In 2001, Jiang was sentenced to six years in jail for publishing details about alleged corruption by Liaoning provincial governor Bo Xilai as well as details of corruption by other officials. Bo, meanwhile, was promoted to commerce minister.

For his efforts, Jiang was charged with revealing state secrets and sentenced to eight years in jail, which was later reduced to six years.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, China currently imprisons more journalists than any other country in the world, with 32 journalists in jail in 2005.

Sources:

China frees corruption journalist. The BBC, January 4, 2006.

The Price of Integrity. Press Release, Committee to Protect Journalists, 2001.

Journalists In Prison. Committee to Protect Journalists, 2006.

China Releases Imprisoned Journalist After 5 Years is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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The NSB reviseed upward GDP growht estimates for every year from 1993 to 2004 except for 1998. Based on the new figures, China’s economy grew an average of 9.9 percent annually from 1993-2004.

And these new figures may still understimate the growth of China’s GDP since it is so difficult to accurately measure much of China’s economic activity which occurs in cash transactions.

Despite all this growth, China has maintained a very low inflation rate.

After decades of mismanagement under Communist management, China’s economy today is the sixth largest in the world. Despite the huge population it has, however, its economy is still only about half the size of the United States.

Source:

China lifts annual growth figures. BBC, January 9, 2006.

China Revises Economic Growth Upward is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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In December, China announced that it approved 13 foreign and domestic banks who would be market movers for the yuan. If it follows through, this will change China’s long-standing micromanagement of its currency designed to keep its value from rising against the yen, pound and dollar.

Having a number of banks that are market movers for the currency would, in theory, limit the ability of China to intervene to keep the value of the yuan down.

There are a lot of reasons that China should stop such intervention, but one of the odd things is watching U.S. officials complain about the cheap yuan. The argument goes that the cheap yuan is largely responsible for the U.S. trade deficit in which the United States imports far more goods from China than it exports to that nation.

But if China is crazy enough to essentially subsidize exports to the United States, why should the United States object? The United States get goods far cheaper, raising the effective buying powers of wages, and China gets cash it uses for the capital investment necessary to continue its economic growth.

Source:

China reforms its currency market. BBC, December 30, 2005.

China Moves Toward Liberalizing Its Currency Market is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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“Environmental scientist have been saying for some time that the global economy is being slowly undermined by environmental trends of human origin . . .,” says Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based independent environmental research organization.

Although it is obvious that no society can survive the decline of its environmental support systems, many people are not yet convinced of the need for economic restructuring. But this is changing now that China has eclipsed the United States in the consumption of most basic resources, Brown notes in Plan B 2.0, which was produced with major funding from the Lannan Foundation and the U.N. Population Fund

China the world’s major consumption of basic resources? How can this be when Brown assured us in 1995’s Who Will Feed China? A Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet that China was on course for an imminent food disaster that, would see China’s food production fall drastically off.

China had, at the time, gone from being a net grain exporter to a net grain importer, and as far as Brown was concerned it was all downhill from there leading to massive worldwide increases in food prices.

Instead, China has done what Brown suggested was impossible — it has gone back to being a net food exporter and last year was taken off of the World Food Program’s list of countries that it provides food aid to, saying the Communist country no longer needed such aid.

As Robert L. Paarlberg noted in a 1996 review of Who Will Feed China? for Foreign Affairs, Brown was playing a bit fast and loose with his interpretations of data related to Chinese agriculture,

Brown justifies his extraordinary pessimism about China by predicting a massive loss of land now used for growing grain — roughly half by 2030 — through degradation or conversion to other uses. He argues that better crop yields will not be enough to offset the loss. This is misleading because switching from grain to high-value crops, such as vegetables, should be viewed as a gain for Chinese farmers, not a loss, and it is unjustified because it is based on an imperfect analogy to the experiences of countries such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. They converted land away from farming, including grain production, as their economies developed, but did so because they had fewer options for growth in agricultural production than China has today.

Not to say Brown ever changes his tune. In Plan B 2.0 Brown points to various rates of resource consumption — such as China’s voracious consumption of oil that has fueled steep increases in the price of that commodity over the past few years — and notes that if things continue as they are today (the one refrain from doomsayers that never changes) then the world is headed for a catastrophe.

But some of these alleged catastrophes are so silly that it is hard to believe Brown would even bring them up. For example he notes that if China reaches the U.S. level of per capita resource consumption,

China’s paper consumption would be double the world’s current production. There go the world’s forests.

Not. Most paper is harvested from trees specifically planted for such purposes (i.e., these trees would not even exist if it weren’t for the anticipated demand for paper). All that will happen if China starts demanding more paper is that paper companies will purchase land formerly used for other purposes and plant trees their for paper production.

The doomsayer formula is always the same. Take some trend that is current at a moment in time — the number of Pokemon cards being bought by kids is increasing by 250 percent annually. Then project that trend out over the next 30 years and note that if that trend keeps going then all of the world’s forests will be used up just printing Pokemon cards. And at no point ever take into account that people might grow tired of Pokemon cards (what economists call an elastic demand) or find different ways of obtaining them (these new fangled computers and portable game consoles) or find more capacity to produce them (planting more trees for Pokemon production).

The thing that distinguishes Homo sapiens is our incredible ability to quickly adapt and modify our behavior to ever-changing conditions. We’ve been doing it for 50,000 years rather successfully, and the doomsayers argument essentially says, “yes, but this time we’re really screwed” and the only solution is to adopt, as Brown pleads for in Plan B, “a restructuring of the global economy so that it can sustain civilization.”

Instead, perhaps Brown should focus on writing a book that could sustain its argument past a 24-month window when everything changes and his wild extrapolations are shown to have been for naught.

Sources:

Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. Earth Policy Institute, Accessed: January 10, 2006.

Rice Bowls and Dust Bowls: Africa, Not China, Faces a Food Crisis. Robert L. Paarlberg, Foreign Affairs, May/June 1996.

Lester Brown — New Century, But Same Book is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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China’s economic expansion, which has helped drive oil upward, has also put strains on worldwide supplies of iron ore and steel sending prices through the roof. According to the BBC, for example, the cost of steel jumped 8 percent in January 2005 alone and in China the price of steel jumped 24 percent in the same month.

The demand for steel has led iron ore producers to boost their prices. In February, for example, mining companies Rio Tinot and Cia. Vale Do Rio Dolce reached an agreement with Japanese steelmaker Nippon that raised the price Nippon paid for iron ore by 72 percent. Other iron ore producers are expected to seek similar increases.

Steelmakers, meanwhile, have to pass on those costs to someone and the result is companies looking to boost steel prices 20 to 30 percent, which in turn would cause a ripple effect of price increases in goods that use steel (and/or encourage exploration and use of steel alternatives).

Sources:

Ore costs hit global steel firms. The BBC, February 23, 2005.

European can makers fear knock-on effect of steel prices. FoodProductionDaily.Com, October 14, 2004.

Worldwide Demand Sends Iron Ore, Steel Prices Upward is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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Under the terms of the treaty, it would be ratified once countries representing 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions had signed it. That point was reach when Russia ratified the treaty in November 2004.

The United States has rejected the treaty arguing that it would be too expensive too implement controls on greenhouse gases, and that it would put the U.S. at an unfair economic disadvantage to make such changes given that China, India and other countries will not be forced to make the same cuts.

President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1999, but the Senate has refused to ratify it ever since, and is unlikely to do so in the forseeable future.

Even among those countries which did ratify the treaty, reducing emissions is likely to turn into an accounting game with high-emissions countries trading emissions rights with low-emissions countries without making much of a dent in emissions. This is one of the reasons Russia changed course and finally ratified the treaty since it will likely benefit economically from such emissions trading. As the Washington Post summed it up,

Moreover, they [the United States and Australia] say, many countries, including Japan and several in the European Union, are unlikely to meet their emission-control targets and will have to buy “credits” — most likely from Russia, which will have plenty to sell because many of its industrial plants shut down during the economic meltdown in the 1990s.

“They are going to take credit for sagging economies and flat populations,” said James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Bush’s proposals for voluntary emission controls and incentives to develop clean technologies would have as much impact on American emissions as Europe would achieve under Kyoto, he said.

Critics counter that binding emissions quotas are needed to create the changes necessary to reduce the threat of global warming, but its difficult to see how a shell game in which major CO2 producers are exempt altogether will accomplish anything beyond symbolic.

Source:

Kyoto Treaty Takes Effect Today. Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, February 16, 2005.

Kyoto Protocol comes into force. The BBC, February 16, 2005.

Kyoto Protocol Goes Into Effect Without United States is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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China sets out strict guidelines for Internet cafes, limiting the types of computer games and content that can be accessed, and requiring strict identity checks and the keeping of automated logs to track the activities of people while they are accessing the Internet at one of the cafes. Those log files are then sent to China’s Public Security Bureau.

This latest crackdown was apparently motivated by concerns that children were spending time playing violent videogames rather than attending class, but it also has the added effect of furthering the Chinese governments control over its citizens access to information the government does not approve of.

Sources:

China net cafe culture crackdown. The BBC, February 14, 2005.

‘Wangba’ crusade. Red Herring, February 17, 2005.

China Launches Another Crackdown on Internet Cafes is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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In order to appease U.S. textile companies, the Commerce Department prepared to impose a number of emergency quotas on the import of jeans, underwear and other clothing products from China. U.S. clothing retailers filed a lawsuit arguing that they would suffer irreparable damage if the emergency quotes were to go into effect.

Goldberg issued a temporary injunction barring the quotas from going into effect, agreeing that retailers would suffer irreparable harm from the quotas and that the quotas should be blocked while the court heard the case.

Under trade agreements that the United States is signed, this year it must remove its textile quota system. Textile companies fear that once the artificial barriers against Chinese textiles are removed, that Chinese textiles will flood the U.S. market. And that would be bad how?

The textile companies created this very situation. Rather than gradually phase out the quotas, they clung to them to protect their anti-competitive products, and now face the prospect of the quotas disappearing with one fell swoop.

The U.S., meanwhile, continues to play the role of preaching the wonders of free trade and the importance of adhering to international trade agreements . . . unless U.S. special interests find this inconvenient, in which case all bets are off and suddenly protectionism is all the rage.

Sources:

U.S. Judge Bars Limits on Imports of China Textiles. Reuters, December 31, 2004.

US Textile Makers Lose Bid to Cap Chinese Imports. Xinhua News Agency, January 2, 2005.

U.S. Judge Blocks Chinese Textile Quotas is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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Oddly enough, China state-run news media used the birth of the 1.3 billion child to trumpet the success of the one-child policy. But, all things considered, the one-child policy has been an abject failure. It did little to slow China’s population growth — most of the decline in China’s birth rate occurred before the one-child policy was instituted, and the birth rate actually briefly increased after the one-child policy was introduced. Certainly other nations in Europe and Asia have demonstrated that very low birth rates can be achieved without such Draconian measures.

Even China’s state-run media makes very modest claims for the one-child policy, claiming that without the one child policy reaching the 1.3 billion mark would have occurred in 2001 rather than 2005. A typically inefficient policy for the Communist state.

The major effect of the one-child policy has, however, been the highly skewed sex ratio. Currently about 120 boys are born in China for every 100 girls — an astoundingly high imbalance that will likely cause severe social shocks and problems. The one-child policy helped exacerbate this imbalance by giving urban residents an incentive to abort female fetuses.

China could have achieved much more rapid economic growth and lower population growth if the dictatorial Communist Party had simply tried a little more freedom instead of micromanaging the lives of its subjects.

China’s population is not expected to continue to grow much longer. Although demographics mean that it will continue to grow even with very low birth rates, China’s population is expected to top off at 1.46 billion sometime in the 2030s.

Source:

China’s population passes 1.3bn. The BBC, January 6, 2005.

Policy Comes of Age as Population Hits 1.3 Billion. Press Release, Family Planning Commission of China, January 6, 2005.

China’s population reaches 1.3 billion. Associated Press, January 6, 2005.

China’s Population Surpasses 1.3 Billion is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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Morris told the BBC,

Our job is to feed the hungriest, poorest people, wherever they are in the world. We are very focused on those countries that would be the least developed, that would have the greatest food security problem, and the least per capita income. China is no longer one of those countries.

Morris went on to add that, “China now has this extraordinary experience of how to move a large number of people out of hunger and poverty.”

Just don’t tell Lester Brown.

Back in 1995, Lester Brown wrote one in a long line of prophetic books about overpopulation, “Who Will Feed China? A Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet.” Published as a WorldWatch book, the plot was simple — China’s rapid growth in industrialization combined with its sky high population meant that China would soon need levels of grain imports that were simply impossible. After all, according to WorldWatch

Within a span of two years (1992-1994), China has gone from being a net grain exporter of 8 million tons to being a net importer of 16 million tons. China’s overnight emergence as a leading importer of grain, second only to Japan, is driving up world grain prices, promising to raise food prices everywhere, the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental research institute, said in a study released today.

Brown projected massive, unbelievable grain import demands from China. He suggested that simply to feed all of the chickens necessary to meet China’s demands for eggs by 2000 would require the equivalent in grain imports of the entire Australian production.

The reality, of course, was a bit different. China’s brief period as a net importer of grain turned out to be an anomaly. For example, other than 1994-95 and 1995-96 when it as a net importer of corn, China has been the second leading exporter of corn, behind only the United States.

Brown and others, as they always do, vastly underestimated the ability of China’s grain production capabilities.

Rather than China’s rapid industrialization and economic growth outstripping its ability to produce food, China, as Morris noted, “has built its capacity to address its own problems, it doesn’t need us any more.”

Brown made two fundamental errors of the type commonly made by prophets of doom. First, he assumed that very short trends — in this case, just over two years (!!) — represented long-term trends. Second, he assumed that the development model that Japan followed — rapid industrialization and population expansion that quickly created land shortages — would also be applicable to China, despite the obvious dissimilarities between the two (Brown might want to locate Japan and China on a map someday and compare and contrast the respective land mass of the two countries).

Source:

China ‘ no longer needs food aid’. The BBC, December 13, 2004.

UN Agency to Halt Food Aid to China. Benjamin Sand, NewsVOA.Com, December 14, 2004.

Future Directions for China’s Food Demand. Robert Wisner, AgDM Newsletter, November 2000.

Who Will Feed China:
Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet. Press Release, WorldWatch Institute, November 3, 1995.

WFP to Wean China Off Food Aid — Another Lester Brown Prophecy of Doom Bites the Dust is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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