China’s government, she says, genuinely wants to tackle its horrific pollution problem. The problem is that it can’t:
Here is more.
China sentence and a half of the day
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Property rights and courts could solve most of the ground and water pollution.
But yes, China is far more decentralized than most outsiders realize. The leadership is genuinely worried that Taiwanese independence could fracture the country.
Old Chinese saying, “The mountains are high, the emperor far away.” Out in the sticks, they don’t care what Beijing says.
In the south they say, “the emperor has his ways, and we have our ways”
Isn’t that a bit like saying I really want to lose weight but I can’t because I don’t have the willpower?
How is that different from every other country in the world?
Jack,
The difference between China and many western countries is that the center has limited ability to extract data, and even less so, information from the local. Much knowledge is locked locally either unexpressed, or if expressed, subject to different interpretations when it is removed from the local context. Remember the old saying “knowledge is power.† In China, the local has the power. There is not much the center could do except for threatening severe punishment of bad deeds. Severe, it is. But both the center and the local know few bad deeds will be found out; and only the severe ones receive severe punishments.
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