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The Future
Zbigniew Brzezinski
born March 28, 1928) is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.
Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China); the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II); the brokering of the Camp David Accords; the transition of Iran from an important U.S. client state to an anti-Western Islamic Republic, encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union;[1] the financing of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in response to the Soviet deployment of forces there[2] and the arming of these rebels to counter the Soviet invasion; and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing overt U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999.
Brzezinski is currently Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appears frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC News' This Week with Christiane Amanpour, and on MSNBC's Morning Joe, where his daughter, Mika Brzezinski, is co-anchor. In recent years, he has been a supporter of the Prague Process.[3] His son, Mark Brzezinski, is an American diplomat and the current United States Ambassador to Sweden since 2011.
Brzezinski advised Carter in 1978 to engage the People's Republic of China and traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for the normalization of relations between the two countries. This also resulted in the severing of ties with the United States' longtime anti-Communist ally the Republic of China.
Dr. Brzezinski, probably best known today for being the father of Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, is also considered the father or American grand imperial strategy in Central Asia. In his text, The Grand Chessboard, the good doctor explains the advantages of a post-Cold War, post-Soviet Union Central Asian landmass dominated by the world’s last hegemonic power, the United States of America.
There is a problem, though. The United States isn’t playing chess against Iran. The United States is playing against China and our old friends, the Russians. AE plans to delve into this topic more deeply in the coming days and weeks, but for today, understand this one thing: the United States, when it comes to resources, is in a fight for its life. As I said before, don’t miss the point of what’s going on here. The United States isn’t trying to control the world’s oil supply just so secret cabals of oil execs can get rich. We’re doing it so our nation can survive the 21st Century. We’re doing it because Russia and China have decided that this period of American dominance needs to come to an end. Currently these two nations are actively engaged in undermining American hegemony in the most effective way possible: by attacking the U.S. Dollar.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and an enemy that is not so good at being an enemy is the friendly one I want to have.
China's current leadership transition is taking place at a point when the country again has to reevaluate its regional and world engagements. The last couple of years have been disastrous in China's foreign policy. Its regional engagements have backfired, one after the other. Some of this comes from what historian Paul Kennedy calls imperial overstretch: to move faster and further than what material resources and political prowess allows for. It is quite possible to believe both that China is a rising power and that it has overstepped the mark on what it's able to achieve through pressure within its own region.
Look at its relations with Japan. After a series of statements from Beijing, some of them very aggressive, the Japanese have elected an administration that takes a hard line on China. Last fall's barrage of harsh words from China — on the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands dispute and other matters — played right into the electoral strategy of Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party.
No longer. Recent South Korean opinion polls show that people's views of China have nose-dived since Beijing's failure to condemn the North's sinking of a South Korean naval vessel and its shelling of a South Korean island in 2010, and Pyongyang's recent missile tests. Park's election campaign made good use of the fear of an unruly neighborhood. She seeks to strengthen Seoul's alliance with the U.S., and has said that North Korea will only join the "family of nations if it realizes that assistance from China cannot last forever."
China has a serious smog problem. So much so that the northern city of Harbin, home to about 11 million people, was forced to cancel classes, close down the airport and suspend certain bus routes Monday.
According to The Associated Press, fine particulate matter readings taken in Harbin indicate that air pollution in the area is 40 times higher than the international safety standard set by the World Health Organization.
How much will it cost to clean up China?
BEIJING, Aug 11 (Reuters) - China plans to accelerate investment in technology to save energy and tackle the dire pollution blamed for a series of health crises that have generated widespread public anger.
The government has been increasingly alarmed by social unrest caused by environmental disasters and threats to public health, often the result of the country's breakneck industrial expansion and mass migration to new cities.
Smog over northern cities in January generated a public outcry, as did the discovery in March of thousands of rotting pig carcasses in a river that supplies Shanghai's water.
The country's cabinet, the State Council, said on Sunday that environmental protection would be elevated to a "pillar industry" that would receive government support in the form of tax breaks and subsidies.
The country has responded to this noxious crisis in a fashion becoming its size, with promises of giant sums of money – more than a quarter-trillion dollars – and a breakneck build-up of a green energy sector that is already the world’s largest.
But even this may not be enough to clean up China’s air. That may require a much larger change, to the philosophy that has guided China for more than three decades: economic growth above all else.
Americans are supposedly helping China by sopping up their excess production (savings), and will supposedly hurt China as their ability to consume disappears.
Well… simply put this would only be true if Americans had been trading real goods of equal value for their excess consumption.
But they were trading slips of paper with ever declining value for real goods from China.
When China cuts off Americans from the goods they can’t afford, real consumption of goods and real savings in China will go up.
After all, paper losses at the companies most exposed to exports to America will not reduce the amount of real resources, labor, or capital in China’s economy. Such losses will just force these factors to flow to companies that can meet the real consumption needs (current and future) of China or trading partners who trade real goods.
Building upon willingness-to-pay surveys for reducing health risks from pollution among households in Shanghai and Chongqing municipalities, the study finds that the health costs of air and water pollution in China amount to about 4.3 percent of its GDP. By adding the non-health impacts of pollution, which are estimated to be about 1.5 percent of GDP, the total cost of air and water pollution in China is about 5.8 percent of GDP.
The burden of both air and water pollution is not distributed evenly across the country. For example, China’s poor are disproportionately affected by the environmental health burden and only six provinces bear 50 percent of the effects of acid rain in the country.
Washington DC, July 11, 2007 -- Following recent media interest in the finalization of a joint World Bank-Government of China report entitled Cost of Pollution in China – Economic Estimates of Physical Damages, the head of the World Bank in China, David Dollar made the following statement:
China approached the World Bank in 2003 to develop an estimate of how much environmental air and water pollution costs China – including in human health impact terms. This was triggered by a growing concern on China's part that its rapid economic growth was carrying a large environmental and human health cost.
the combined health and non-health cost of outdoor air and water pollution for China's economy comes to around $US100 billion a year (or about 5.8% of the country's GDP)
air pollution, especially in large cities, is leading to higher incidences of lung diseases, including cancer, respiratory system problems and therefore higher levels of work and school absenteeism
water pollution is also causing growing levels of cancer and diarrhea particularly in children under-5
water pollution is further exacerbating China's severe water scarcity problems, bringing the overall cost of water scarcity to about 1% of GDP.
regardless of income levels in China, the willingness to pay for reduced health risks associated with environmental pollution is about the same.
In undertaking this ground-breaking assessment of its pollution challenges, China has shown how committed it is to addressing the problem. In its 11th Five Year Plan (2006-2010), China put environmental protection as its highest priority. The plan calls for a "resource saving society" and sets targets to reduce energy consumption per yuan of GDP by 20% and meet 10% of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2010. It also pledged to reduce total discharge of major pollutants by 10% by 2010.
In cooperation with SEPA, the World Bank has been working on a series of innovative research reports on critical environmental protection issues. Besides this report, we are also working with China in the areas of environmental administration, air and water pollution control, and national "green" accounting which incorporate environmental costs into GDP estimations.
The World Bank's lending portfolio in China reflects the Government's commitment to the environment. In fact, environment-related projects account for about 60% of our lending to China (and are also prominent in IFC and MIGA portfolios), including energy efficiency, rural and urban water conservation and pollution reduction, and sustainable rural and urban development
1.Knowthe difference between public economic policy and deep economic strategy.
2. Gain a thorough grasp of Asian mentality.
Li Pingri remembers swimming with fish and shrimp as a boy in Guangdong’s Chigang waterway in China. Today, even after the city spent 48.6 billion yuan ($7.2 billion) on a cleanup, he can’t stand the canal’s smell.
China Projects & Programs
As of June 30, 2012, Bank cumulative lending (IBRD and IDA) to China was more than $50.41 billion for 349 projects. The portfolio is concentrated in environment, transportation, urban development, rural development, energy, water resources management, and human development.
China: Guangdong Social Security Integration and Rural Worker Training
P117596
80.0
Active
June 20, 2013
Anhui Xuancheng Infrastructure for Industry Relocation
P129431
150.0
Active
June 20, 2013
China: Nanchang Urban Rail Project
P132154
250.0
Active
June 20, 2013
Ma'anshan Cihu River Basin Improvement Project
P126813
100.0
Active
June 4, 2013
Ningbo Municipal Solid Waste Minimization and Recycling Project
P123323
80.0
Active
May 31, 2013
Guangxi Laibin Water Environment Project
P126817
80.0
Active
May 31, 2013
China: Jiangxi Shangrao Sanqingshan Airport Project
P123729
50.0
Active
May 13, 2013
Urban Scale Building Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
P130786
12.0
Active
April 26, 2013
China GEF Large City Congestion and Carbon Reduction Project
P127036
18.18
Active
March 29, 2013
CN: Beijing Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Scale-Up (Sunshine Schools) Project
P125022
120.0
Active
March 20, 2013
Liaoning Coastal Economic Zone Urban Infrastructure and Environmental Management Project
P126611
150.0
Active
March 20, 2013
CN-Jiangxi Poyang Lake Basin and Ecological Economic Zone Small Town Development Project
P126856
150.0
Active
March 20, 2013
Green Energy Schemes for Low-carbon City in Shanghai
P127034
4.35
Active
March 20, 2013
Green Energy Schemes for Low-carbon City in Shanghai, China
P127035
100.0
Active
March 20, 2013
Jiangxi Wuxikou Integrated Flood Management Project
P128867
100.0
Active
March 20, 2013
China:Fujian Meizhou Bay Navigation Improvement Project
P124848
50.0
Active
February 28, 2013
Hunan Forest Restoration and Development Project
P125021
80.0
Active
January 17, 2013
China HCFC Phase-Out Project (Stage I)
P115561
365.0
Active
November 22, 2012
Chongqing Urban Rural Integration Project II-Health
P126210
100.0
Active
June 14, 2012
China: Gansu Qingyang Urban Infrastructure Improvement Project
China 5.3 5.3 5.8 6.6 6.0
Congo, Dem. Rep. 43.2 65.4 56.5 43.8 28.4
When you calculate how much money you have, you weigh your assets to your liabilities. But people everywhere fail to factor in the pollution as a liability. ...
When you take these numbers into account, China could very well be bankrupting itself by making money. I will search to see if I can find some hard numbers or sources to back this position.
I don't really believe that the leadership of Red China is the real power over there. When you look back at US/British/Sino relations in the 20th century there was a constant stream of influence in their affairs coming from the West.
soficrow
reply to post by boncho
When you calculate how much money you have, you weigh your assets to your liabilities. But people everywhere fail to factor in the pollution as a liability. ...
When you take these numbers into account, China could very well be bankrupting itself by making money. I will search to see if I can find some hard numbers or sources to back this position.
S&F for your time and labour at least. Would be interesting to see a balance sheet for the entire planet that calculates the economic impacts of air pollution and environmental contamination. Who do you think should be held accountable for losses? The people and corporations who profited, or individual nations and their citizens?
antar
Even though I have read alot about China, it never occurred to me that they are all inclusive and remain within their own boundaries, but with our debt to them and the fact they are moving in to America by the droves, do you suppose they have extended their perceived boundaries to include the Continental US? On one hand your info is calming but on the other it is even more disturbing.