Yeah well, who can see through that air pollution? I have only been to Beijing twice, once in June, once in November
for a total of 3 ½ weeks. On only one
day in 3 ½ weeks in two different seasons was the sky blue. The rest of the
time the city was, as Reuters describes it in an article today, under “a pungent,
beige shroud of smokestack emissions, vehicle exhaust, dust and aerosols.” You could feel it in your eyes, throat and
nose. I remember Nicholas Kristof writing that when he lived in Beijing in the 1980’s he
would go running and come back and his tongue would be black.
These enchanting images are occasioned by the report today
in Reuters and elsewhere that the People’s Liberation Air Polluters issued a
statement that they are trying to stop…what would you think? The pollution? No, you did not think that.
The P.L.A.P. is trying to stop foreign embassies from releasing their own air
pollution readings from monitors they have on embassy grounds. This is another front in the war of foreign interference
in Chinese internal affairs according to P.L.A.P. Be that as it may it is not a new front. The
foreign embassies have been doing it for awhile.
No democratic government would issue such a statement. Democracies are in touch with their
constituencies. Dictatorships share a cluelessness about how their statements “play”
in public because they don’t consult the public. So the Chinese dictators didn’t
consider that their bullying was going to highlight Beijing ’s air pollution in newspapers and
blogs around the world, rather than shroud it.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that China is also
enshrouding its finances. The state bureaucracy that compiles reports on
companies has begun withholding information—some pretty basic information too—like
“financial reports, shareholder changes and assets transfers. The Journal says
this puts a “cloud” over an already “murky” situation. Shroud, cloud, murky, and opaque. Name of a Chinese law firm?
Image: The first
Google image with keyword “Beijing
