After reading chapter 15 in, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded“, I decided to learn more about Thomas Friedman, the author, and discovered he has been the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes and writes a foreign affairs column for The New York Times.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to discover that Chapter 15 in Friedman’s book is about China.
He has visited China regularly since 1990—nine years more than I have, and in chapter fifteen he writes in detail why it is so difficult to get things done there.
The China he describes is the one I’ve learned about since 1999 – not the China that the Western media and American politicians paint as dark and forbidding, while they pander to many Americans who suffer from Sinophobia.
Friedman mentions how China’s government is authoritarian but quickly dispels the power of that image by pointing out the lack of control China’s leaders have over the rest of the Communist Party scattered across a country the size of the US with a population five times larger.
China’s leadership in Beijing became aware of the environmental problems years ago, attempted doing something about it and was ignored by most of the 73 million Party members.
Friedman also justifiably pointed out how unfair it is to criticize China for pollution when the Western industrialized countries started long before the Chinese did.
He also says that the West shipped most of its dirtiest manufacturing industries to China.
The chapter concludes with Friedman urging China’s leaders in Beijing to enlist the help of more than a billion people in a partnership that would force the entire Communist Party to obey the environmental laws and clean up China’s air and water.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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