Modern Issues in China

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Modern Issues in China
Trade with the U.S.
Three Gorges Dam
Overcrowding
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Three Gorges Dam

• China's biggest construction project since the
  Great Wall

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Taming the Yangzi River

• It is expected to tame the fabled Yangzi River.
  The Yangzi's notorious floods have been recorded
  for millennia and have claimed more than 1
  million lives in the past 100 years.
• Known to most Chinese as Chang Jiang (Long
  River), the Yangzi at 3,937 miles is the third
  longest river in the world behind the Nile and
  the Amazon.

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The Three Gorges Dam Facts

• It will be one and a half miles wide
• More than 600 feet high
• It will create a reservoir hundreds of feet deep
  and nearly 400 miles long.
• When completed, it will be the largest
  hydro-electric dam in the world.
• Total costs will be about 24 billion dollars.
• 20 years construction time.   

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Hydroelectricity

• The dam's hydropower turbines are expected to
  create as much electricity as 18 nuclear power
  plants

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Access inland

• The project includes a system of locks, the
  largest ever built, intended to bring ocean-going
  ships 1,500 miles inland to Chongqing, the
  capital of the municipality created from Sichuan
  Province in 1997 to encompass the project.
• The area, with more than 30 million people, is
  under the direct control of the central
  government in Beijing.
• Officials hope the combination of inexpensive
  electricity and cheap river transportation will
  further open the region to international
  investment -- making Chongqing a major business
  center.

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Pros to Using Dams

• Dams can store rain water or water directly from
  the river itself. Then, in case of a Drought, the
  dam will still have a relatively constant supply
  of water.
• Producing Power.
• Controls flooding provides recreational
  activities such as boating fishing and swimming,
  if the lake is not being used for drinking water
  
• Simple design makes for inexpensive repairs and
  maintenance costs, very few breakdowns
• Produce inexpensive (after completion) and clean
  power.
• Renewable energy source, because the water is not
  destroyed by passing through the dam.
• If needed, dams can be shut down instantly, where
  thermal plants take hours, and nuclear plants can
  take days!

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Flooding behind the dam

• The Three Gorges Reservoir will flood 632 square
  kilometers (395 square miles) of land.
• The land that is going to be flooded is some of
  the most fertile in China
• Archaeologists and historians have estimated
  nearly 1,300 important historical sites will
  disappear under the reservoir's waters.

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People displaced

• It has displaced about one million people from
  their homes and destroyed a large section of the
  scenic Yangtze River.
• Entire villages were abandoned and moved (homes,
  businesses, cemeteries, etc New housing built

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Will be how high the water will get due to the dam
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Water has been let loose
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Environmental Damage

• The submergence of hundreds of factories, mines
  and waste dumps, and the presence of massive
  industrial centers upstream are creating a
  festering bog of effluent, silt, industrial
  pollutants and rubbish in the reservoir.
• Erosion of the reservoir and downstream
  riverbanks is causing landslides, and threatening
  one of the worlds biggest fisheries in the East
  China Sea
• BUT
• Chinese officials note the dam may end up
  providing as much as one-ninth of the nation's
  electrical production. Considering that China
  burns 50 million tons of coal each year for
  energy, their point is that the environmental
  benefits outweigh the environmental damage.

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Summary of Information
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Chinas Population

• Growing rapidly
• Need for resources
• Need for places for the people to live and work

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• China has the highest population in the world,
  encompassing 1.3 billion or twenty one percent of
  the world's population. China faces serious
  social and economic problems associated with
  overpopulation in the years to come.

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Problems associated with overpopulation

• Overly populated regions lead to
• Destruction of Land (for cities and housing)
• Lack resources (not enough food, fresh water,
  electricity, schools, hospitals, transportation
  etc)
• Pollution
• Bad living conditions (slums)

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Lack of Resources
Lack of transportation
Lack of stores and food for the large of people
Adequate Housing is difficult to maintain for the
growing population
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Pollution
750,000 people each year are dying from air
pollution
Rivers and lakes are so polluted it is killing
wildlife and taking away fresh water sources.
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Living in the Slums

• 10 of Chinas population live below the poverty
  line.

Poor housing in a fishing village near Hong Kong
Peasant Farmers in China
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1979 Law One Child Policy

• The policy limits couples to one child. Fines,
  pressures to abort a pregnancy, and even forced
  sterilization accompanied second or subsequent
  pregnancies.
• It is not an all-encompassing rule because it has
  always been restricted to ethnic Han Chinese
  living in urban areas (90 of the population).
  Citizens living in rural areas and minorities
  living in China are not subject to the law.

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The Result?

• China's population growth has been somewhat
  slowed by the one child policy, in effect since
  1979.
• China's population is expected to grow over the
  next few decades. This can be attributed to
  immigration and a decrease in infant mortality
  and a decrease in death rate as national health
  improves.
• However, the rule has been estimated to have
  reduced population growth in the country by as
  much as 300 million people over its first twenty
  years.
• Around 2030, China's population is anticipated to
  peak and then slowly start dropping.

World Ratio 105 males to 100 females China 114
males to 100 females
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Chinas Economy and Trade
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Trade with the U.S.
China is listed the number two country that the
United States is exporting to and importing from
ranking right behind neighboring Canada
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Why trade with China?

• Trading itself is the most efficient way of
  gaining goods and services. It is much more
  efficient for a country to trade with one another
  that to attempt to produce all of the goods
  themselves. Trading with China is especially
  important to the United States. The United States
  has such a strong relationship with China because
  they need China to gain many of the goods that
  they desire.
• This has caused the loss of thousands of US
  companies and started the Race to the Bottom
  for wages and environmental quality, destroying
  employment in many communities and regions in the
  United States.

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Environmental Negatives

• China has the largest population of any country
  in the world. Its economy is also growing
  rapidly. This puts strain on the environment and
  natural resources.
• Overall the increase in demand for goods to the
  US has increased number of factories and energy
  use. This has had very negative impacts on the
  environment with land loss, erosion, water and
  air pollution and deforestation.

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Factory Conditions

• Many sweatshops are located in developing
  countries such as China, India, and Bangladesh.
  However, they can be found around the world.
• Many people believe that sweat shops exploit poor
  unskilled laborers by paying them low wages.
  Various health and safety issues arise in the
  workplace.
• Abuse is common because the boss know that they
  cant get another job.
• Many of the workers are female. They are grossly
  underpaid for the extended work day.
• Their wages dont cover the cost of living.
• United States companies are exporting jobs to
  China because it costs less for them to produce
  goods there.

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Nike

• Nike Inc., the world's biggest sneaker and
  sportswear maker, admits it found falsified
  documents, underage workers and unpaid wages at
  suppliers in China.
• The report said China is Nike's largest
  single-sourcing country, with some 180
  manufacturers and about 210,000 employees.

A Nike shoe factory in China
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Disney

• FACTORY staff making some of Walt Disneys most
  popular Christmas toys are working up to 18 hours
  a day for as little as 16 cents an hour, an
  investigation has found.
• Workers at the factories in southern China also
  claim they have had to stay in cramped
  dormitories housing up to 16 people and that they
  are fined if they spend more than five minutes in
  the lavatory. At one factory they receive just
  one day off a month.

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Recalls for unsafe products

• Because china has lower quality standards there
  have been many products of inferior quality that
  have made it to the United States.
• In some cases, these products are not only poor
  quality but dangerous.

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Toy

• The latest news in the China Saga has parents of
  kids once again scrambling as Mattel has issued a
  toy recall only weeks after Fisher-Price had to
  do the same because of the use of deadly lead
  paint.
• Around 9 million of the Chinese made toys
  ranging from Barbie to Batman to Polly Pockets to
  die cast cars are all posing a potential danger
  to kids because of lead paint. (2007)