CONGO: 182M

According to Deutsche Bank's analysis, the percentage of working-age Chinese in the population (those aged 15 to 64) will peak around 2010 at 72.2%. Over the next 40 years, that number will fall steadily to just 60.7%, according to U.N. forecasts. The steep drop is due in large part to China's one-child policy, first implemented in 1979. Also, many Chinese retire before they are 64; China's current retirement age is 50 for most women and 60 for most men.
. . By 2050, every 10 Chinese workers will support seven Chinese who are too young or too old to work.
Jan 6, 05: China named the first baby born at a Beijing hospital today as the 1.3 billionth person of the world's most populous nation, more than two decades after a one-child policy was introduced to keep its numbers in check. China's population exploded after the late Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong exhorted the people to multiply in the 1950s to make the country strong.
. . But China put the brakes on growth with the tough one-child rule and is now worried about finding jobs for the masses and caring for the elderly. A hefty fine is slapped on urban residents with more than one child. Rural folk and members of ethnic minority groups can have a maximum of two children. While the rules have helped China curb its birth rate from more than 33 births per 1,000 population in 1970 to less than eight per 1,000 per year three decades later, the country faces new demographic challenges over how to support an aging population.
. . China is expected to add eight million to its population each year, the U.N. Population Fund says, and has no plans to ease the one-child policy despite concerns of low urban birth rates. The birth rate is highest in the largely rural, impoverished west, while it is lowest in booming Shanghai. China's one-child policy has prevented a population increase of about 300 million people in the last decade!
. . The rules on family size have also created a gender imbalance, with about 117 boys for 100 girls, as a cultural preference for sons prompts couples, usually in rural areas, to abort girls.
. . India, the world's second-most populous nation, has 1.1 billion people and could overtake China by 2035 if current trends continue, according to India's census office.
July 30, 03: Parts of China are facing their worst drought in a decade with nearly three million people suffering from water shortages in two provinces alone. In eastern Zhejiang province, some 1.3 million people are short of drinking water while 200,000 hectares of crops have been damaged.
. . Eastern Anhui province, struggling to overcome the worst floods in years, is also now blighted by intense heat. Meanwhile, torrential rains that have plagued central and eastern China have moved towards the northeast where water levels are rising on the Nengjiang river. The area around the famous Three Gorges in Hubei province meanwhile is threatened by landslides, while boats have been prohibited from navigating the Tongzhuang river.
. . China has been particularly hard hit by wild weather this year with at least 3.5 million people made homeless by floods. And last week, a powerful typhoon swept over the south, leaving a trail of destruction in its path.
June 19, 03: Scientists in China have said that increasing desertification is costing the country more than US$40 bn a year. They blamed the increase on harsh envrionmental conditions and industrial activities. They said that desertification is severely harming agricultural production, communication and transportation networks and even burying whole villages.
. . China now has more than 2.62 million square kilometres of land under desertification, twice the amount of the total available farmland in China. Duststorms choke northern China nearly every spring, often blown off the dry expanses of the Mongolian desert plain. The desert is now less than 250 kilometres from the capital, Beijing.
In China, even though it is forbidden to have sex-selective abortions following ultrasound, the current birth ratio of 116.4 boys to 100 girls.
Mar 1, 02: A group of villages in Southern China have become inadvertent repositories of the West's hazardous computer waste. The area is described as an "environmental wasteland", where pollutant levels are hundreds to thousands of times higher than those allowed in developed countries. "The ground is saturated in lead and acid by-products", he says. "Many of the poorer villagers still drink the surface waters, which are highly contaminated."
Mar 1, 02: A recent logging ban in China is having an unexpected secondary effect. To meet its insatiable hunger for timber, the country has become the world's second largest importer of wood, a development that could sound the death knell for the forests of South-East Asia.
. . China is buying hardwoods from the rainforests of Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the African state of Gabon (see Graphic), and softwoods such as spruce and fir from Siberia. It is now the world's second biggest timber importer, after the US. The logging ban in China has created a major black market for illegal harvesting in the Siberia forests.

XINHUA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE; April 9, 2001;
. . WHITE PAPER ON CHINA'S HUMAN RIGHTS.

Women's health conditions have constantly improved. In 2000, there were 609 hospitals specially for women and children, employing 72,000 medical personnel, and 2,598 clinics for women and children, employing 75,000 medical personnel. By 1999, the ratio of health care for pregnant and puerperal women throughout the country had exceeded 86 percent, and 95.4 percent of rural women had access to the modern method of midwifery. The mortality rate of pregnant women and women in labor dropped to 56.2 per 100,000 from 61.9 per 100,000 in 1995. Beginning in 2000, the Chinese government has practiced a two-year special plan in the western region and impoverished rural areas with 200 million yuan earmarked to combat the maternal mortality rate and eliminate trismus nascentium.
. . In October 2000, the China Poverty Relief Fund formally started the Strategic Plan of "Action 120 for the Safety of Mother and Baby," committing itself in establishing health and first-aid organs for women and children at the county, township and village levels in the poverty-stricken areas in the six provinces and one municipality in the central and western parts of China, to improve the health care of poor mothers and babies, and eliminating the mortality rate of babies, pregnant women and women in labor. An estimated 32 million yuan is to go to this 10-year campaign.
. . The state has adopted measures to effectively protect women's rights against infringement. To curb domestic violence, bigamy and taking concubines more effectively, perfect the family property system and protect women's rights in marriage and the family against infringement, the NPC mobilized people of various circles to conduct serious research for the revision of the Marriage Law, and publicized the draft amendments to the Marriage Law in January 2001 for public discussions. So far, the people's congresses and governments at all levels have formulated over 20 local regulations and policies for preventing and curbing domestic violence.
. . By the end of October 2000, 13 provinces and 47 prefectures, cities and counties throughout the country had established the system of joint conference for protecting women's rights, attended by many departments, to regularly coordinate, supervise and examine the work of protecting women's rights and interests. The court system has set up 544 collegiate panels for safeguarding the rights and interests of women and children, employing 4,266 full-time cadres from women's organizations as people's assessors to directly participate in the trial of cases involving women's rights and interests.
. . Between April and July 2000, the public security organs launched a nationwide movement to crack down on crimes of abducting and trafficking in women and children, in accordance with the law, and uncovered some 20,000 such cases, which involved 7,600 criminal gangs, saving or making proper arrangements for the resettlement of a large number of women and children who had been abducted and sold.


. March 7, 01. Along with Mexico City, Beijing shares the distinction of being the world's most polluted capital.
. . Part of the problem for Beijing is its natural situation - in a basin surrounded by hills, over a hundred kilometres from the coast and at the mercy of dust filled winds from the Mongolian planes.
. . China's national dependence on coal - still the source of some 75% of its energy - is seen as a key cause of country's environmental problems.
. . But Beijing has plans to phase out coal use. "First we tackled the small food stoves; now, in just two years, almost the whole catering industry has gone over to natural gas or electricity, and all small and medium size industrial boilers are using clean fuels."
. . Thousands of homes too are being converted to natural gas too, and the World Bank is providing assistance.
. . "It's like London in the 1950s," says Mr Li, "once you stop coal use the problem is solved."
. . Respiratory diseases have become one of the country's biggest health risks. There are billions of dollars in crop losses each year.
. . Clean-up measures are now being announced thick and fast. In Beijing, after years of apparent inaction, a total ban on leaded petrol for cars was implemented within the space of just six months.
. . The authorities are also taking action against polluting factories. Some have been closed, and others are under threat if they do not cut pollution by the end of this year.
. . Many environmentalists agree that China now has some of the toughest environmental laws of any country. But putting them into practice nationwide is a major challenge.
. . The environmental officials can't hold back the aspirations of more and more Chinese people to own a car.
China and India have half the world's 45,000 dams.

CHINA STICKS TO POPULATION CONTROL POLICY IN NEW CENTURY
. . Xinhua General News Service;
November 2, 2000

China will continue its efforts to control the growth of the population in the 21 century, said Zhang Weiqing, minister of the State Family Planning Commission Thursday.
. . At the annual board meeting of the Partners in Population and Development by South-South Cooperation, which opened here today, Zhang said that keeping a low birth rate is the key task of China' s family planning program in the coming decade.
. . He said that China has made it a goal to keep the population below 1.4 billion until 2010 on the basis of scientific feasibility study. In order to realize the goal, China is persisting in popularization and education about family planning and contraception, and it will make efforts to build a perfect population control system suitable for China's situation, said Zhang.
. . He said population will continue to be a pressing issue for China in the 21st century. The annual net growth will be more than 10 million at the start of the new century. It will not decline until it reaches a peak of 1.6 billion in the middle of the 21st century, Zhang said.
. . At present, China has a large work-age population, which puts a heavy burden on employment. The work-age population will peak at 900 million in the coming decades.
. . In addition, Zhang predicts that the number of senior citizens over the age of 60 in China will reach 130 million at the end of this year, and will exceed 357 million in 2030, and 439 million in 2050, or a quarter of the total population. Zhang said that China will stick to family planning policy for a long time depending on future population situation.

CHINA
China Relaxes Its One-Child Policy.

Sept?, 00: China is relaxing its urban one-child policy, & claiming success. (from "pressure" to "influence".) They prevented 300,000,000 extra people. Tho there were abuses, it's vastly less problem than feeding (or not feeding) another 300 million people!
Even so, their pop is expected to hit 1.6 Billion by 2050. (famine, etc, etc, etc permitting)
. . An estimated 60 million people will be allowed to have more than one child, particularly people who were born in single child families. In a survey of young, single people, most said they would not want several children. China's population growth is now at 0.9%, but the total is still expected to hit 1.3 billion this year and 1.4 billion in 2010 before levelling out at 1.5 - 1.6 billion.
. . The one-child policy was only strictly enforced in four cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing, and two provinces, Sichuan (southwest), and Jiangsu (east), which account for 37% of the population. In other provinces, couples can have a second child if the first is [only a?] a girl, while ethnic minorities may be allowed anywhere from two, four or as many children as they want, as in Tibet.
. . Even if Beijing’s tough birth control policies hold sway — which is by no means certain — the population may rise to about 1.6 billion by 2050 before leveling off. According to China’s own statistics, the amount of land, farmland, grassland water resources owned by each individual Chinese is less than one-third of the world’s average figure. Forest and oil resources per capita are just one-tenth of the world’s average.
. . There's a small slice of eastern China that supports the vast majority of its billion people. Most of the country is made up of mountains or desert--regions barely habitable, much less arable.
. . But the south may be the country’s most pressing problem. Water has been named one of the top challenges for the country by China’s most prominent man of action, Premier Zhu Rongji, but putting in place an integrated plan involves countless trade-offs.
. . One partial solution comes from diverting water. China has some of the world’s biggest projects of this kind under way, including three canals that will move water from the Yangtze River in the south some 800 miles north to the dry Beijing-Tianjin area.

The dramatic gains in agricultural productivity in the 1980s have leveled off and the last decade of intensive farming, marked by the highest use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides in the world, is now destroying farmland.
. . In Zhaozhou county, home to about 330,000 farmers and ranchers in northeast China, about one-quarter of the land area turned to an impermeable crust after overgrazing caused a chemical change called alkalization of the soil.
. . Another portion of the land used for crops suffers from “soil burning”, which takes place when chemical fertilizers are used but organic matter is not restored to the soil, as it was in the past when manure served as fertilizer.
. . "The decline of organic matter in soils is probably more crucial than most of the issues that make the headlines,” said Josh Muldavin, a geography professor who chairs international development studies at University of California Los Angeles.
. . Muldavin has been working with the Zhaozhou farmers to rejuvenate the soil, but remedies are very expensive and can take decades. “Things can be done but they’re difficult,” he said. “At the same time, economic policy is pushing people to increase production.”

A better publicized problem is that rapidly growing industrial areas have gobbled up vast amounts of farmland —- about 1 percent per year in the 1990s. This is even worse than it appears, suggested Muldavin. “Unfortunately, the marginal land is in hinterlands, and is the last to be converted (to industrial uses). Some of the richest farmland is in areas that are rapidly urbanizing, primarily in the north China plain. The best farmland is being converted.”
. . The trend has set off alarms in Beijing: China’s elderly leaders have all witnessed famine in China in their lifetimes. But directives to limit the loss of land have proven difficult to implement and hard for local government officials to enforce. Power and wealth, after all, lie in the hands of the industrialists, not with the farmers.
. . Most economists agree that China will likely need to import more grain, though China’s leaders —- fearful of political implications —-are loathe to do so. And China’s entry into the international grain market would raise prices for the entire world market.

10-21-99: China's dramatic gains in agricultural productivity in the 1980s are leveling off, and the last decade of intensive farming, marked by the highest use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides in the world, is now destroying farmland.
In Zhaozhou county, home to about 330,000 farmers and ranchers in northeast China, about one-quarter of the land area turned to an impermeable crust after overgrazing caused alkalization of the soil.
. . Another portion of the land used for crops suffers from “soil burning”, which takes place when chemical fertilizers are used but organic matter is not restored to the soil, as it was in the past, when manure served as fertilizer.

WATER WARS

Oct 7, 01: More than 2,000 lakes that nurture China's once ferocious Yellow River in the western province of Qinghai are disappearing and causing water shortages for the local people, state-run Xinhua said.
. . Dubbed "China's Sorrow" for its disastrous floods over the centuries, the nation's second-longest Yellow River waterway has been dying over the years, harmed by excessive water use and pollution. Global warming had also taken its toll, putting pressure on the Yellow River's water supply for several consecutive years.

Seen from the halls of power in Beijing, the country’s most pressing problem is to keep the economy rolling ahead. It is the issue upon which dynasties have risen and fallen, and China’s elder revolutionaries know their history.

Early experiments in private enterprise originally took root because of a crisis in the countryside. There was a desperate need to provide alternatives for people living in rural areas, which at that time made up some 90 percent of the population. Farms had been divvied up ever smaller over the generations (except during a short period of collective farming) until the average plot was a tiny noodle strip of an acre or less.

Blossoming factories around the country have absorbed hundreds of millions of people and dramatically raised living standards across China. Largely because of these factories, economic growth has been stunning —-nearly 10 percent a year for two decades. To absorb vast armies of people from the countryside, and those laid off from unprofitable state firms, China needs to keep it all moving forward —-fast.

But industry and rising soaring urban consumption are already on a collision course with agriculture as the two sides vie for scarce water supplies, especially in the arid north.

A growing population of city residents has driven demand sky high —-access to private showers alone makes a huge difference. Add in luxuries like washing machines, beer, Coke, and swimming pools, and the problem of consumption becomes understandable.

Water tables are falling one to three meters a year in some urban areas. Farmers are facing a more desperate situation. With alarming frequency and greater duration, the Yellow River, one of the main water sources in the north, runs dry before it meets the sea.

In some places, the farmers continue to pump what is basically untreated sewage into the fields. Meanwhile, other rivers have disappeared. “They have sucked everything up,” said Daniel Gunaratnam, a water specialist at the World Bank in Beijing.

Water —-the shortage of it in the north, the pollution of it in the south — may be the country’s most pressing problem. Water has been named one of the top challenges for the country by China’s most prominent man of action, Premier Zhu Rongji, but putting in place an integrated plan involves countless trade-offs.

One partial solution comes from diverting water. China has some of the world’s biggest projects of this kind under way, including three canals that will move water from the Yangtze River in the south some 800 miles north to the parched Beijing-Tianjin areas, home to some 20 million.

“The future of China depends on how they solve (the water) problem,” said Gunaratnam.

AIR POLLUTION

Good news: China's CO2 emissions dropped by 3.7 percent for the year, while its economy grew by 7.2%. Prior to last year, China had experienced a 4 percent increase in carbon emissions during each of the last 20 years. (That's quite a total! More than doubling.)
Why this change occurred last year in China is unknown, but one factor may be a recent $14 billion cut in coal subsidies. (sounds capitalist!) Many modernizations increase efficiency.
Don't count on it to stay that way, tho. As they achieve some affluence, imagine a billion new cars (& other machines) exhausting their gasses into the air! Plus what it'll take to smelt that much steel with coal!

The air pollution produced by China’s economic transformation has been stunning, and in some cases, legendary.

The country has some of the worst air quality standards in the world, a factor, health experts believe, behind the soaring rates of asthma and other respiratory disease. The northern city of Benxi finally drew the aid of international agencies when it disappeared off satellite images because it was buried beneath a thick, acrid cloud.

After a seven-year effort, Benxi is visible again. But China’s reliance on coal —-dirty, but cheap and plentiful —-is not going away. Coal provides about 75 percent of the country’s power supply, and demand for power climbs with each passing year.

Japan, which has been affected by acid rain generated in China, has provided scrubbers and other clean-coal technology. Widespread use of these technologies can make a substantial difference in air quality, but their use affects the bottom line. There are persistent reports of factory managers turning scrubbers on only for inspections, because running them raises costs.

Economists say coal is too cheap, which encourages inefficient use. But as the United States and other countries have discovered, lifting subsidies on energy is politically unpopular and slows economic growth.

Ultimately, China will need to make a major shift, as indicated by a World Bank report from the northern province of Liaoning. “The air quality problems here and in other cities of Liaoning Province are too severe to be solved soon, or at reasonable cost, by emission controls alone,” it reported. “Reducing air pollution will require action at all stages —-beginning with finding different sources of fuel.”

THE GREENING OF THE REDS?

In the face of multiple crises, China is rethinking many of its most dearly held beliefs — from its food security policy to its views on non-governmental organizations.

In the last few years, Beijing has allowed several independent green groups to form for the sake of education, and to some extent, to monitor industry compliance with regulations. It has tolerated the existence of Greenpeace China in the autonomous region of Hong Kong, despite the parent organization’s penchant for public protest.

There are even signs that Beijing is rethinking its approach to limiting population growth. International population experts now insist that people, even poor people in the developing world, don’t need to be forced to have smaller families as China has done.

“The idea that poor people want more children for security is largely a myth”, said Joe Speidel, population expert at the Hewlett Foundation. “Most growth comes from a lack of access to family planning. If people know they have an alternative, most will now choose to have a smaller family.”

There are also growing signs that China itself is subscribing to the view. Though it has not abandoned the One Child Policy that drew scathing criticism, in 1994, Beijing signed onto the Cairo Program of Action. The 179 signatories agreed to implement population programs that disband target numbers, abandon coercion and provide education. China’s signing onto the program helped the U.N. Population Fund Program to win renewed funding from the U.S. Congress, which had been withdrawn due to UNFPA involvement in China.

But at this point, even with ideal programs, it will be generations before China can see the gains. In the meantime, it will need equally creative means to stretch resources for its people.

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Other countries, various stats:

U.S.: 275M now, 403M in 50 years. We should be able to do better (lower) than that!

Bangladesh:
. 124M people; 15M under age 5--2/3 of whom are undernourished, & 60% have stunted growth. 3M more born/yr--only 14% in the presence of a doctor, let alone a hospital. 4 of every 1000 women die in childbirth--one of the world's worst rates, in one of the worst pop-densities. It's the size of our Georgia, w half the US pop!
. GNP per capita: $360 (world average: $1,330). It was only $110 a few years ago.
. Progress: fertility rate down from 7 per woman in 1075 to 3 today. Pop still espected to more than double to 250M by 2035.

EUROPE
. . 728M now, in 50 years: 658! Great! Expect an economic boom.

GERMANY:
. 82M people; expected to successfully go down to 73M by 2050.

ITALY:
. 57M people; expected to successfully go down to 41M by 2050.

SPAIN: very successful lowering, mostly out of simple individual decisions.

AFRICA: 800 M now--could rise to 1.8B by 2050, despite a very high AIDS rate. It has 13% of the world's pop, and 69% of the known AIDS cases--and a much more gender-equal distribution.

Kenya:
. 2M of their 30M people have the HIV virus (6.6%) --mostly in the cities. 500 die per day.
. Pop grew by 34% over the last decade --to 28.7M. Fertility rate down from 7 kids per woman to 5 today-- still horrific.

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