Article title: “A doctor’s poem is going viral in China and raising awareness that smog (surprise!) is a cause of cancer”
Reading about one of the most concerned issue in my country--air pollution--from a foreign perspective is truly painstaking. It is like someone whom you don’t want to admit your inferiority to has something over you. And that something is, as much as I would like to deny, undeniably true. Air pollution--one of the most concerned (well mostly by the citizens rather than the government) issues in China right now--killed 1.6 billion people in 2015--4,000 every single day. Just look at the air quality index on the right for the past few days. Any of these values are several times of America’s.
But apparently, this striking contrast isn’t raising public awareness, for this kind of information often never reaches the public (thanks, Chinese government). The fundamental trade-off here is economic growth and public health, and it frustrates me that the government, despite its being ambiguous about the decision, is not giving up some part of the former while anticipating the air pollution issue to basically solve itself. Objectively speaking, China does need economic growth to keep up with population growth; however, it will only develop at the expense of the health of the current population. Instead of spending $320 billion subsidizing the already declining steel industry that contributes significantly to air pollution or removing posts that target the government, the government should move on and “provide fair opportunities for the industries of tomorrow” unless it is counting on air pollution for population control.
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