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Anonymous said... In the eyes of Western elites, Westerners can have the privilege to eat meat while Chinese should just eat grass.
Time magazine on Friday posted an article entitled "How China could change the world by taking meat off the menu." The author draws a connection between Chinese eating meat and global environmental problems. It said: "Livestock farming produces 20 percent to 50 percent of all man-made greenhouse gases… Halving China's animal-agriculture sector could result in a 1 billion metric-ton reduction of CO2 emissions."
In 2018, the Atlantic published a piece with the headline of "China's love for meat is threatening its green movement." In 2019, the Economist released an article entitled "The planet needs China to curb its appetite for meat." It is reported in June 2020 that Pat Brown, chief executive of Impossible Foods, a company developing plant-based substitutes for meat products, even said, "Every time someone in China eats a piece of meat, a little puff of smoke goes up in the Amazon."
Chinese people's eating patterns remarkably differ from people in the West. Chinese mainly eat grain and vegetables, supplemented by meat, while for Westerners, meat has been their staple food. The proportion of meat in the diet of Westerners is much higher than that of Chinese.
The Time article states that China consumes 28 percent of the world's meat. This data has been cited by Western media outlets since 2016. Western media tend to criticize China by referring to the total amount. As China is the most populous country in the world, using a total figure as a benchmark is unfair to China. Yet based on meat consumption per capita, the West far exceeds that of China.
In terms of beef, the OECD shows in 2020 that China's consumption of 4.2 kilograms per capita lagged behind the world average at 6.4 kilos. The figure for Argentina was about nine times as much as that of China, and the US more than six times that of China. The consumption of many Western countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK, was also much higher than China's.
According to media report, beef production causes five times more climate-warming emissions than pork. If having less meat is essential to "change the world," it is more than fair to urge the West to reduce its beef consumption. The US consumed far more meat per capita in 2020 alone, so how can they pass the buck of Amazon destruction to China?
When interviewed by an Australian media outlet in 2010, former US president Barack Obama said, "If over a billion Chinese citizens have the same living patterns as Australians and Americans do right now, then all of us are in for a very miserable time. The planet just can't sustain it."
In the eyes of some Western elites, Westerners can have the privilege to eat meat while Chinese should just eat grass. They are reluctant to see Chinese are living an increasingly abundant life, and that the living standards of the Chinese are getting closer to the Westerners. They feel their sense of superiority including the one toward their political system challenged when they see Chinese, whose political path and values sharply differ from them, can also enjoy a better life.
There are many reasons why the USA and the West hate China and wants to put China down.
ReplyDelete1) The communist system is doing better than democracy, eradicating poverty in particular.
2) The US$ is losing its importance. The US$ hegemony is in decline.
3) Russia and China have decreased their use of the US$ for trade by 50%.
4) Their money printing out of thin air is threatened by the decline of the US$ hegemony.
5) China is overtaking them as the biggest economy in the world. This is unthinkable.
The big strategic game in Asia isn’t military but economic
ReplyDeleteAustralia, India, Japan, and the United States will be uncomfortable living with a more powerful China. It’s legitimate for them to hedge by cooperating in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, informally known as the Quad. Unfortunately, the Quad will not alter the course of Asian history for two simple reasons: First, the four countries have different geopolitical interests and vulnerabilities. Second, and more fundamentally, they are in the wrong game. The big strategic game in Asia isn’t military but economic.
Australia is the most vulnerable. Its economy is highly dependent on China. Australians have been proud of their remarkable three decades of recession-free growth. That happened only because Australia became, functionally, an economic province of China : In 2018-2019, 33 percent of its exports went to China, whereas only 5 percent went to the United States.
This is why it was unwise for Australia to slap China in the face publicly by calling for an international inquiry on China and COVID-19. Now Australia has dug itself into a hole. All of Asia is watching intently to see who will blink in the current Australia-China standoff. In many ways, the outcome is pre-determined. If Beijing blinks, other countries may follow Australia in humiliating China. Hence, effectively, Australia has blocked it into a corner.
And China can afford to wait. The problem for Canberra is that China holds most of the cards. Power in international relations lies with the country that can impose high costs on another country at a low cost to itself. This is what China can do to Australia, but Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his colleagues do not seem to understand that.
No countries can compare with China and Japan in terms of the length of their historical contact: 1,500 years.” China and Japan maintained deep cultural ties throughout much of their past, but China, with its great civilization and resources, had the upper hand. If, for most of 1,500 years, Japan could live in peace with China, it can revert to that pattern again for the next 1,000 years. However, as in the famously slow Kabuki plays in Japan, the changes in the relationship will be very slight and incremental, with both sides moving gradually and subtly into a new modus vivendi. They will not become friends anytime soon, but Japan will signal subtly that it understands China’s core interests. Yes, there will be bumps along the way, but China and Japan will adjust slowly and steadily.
As two old civilizations, India and China have also lived side by side over millenniums. However, they had few direct contacts, effectively kept apart by the Himalayas. Unfortunately, modern technology has no longer made the Himalayas insurmountable. Hence, the increasing number of face-to-face encounters between Chinese and Indian soldiers. Such encounters always lead to accidents, one of which happened in June 2020. Since then, a tsunami of anti-China sentiment has swept across India. Over the next few years, relations will go downhill. The avalanche has been triggered.
Yet China will be patient because time is working in its favor. In 1980, the economies of China and India were the same size. By 2020, China’s had grown five times larger. The longer-term relationship between two powers always depends, in the long run, on the relative size of the two economies. The Soviet Union lost the Cold War because the U.S. economy could vastly outspend it. Similarly, just as the United States presented China with a major geopolitical gift by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement in 2017, India did China a major geopolitical favor by not joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Economics is where the big game is playing. With the United States staying out of TPP and India out of RCEP, a massive economic ecosystem centered on China is evolving in the region.
[ K M ]