When a Billion Chinese Jump (61 page)

28.
Named after the economist Arthur Lewis, a Nobel Laureate well known for his studies of labor. According to him, developing countries’ industrial wages begin to rise quickly at some critical point when the supply of surplus labor from the rural areas tapers off. This shifts the labor supply from surplus to shortage (Kam Wing Chan, Cai Fang, and Du Yang,
The China Population and Labor Yearbook,
vol. 1:
The Approaching Lewis Turning Point and Its Policy Implications
[Brill, 2009], p. 12).

1.
In an interview with Hari Kunzru, October 2007,
http://www.harikunzru.com/jg-ballard-interview-2007
.

2.
Fraser Newham, “China Puts Its Best Face Forward,”
Asia Times,
April 6, 2006.

3.
Wu Jiao, “50% of People to Be Middle Class by 2020,”
China Daily,
December 27, 2007.

4.
World Wide Fund for Nature, 2008 Living Planet Report,
www.panda.org
, 2008.

5.
Ibid. A European or Japanese lifestyle is a little less eco-intense than that of the U.S., but it too would be catastrophic on a Chinese scale. The comparison is similar to that of launching 3,000 or 4,000 nuclear warheads. One number is bigger than the other, but it is almost irrelevant as destruction would be total in either case.

6.
Shanghai’s carmakers account for almost a fifth of the local economy. Its port is expected to overtake Singapore as the world’s busiest container port, in terms of cargo handled, before 2012 (“Singapore Remains World’s Busiest Container Port,”
Port World,
January 11, 2008).

7.
Song Ligang and Wing Thye Woo (eds.),
China’s Dilemma: Economic Growth, the Environment and Climate Change
(Brookings, 2008), p. 8.

8.
As ever, the expansion was superaccelerated in China. In the U.S., it had taken thirty years for the chain to hit the 600-restaurant mark (Warren Liu,
KFC in China: Secret Recipe for Success
[Wiley, 2008]).

9.
The term appears to date back thousands of years. When archaeologists excavated the terra-cotta warriors in Xian, one way of distinguishing the ranks of the soldiers was the size of their stomachs. The poor foot soldiers were lean. The officers were distinguished by a more fulsome girth.

10.
Though it is nowhere near as bad as in the U.S., where a third of people are obese and nearly two-thirds are overweight (James Randerson, “China’s Alarming Increase in Obesity Blamed on More Affluent Lifestyle,”
Guardian,
August 18, 2006). In the first fifteen years after the start of economic reforms in 1978, the number of overweight people in China more than doubled to 200 million. A six-year-old boy in China is now 6 kilograms heavier and 6 centimeters taller than his counterpart thirty years ago.

11.
Speech at the Nature Conservancy conference ConEx in Vancouver, 2008.

12.
The average consumer in China ate 54 kilograms of meat in 2007, up from 20 kilograms in 1980. The country as a whole now chomps through 65 million tons of meat per year, equivalent to 260 million cows, 650 million pigs, or 26 billion chickens (Jonathan Watts, “More Wealth, More Meat: How China’s Rise Spells Trouble,”
Guardian,
May 30, 2008). A study by the Australian Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation forecasts a sharp rise in demand for meat and dairy in twelve Asian countries—home to more than half the world’s population. By 2020, it predicts a rise in beef consumption in the region by 50 percent, pork by 30 percent, chicken meat by 40 percent, and dairy products by 55 percent.

13.
Europeans have a leaner diet but still get through 89 kilograms of meat per year.

14.
Between 1978 and 2006, the number of air conditioners in China rose 390,000-fold, refrigerators 1,200-fold, and cars 700-fold (
National Statistical Yearbook 2007
[China National Bureau of Statistics, 2007]).

15.
Ibid.

16.
The 140,000 tons of tissues and toilet paper Shanghai uses every year consumes some 80,000 tons of wood pulp, equal to about 300,000 tons of wood. Wang Yueqin, vice director of the Shanghai Paper Trade Association, noted: “While I am happy to see many young people adopt paper tissue for its convenience, which is a sign to reflect our social development and has helped improve our industry to some part, I am beginning to worry about the large
wood consumption” (Cao Li, “Toilet Paper Demand Upsets Wood Supplies,”
China Daily,
February 15, 2005). Figures on carbon usage provided by Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, based on data from the China National Bureau of Statistics, IPCC, and the World Bank.

17.
McKinsey and Co., “The Coming of Age: China’s New Class of Wealthy Consumers,”
www.mckinsey.com
, 2009.

18.
Ibid. Wealthy households are defined as those with incomes of at least 250,000 yuan.

19.
“China’s Auto Consumption Likely to Surpass That of the U.S. by 2017,” Xinhua Economic News Service, April 14, 2008.

20.
J. R. McNeill,
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
(W. W. Norton, 2001), p. 15.

21.
Jonathan Watts, “A Miracle and a Menace,”
Guardian,
November 9, 2005.

22.
The countryside was also targeted. After the economic downturn of 2008, the Chinese government attempted to spur consumer demand by giving 13 percent rebates to farmers who bought air conditioners and refrigerators.

23.
Yue-Sai sounds naïve and self-deluding, but her self-justification has since been echoed by countless multinationals. When criticized for pandering to an authoritarian regime, the response is usually along the same lines as Yue-Sai’s: “Our products are opening China to the world. By selling we are doing good.”

24.
Fraser Newham, “China Puts Its Best Face Forward,”
Asia Times,
April 6, 2006.

25.
The Japanese firm Shiseido reportedly found that Chinese consumers want even more intense whitening agents than those in Japan (ibid.).

26.
Leg lengthening is a painful and dangerous procedure in which surgeons break the legs and bolt either side onto a racklike device, which stretches the bones as they heal over months.

27.
Yet, she is self-aware when she explains why Asian features require different makeup. “Being Chinese, we know that we look different from you in the West. I have black hair, dark eyes, a flat nose—I have a hard time buying sunglasses. My skin tone is yellow, my eyes are small and slanted so I try to make up differently.”

1.
Thomas Malthus,
An Essay on the Principle of Population
(1798),
ch. 16
.

2.
In terms of registered population in 2008. Other provinces claim this title when measured in different ways. Guangdong would be top if migrants are included, Sichuan if Chongqing is included.

3.
Ibid.

4.
In the nineteenth century the American A. K. Norton wrote, “The numbers of the people must be cut down, and if disease, war and plague are not sufficient, famine may be depended upon to fill up the toll. Herein lies the paramount reality of the China problem” (cited in Jasper Becker,
Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine
[Holt, 1998], p. 11).

5.
Qu Geping and Li Jinchang,
Population and the Environment in China
(Lynne Rienner, 1994).

6.
Though the origins of tai chi are contested.

7.
Hence the abbreviated name for the province Yu, a character depicting a person leaning on an elephant (Mark Elvin,
Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China
[Yale University Press, 2004]).

8.
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2009-01-23/071217101413.shtml
.

9.
Population density in Henan is 380 people per square kilometer (
National Statistical Yearbook 2008
[China National Bureau of Statistics, 2008]). It is the seventeenth-poorest province in China with an average rural income of 3,850 yuan in 2007.

10.
The safety of planes is a high priority in China: many airports put up huge nets around the runway to stop birds from flying into aircraft engines. Conservationists say the nets are deadly, unnecessary, and no longer used in most developed nations (interview with John MacKinnon).

11.
Here and in Sichuan, which was the most populous province until Chong-qing was made into a separate municipality.

12.
Judith Shapiro,
Mao’s War Against Nature
(Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 31. Mao also argued that “an extra belly was also two extra hands.”

13.
The first people’s commune was established in Chayashan, near Xinyang city, in April 1958.

14.
Wang Shilong’s stunning photographs of the province during that era capture the sense of communalism. In one, thousands of farmers are mobilized as hydroengineers, working in a honeycomb formation to dig vast irrigation channels. In others, workers toss fuel into the roaring fires of backyard steel furnaces and beaming farmers display giant cabbages and armfuls of wheat. Such idealized propaganda—backed by the “Good News Reporting Teams” of Maoist cheerleaders—masked a very different reality.

15.
Becker,
Hungry Ghosts,
p. 272.

16.
One in eight people in Xinyang died (Yang Jisheng,
Mubei: Zhongguo 60
Niandai Dajihuang Jishi
[Tombstone: A History of the Great Leap Forward], Cosmos Books, 2008).

17.
Starvation and cannibalism have a long history in China. The same is true in many Western countries. But memories here are more recent. It is no coincidence that the most common question after saying hello even today is “Ni chi le ma?” (Have you eaten?). See also Becker,
Hungry Ghosts,
pp. 116, 118, for this and the remainder of the paragraph.

18.
Henan’s apparent success in dam building was the inspiration for Mao to launch the Great Leap Forward, according to Ma Jun,
China’s Water Crisis
(Eastbridge, 2004), p. 149.

19.
Becker,
Hungry Ghosts,
p. 77.

20.
Mao was in a hurry to catch up with developed nations. Henan’s leaders were the most enthusiastic in feeding his delusions about the production gains that could be achieved. Other grandiose goals, “Let the River Waters Yield” and “Let the High Mountains Bow Their Heads,” started here and spread nationwide in this era.

The Henan Communist Party secretary Wu Zhifu tried to conceal the leader’s failures by restricting travel, locking up opponents, and ensuring the propaganda machine churned out stories of production gains and satisfied farmers. Anyone who dared to reveal that the harvest in 1959 actually declined—instead of more than doubling as the government claimed—was denounced as an enemy of the people. Wu’s hold on power was finally broken in 1961 when 30,000 PLA troops moved in, arrested the leadership, and distributed grain. By then, countless thousands had starved to death (Becker,
Hungry Ghosts,
p. 112).

21.
Henan exported 21 million migrants in 2008, according to Xu Guangchun, Henan Communist Party secretary (
China Youth Daily,
February 2009).

22.
The Huai was the inspiration for the title of Elizabeth Economy’s
The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future
(Cornell University Press, 2004).

23.
Ma Tianjie, “Environmental Mass Incidents in Rural China,”
China Environment
10 (2008/9), Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

24.
See
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa= 0&msid=104340755978441088496.000469611a28a0d8a22dd
.

25.
About 11 percent of cases of cancer of the digestive system are attributable to polluted drinking water (World Bank and Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection study,
China: The Environmental Cost of Pollution,
p. xiv).

26.
Xiditou, with a registered population of 6,000, has a cancer rate of 2,032 per 100,000, almost fifteen times the national average (Mary-Anne Toy, “Waiting for Death in Fetid Cancer Villages,”
Sydney Morning Herald,
May 27, 2009).

27.
Richard McGregor, “750,000 a Year Killed by Chinese Pollution,”
Financial Times,
July 2, 2007.