Finance minister sees opportunities in China

Oh no, RR, sounds like Harper's government is getting friendly with those godless Communists you like to bitch about so often...

Are we going to sell them a copper mine or maybe a whole autonomous region so they can set up their own gulag?

You'd think with such money to invest, they would address their own polution and green house gas problems... or are they still a "developing nation"?

In Victoria last weekend, I saw 3, count them 3, solar powered water heaters on roofs of housing (in a 'sustainable development'). Chinese cities have literally thousands of them on rooftops. That's one way they are more environmentally aware than we are.

However, as the US and the rest of the West has shown, you get richer by using fossil fuels like crazy, not cutting back. You can't blame them for wanting the same standard of living (or something even close) to what we have. We also polluted the shit out of our own countries in the 1950s and 60s getting to where we are now.

Why the double standard? Or is it only okay when we use PCBs, DDT, asbestos, and lead paint (to name but a few)?

They are working on dealing with pollution and greenhouse gases. However, to pay for that, they first need a viable economy. If you know some secret step that they can take to bypass the dirty industrialization phase on the route to wealth and prosperity, maybe you should tell them.

And yes, they still are a developing nation. Sure, Shanghai, Beijing and some other coastal cities are affluent and wealthy, but a lot of the interior is as dirt poor as most of Africa.

Its not just the federal government but his provincial one as well. Companies like Teck sell coal to China. In fact most of BC's coal gets shipped to China filling his provinces coffers with nasty dirty commie money.

No more chinese crap please.

Maybe we could sell them all those green things Dion was talking about..but wait. We don't sell products to China. Just raw materials.. that they make into things and sell back to us.




http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmen ... s-47102302


It's a good thing I don't believe in all this global warming crap.. but don't you?
Does it matter to Al Gore if there are 300 thousand or 1.4 Billion people when the poluttion levels are the same. Dividing it by a bigger number just makes it sound smaller when the polution level is still the same.

Yeah, we never sell manufactured goods to China;

"Bombardier of Canada got the contract for a signaling system on the network as well as for work on 40 high-speed trains."

http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/03/news/in ... n.fortune/

"Meanwhile, Nortel appears to be losing ground in China. According to SinoCast Daily Business, service providers, including China Telecom, have scratched Nortel off the supplier roster."

http://www.von.com/articles/enterprise/ ... pause.html

Sounds like at least two Canadian companies are selling finished goods to China. I also rode on a Bombardier train when I was in China last fall.

Any other myths you want busted?




How much of the world's emissions did the West have in the 1950s and 60s when we were industrializing? I bet it was pretty high (much higher if you counted the Soviet bloc).

Again, why is it okay for us to be wealthy and industrialized and not the Chinese?

It's incredibly hypocritical of us to say, "do as I say, not as I do".




Actually, I'm not sure that human activity is behind it or not, but I do think if we can use greener technology, then we should. I think 'Don't shit where you eat' is a pretty fucking smart proverb...how about you?

Question is though, how many are we going to be able to sell them before they steal the design and sell it back to us?



http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoe ... b457af36cd

You can talk all you like about the pollution of the 50s & 60s but we wern't all dying next year because of global warming back then. Now the EPA has become one of the best and the state of polution in the US is a fraction of that in China. I'm even going to drop that one because it's so unfair to beat you up over something so one sided.

I don't know, probably about as much as we steal with the Echelon network;



Seriously though, I'm not surprised. China is working on building its own line of regional jets. China is to most definately to blame for its acts of espionage, but who can blame them? If you are foolish enough to leave your car unlocked, you shouldn't be surprised that steals it. Like they say, "locks only keep the honest people out."

I would also think that CSIS needs to get off its ass and do its job, vis-a-vis counter-espionage.



And you can bleat on and on about how the US is environmentally conscious now. It doesn't mean shit. It never was when it was the world's factory, back in the 50s and 60s. Compare apples with apples, not oranges. Your argument is specious at best.

I could just as easily say, well China had far less pollution when it was dominantly an agrarian country, but does that prove anything? Nope, of course not! I'm comparing one rapidly industrializing nation with another (albeit in different time frames), but that is far more accurate than comparing a nation shedding its manufacturing (to China no less), to one that is rapidly building an industrial base.




My dear boy, you haven't even landed a glancing blow yet.

So far, all you've managed to do is dodge, dodge and dodge some more.

And you've never answered my original question; namely how does China get wealthy without doing what the West did 50 years? Or what Japan did 40 years ago? Or what Taiwan and South Korea did 20 years ago? Each and every one of them polluted their own country to excess (Taiwan is still brutal) and have only recently come to realize that mistake.

Do we hold the Chinese to a higher standard than we hold ourselves to? Or is it just that everyone but the Chinese allowed to fully develop?

So it's our fault if we let China steal our secrets? That's retarded. Isn't that blaming the victim?
If I'm not mistaken, the RCMP already tried to look into things like organized criminals from China and Chretien shut it down and tried to hide it.


The question of how China develops while being green is not my concern. Are you seriously suggesting that the only way China can be the rising manufacturing lead is with rampant pollution?

I'm sure the people of China have different opinions considering it's their children who are being poisoned with lead, cadmium, or any number of other pollutants. I'm quite sure the average Chinese citizen would be fine with a slightly slower level of growth in exchange for rivers that are clean and air that they can breath. This unregulated capitalism is more a demand of the party than it is the people.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00217.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/environm ... onmentNews

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/02 ... h-defects2

I never said it was our fault, I said I don't blame them.

We used an intercepted cell phone call in 1981 from the US ambassador to Caanda to outbuid them on a grain deal to China to the tune of $1 billion. Why aren't you bitching about that?

My point is espionage is a crime of opportunity. If we don't bother to protect our own secrets, how can we be surprised that someone stole them? We did when we had the chance and so will everyone else, from the Israelis to the Americans to the Chinese.

If you lock the henhouse door, you don't need to worry about the foxes lurking around outside.



If it's not your concern, then neither is their pollution problem.

Like I said, they are going through the exact same steps we did in the 1950s and 60s when we transitioned from an agricultural society to a manufacturing one. We poisoned our own environment with DDT, PCBs, lead paint, asbestos, you name it. Our system of corporate regulation didn't appear to be any better than the Chinese system is. Until someone comes up with a better way, EVERY developing nation is going to follow the same path.

So either be a part of the solution or just stop bitching.