China is truly beset with difficulties these days; the floods continue (though apparently water levels are dropping; see the incredible picture of the Three Gorges Dam at left); air pollution, which had stabilized for a short couple of years, is getting worse again;
China says air pollution worsening
... about half of the water supply is unusable by humans, strictly fit for industry and irrigation; in passing I saw something which said that some of the water (about 25%) isn't even fit for industry (though that report said air pollution is getting better -- who to believe?);
and in their push to become a more homogenously uniform society, the ruling Communist capitalist despots are attempting to slowly end the use of the only other "official" language other than Mandarin Chinese in their country, which is Cantonese, spoken in the southern province of Guangdong, the city of Guangzhou (which used to be called Canton), Hong Kong, and Macau. This is not going over particularly well:
Protesters gather in Guangzhou to protect Cantonese language
Hong Kong plans rally to save Cantonese language
Eventually, all these problems are going to cause something to break, societally, big-time, and I expect somewhat calamitous repercussions when that happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment