Greenpeace and the growth of environmentalism in China – Part 2/3

March 9, 2012

When The Diplomat.com asked Li Yan, head of Greenpeace in East Asia’s Climate and Energy Campaign about China, Li Yan replied, “China has made impressive efforts to cut back its carbon emission growth, and it’s fair to say that China is doing much better than many other countries, including industrialized ones. However, with the rapid growth of emissions, China needs – and has the capability – to do more…”

“According to a recent U.N. Environment Program report, China has surpassed the United States in renewable energy investment in 2010, making it now the world’s largest… In 2010, China’s wind power installation capacity was about 42GW, which places China as the biggest installation country globally.”

In addition, a recent post by Ma Tianjie on the Greenpeace East Asia Blog said, “As early as 2009, after a series of lead pollution cases, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (China) had called for a ‘blanket inspection’ of heavy metal pollution facilities. This means, in theory, local governments should already have an inventory of local industrial facilities that release heavy metals, with basic information on who is discharging what…”


Gloria Chang is Greenpeace China’s key campaigner on climate change – June 2007

“It is clear that the government’s environmental protection apparatus, low in capacity and short in manpower, cannot fight this battle alone,” Ma Tianjie said. “The public, especially non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working for the protection of the environment, has a role in contributing to such efforts.

“In August 2011, the ministry (in China) made an unprecedented move by releasing detailed pollution information on more than 1,900 lead-acid battery facilites across the country. It was the first time that information on an entire industry’s environmental performance was made public.

“Reactions to the initiative were overwhelmingly positive. A close scrutiny of the data by the media, environmental NGOs and the public resulted in corrections and a dataset of improved quality, which would only help the ministry to better supervise the listed facilities.”

Ma Tianjie recently appeared on China’s CCTV news program “China 24” to discuss the recent toxic metal contamination of water supply in Guanxi Autonomous Region. You may learn more of this CCTV appearance at Greenpeace.org.

However, China is often criticized by its critics/enemies for censorship and controlling what the state owned media reports without any mention of broadcasts such as this one on CCTV with Ma Tianjie of Greenpeace East Asia.

Continued March 10, 2012 in Greenpeace and the growth of environmentalism in China – Part 3 or return to Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Subscribe to “iLook China”
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.

About iLook China

Leave a Comment » | China, Communism, environment, government, legal system, media, politics, science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Greenpeace and the growth of environmentalism in China – Part 1/3

March 8, 2012

The list of Chinese democracy activists that have been arrested is not long considering there are more than 1.3 billion people in China. Wiki lists 30.

I studied the list of Chinese dissidents and saw that none was executed although there were several alleged to have committed treason and revealing state secrets: Bao Tong (1989), Shi Tao (2004), Wang Bingzhang (2002), and Wei Jingsheng (1979).

Unless I missed something, no dissidents was in jail at this time and a few had been kicked out of the country. Wei Jingsheng, an electrician accused of passing military secrets, was deported to the US in 1997 after spending some time in prison.

If found guilty of these crimes in the United States, the result may have led to a death sentence or life in prison. When I checked the list of people convicted of treason in the US, I saw that 10 have been executed. The United Kingdom had a longer list of executions for treason, while China’s list has only three names on it, which were Zhou Fohyai (executed 1948), Chen Gongbo (executed 1946), and Wang Jingwei (executed 1944).

However, when it comes to environmental activists, such as members of Greenpeace being detained in China, the list is short, while in the West the list of environmental activists being arrested is long.

In 2007, six Greenpeace protesters were arrested for breaking into the Kingsnorth power station in southeast England.

June 2008, two Greenpeace activists were arrested in Japan for exposing a whale meat scandal involving the government sponsored whaling program.

May 2010, seven Greenpeace activists were arrested in Port Fourchon, Louisiana in an anti-drilling protest.

In May 2011, six Greenpeace campaigners were arrested in Durban, South Africa.

June 2011, eighteen Greenpeace activists were arrested after climbing aboard an oil rig off Greenland’s coast to protest deepwater drilling in the Arctic.

August 2011, Daryl Hannah and 70 other environmental activists arrested at a Tar Sands Pipeline protest outside the White House in Washington D.C.

In November 2011, three Greenpeace activists were arrested in South Africa over coal power plant protests.

However, in China in 2006, Greenpeace East Asia was the only NGO to be consulted on an early draft of a renewable energy law by China’s National People’s Congress. In fact, before Greenpeace opened offices in Guangzhou and Beijing in 2002, activists from the Hong Kong office ran several campaigns on the Chinese Mainland and have even been interviewed on CCTV.

In addition, Greenpeace activists have recently gone undercover in China to catch industrial polluters, and it appears that this operation may have had the blessing and support of the CCP’s Central Committee.

Continued March 09, 2012 in Greenpeace and the growth of environmentalism in China – Part 2

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Subscribe to “iLook China”
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.

About iLook China

8 Comments | China, environment, government, legal system, media, politics, science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Americans doing Business in China – Part 16/16

March 7, 2012

Note from Blog host — another example of East meets West through business and trade:  “Avon, the first direct-sales company in China, has 85,000 agents knocking on doors and yurts in every region except Tibet, racking up sales of $68 million in 1996. A year before, Mary Kay opened its first cosmetics plant outside the U.S. in Hangzhou. Demand has been so keen that the Texas-based firm has already broken ground on a new China factory, 15 times larger than the first one…

“China’s American embrace is most fervent at the cathedral to Yankee culture, the cinema. Beijing still allows distribution of a handful of imported flicks each year, but the ration is no longer a forced diet of scratchy Hollywood flops. These days Chinese eschew the patriotic reels still churned out by government filmmakers for the latest Sylvester Stallone and Tom Cruise blockbusters, which laud Western excesses…

“Mainland TV, undergoing its own revolution, offers another shock to seasoned sinologists. Thanks partly to satellite TV, Chinese soaps and historical serials now compete against programs that would have seemed unimaginable only a few years ago: episodes of Baywatch and The X-Files.” Source: The Americanizaton of China

______________________

Part 2 – In the PBS documentary of foreign entrepreneurs in China we discover (when the US financial crises hit the world causing more than $64US trillion in global loses while those who caused the crises walked away with fortunes) China experienced a slowdown in economic growth in 2008.

One foreign entrepreneur, Ed Hung, talks of the clothing store he co-founded, NLGX Design, which opened in Beijing in 2008. He said rent was still increasing.

Ed Hung was born and raised in San Francisco. His business partner, Michel Sutyadi, was born and raised in Germany. They met in Beijing while studying Mandarin in 2005.

Ed Hung says modern Beijing is becoming a consumer culture.

Then Doug Ma, a co-founder of Go Tour-ING, talks of how the global financial crisis (which was started in America) has affected business.

In the spring of 2008, Dough Ma left his job at an investment bank to travel. He wrote a post for Jet Set Zero in July 2009, and said, “It has been quite a challenge starting up Tour-ING. For one thing, it has been a tough year for the tourism industry. Less people are traveling due to the global economy and the outbreak of swine flu has hindered a lot of travel plans.”

Brian Sloan, CEO of Robotic Blow Job, says the sex toys he manufactures and sells seem more popular in hard economic times since people spend less money going out and stay home more so they need a method of self-entertainment.

Due to legal problems in Chicago, Sloan took his business to China because, “In China, people respect what I do as a business,” he says.

Note from Blog host – If you plan to do business in China, I recommend visiting the China Law Blog first.

Return to Americans doing Business in China – Part 15 or start with Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Subscribe to “iLook China”
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.

About iLook China

Note: This post first appeared on January 24, 2011

Leave a Comment » | America, business, capitalism, China, economy, expatriates, expatriots | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Americans doing Business in China – Part 15/16

March 6, 2012

Note from Blog host — another example of East meets West through business and trade: Recently, the Future of US China Trade.com reported the results of a survey of 434 multinational companies doing business in China. “78% percent of companies surveyed rank China among their top three priority locations for investment. Only 7% rank China as ‘not a high priority’.”

_______________________                

Part 1 – Young and Restless in China was filmed over a period of four years starting in 2004 for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Paris Franz, a student, blogger and writer with a passion for history, art and travel, wrote a post about Young and Restless in China for Suite 101.com.

This two-part segment is about foreign entrepreneurs in China. I plan to also feature other segments of this PBS Frontline documentary because it demonstrates how much China is changing. The more I learn, the more it appears that there is more freedom in China than most people outside China are aware of.

Franz wrote, “The film highlights what is unique about China at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

“The entrepreneurs – starting up tailoring, hotel and internet café businesses – are full of optimism, supremely confident that their hard work is going to make them rich. As one of them says, China today is “the land of opportunity.”

Part One starts with “there is this misconception of China that it is not modern, that it is still changing, but if you come and see with your own eyes you will discover that (urban) China (where about 500 million people live) is as modern as any city in the world.

One entrepreneur says, if you visit Beijing and see the architecture, you will see that it is leaps and bounds ahead of the US.

Another entrepreneur says, China is a melting pot for all types of entrepreneurs in Beijing… For young entrepreneur it is cheap to start something new in China compared to the US.

In fact, as the economic tide turns against the west, younger, foreign talents are taking their entrepreneurial ambitions to China because the market is right for starting a business.

One American entrepreneur says he graduated from law school at Penn State in 2005. He then talks about how he arrived in China to create, manufacture and sell his own brand of sex toys and fetish clothing.

Note from Blog host – If you plan to do business in China, I recommend visiting the China Law Blog first.

Continued March 7, 2012 in Americans doing Business in China – Part 16 or return to Part 14

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Subscribe to “iLook China”
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.

About iLook China

Note: This post first appeared on January 23, 2011

Leave a Comment » | America, business, capitalism, China, economy, expatriates, expatriots | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Americans doing Business in China – Part 14/16

March 5, 2012

Note from Blog host — another example of East meets West through business and trade: China Daily.com says, “The world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, says its inventory of stock produced in China is expected to hit US$18 billion this year…”

However, trade is global. Wal-Mart has stores in 26 countries outside the continental US—including China.

Walmart entered the Chinese market and opened its first Supercenter and Sam’s Club in Shenzhen in 1996. Currently, Walmart operates a number of store formats in China including Supercenters, Sam’s Clubs, and Neighborhood Markets. As of August 5, 2010, Walmart had 189 units in 101 cities, and created over 50,000 job opportunities across China.  Source: Wal-Mart China.com

______________________

Guest Post by Bob Grant — publisher/editor for Speak Without Interruption, an international online magazine.

The world is a global market – those businesses that don’t believe this, or embrace it, will go by the wayside.

In 2002, I was an independent manufacturer’s rep and one of my customers said that I should look at branching out – representing products “outside” of the U.S.

I thought this was good advice, so I first started looking in Europe. For many reasons – after trying many companies and products – I decided that Europe was not for me.

I then looked and visited Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China.

I settled on China because I felt that was a country that could best provide me with the products I needed to succeed.

Once I settled on a product category, I then knew that I needed one key person inside China to make it all come together and become successful.

It took me a year to find that person and his name is David. Without David, I would not be where I am today and I am forever indebted to this young man.

David and I had some very productive years together.

Then like most things that are successful – there was a down turn. This was due to the world economy and actions taken by both the Chinese and U.S. Governments.

Through no fault of our own our business died. However, David has stuck with me and I with him. We are now working on new projects that we both hope – and feel – will get us back some of the volume we have had in the past.

I never had a son and David became that son to me. He and his family have also adopted me as part of their own.

It saddens me when I read statements about China and its people that just are not true. I can only testify to my own experiences and connections inside China but I would not trade the relationships I have made for anything.

David and his family are a key part of my life and forever will be – regardless of what the governments of our respective countries might say and do.

Note from Blog host – If you plan to do business in China, I recommend visiting the China Law Blog first.

Continued March 6, 2012 in Americans doing Business in China – Part 15 or return to Part 13

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Subscribe to “iLook China”
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.

About iLook China

Note: This guest post first appeared on September 30, 2010

Leave a Comment » | America, business, capitalism, China, economy, expatriates, expatriots, United States | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »