I had no problem with The New York Timesgoing 'paid' with the efforts of the paper's franchise players. I bought in immediately upon notice, getting the discounted rate. What is in the grey lady's pages is vital to what I do--Professor Russell Moses catches me up on the Washington Post (and sundry others) when I get too distracted and don't get to all of the dozen or so newspapers and news sites I try to read or skim daily. I do realize though that a great many folks chose to opt out of the switch.
Why am I bringing this somewhat controversial--within journalism circles, at least--issue ofTimes Select up now? Because Tom Friedman of The Times has been in China of late, filing columns from deep within the Middle Kingdom that need to be read by anyone with interest in the affairs of China and the United States. So much so that I am going to reproduce them in full below. They need no comment from me.
You don't see this every day: A columnist for The China Daily wrote an essay last week proposing that the Chinese consider eating with their hands and abandon chopsticks. Why?
Because, Zou Hanru wrote, "we no longer have abundant forest cover, our land is no longer that green, our water tables are depleting and our numbers are expanding faster than ever. ... China itself uses 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks a year, or 1.66 million cubic meters of timber, or 25 million full-grown trees." The more affluent the Chinese become, he added, "the more the demand for bigger homes and a wide range of furniture. Newspapers get thicker in their bid to grab a bigger share of the advertising market."
In the face of rising environmental pressures, he said, China must abandon disposable wooden chopsticks and move to reusable steel, "or, better still, we can use our hands."
Mr. Zou's column underscores that while year after year of 9 percent growth may be economically sustainable for China, it is reaching its environmental limits. That pressure hits you the minute you land in Shanghai.
As you wait for 90 minutes to get your visa stamped at the airport, crushed between traveling Chinese and visiting investors, you can feel that you are in a country engaged in extreme capitalism. Every other person around me in the visa line was already on a cellphone or P.D.A. - as if people could not wait to get through passport control to start doing deals.
Not only is China not a communist country anymore, but it may also now be the world's most capitalist country in terms of raw energy. Indeed, I believe history will record that it was Chinese capitalism that put an end to European socialism. Europe can no longer sustain its 35-hour workweeks and lavish welfare states because of the rising competition from low-wage, high-aspiration China, as well as from India and Eastern Europe.
But can anything stop Chinese capitalism? Yes, Chinese capitalism. Other than political breakdown, the biggest threat to China's growth is now the environment. One Sam's Club, part of Wal-Mart, in the Chinese city of Shenzhen sold 1,100 air-conditioners in one hot weekend last year. There is a limit to how long you can do that. China's leaders know this and have been taking steps to reverse deforestation and find alternatives to the coal-powered electricity plants that have turned cities like Shenzhen into just one big gray cloud.
One thing the Chinese government is doing is changing how local, state and national officials are judged. G.D.P. growth is not the only metric anymore.
"During the transition period from planned economy to a market economy, there was a period when the economic indicators were the only criteria, because we had to develop the economy," Shanghai's deputy mayor, Feng Guoquin, told me. Today, however, more and more Chinese citizens demand that their local officials "pay equal attention to economic development and ecological protection."
But given that the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party rests largely on its ability to keep raising living standards, it can't afford a recession and mass unemployment - in any crunch, officials will always choose raw growth. The party cannot afford a recession, and it also has to extend growth to the still impoverished rural areas. But many of those villages are already boiling because, while villagers crave jobs, they resent the deforestation, dams and polluted rivers that have already been dumped on them by the big cities.
So I'm glad that Donald Rumsfeld finally came over to China to talk with China's military last week, but that is so 20th century. How China uses its growing military is purely hypothetical. What China's impact on the global environment will be if it continues to grow at this pace is a certain disaster - for China and the world.
Tighter regulation alone won't save China's environment, or the world's. Since logging in most natural forests was banned here in 1998, China's appetite for imported wood has led to stripped forests in Russia, Africa, Burma and Brazil. China outsourced its environmental degradation.
That is why you need an integrated solution. And that is why the most important strategy the U.S. and China need to pursue, in concert, is one that brings business, government and N.G.O.'s together to produce a more sustainable form of development - so China can create a model for itself and others on how to do more things with less stuff and fewer emissions. That is the economic, environmental and national security issue of our day. Nothing else is even close.
Well, not the Buddha, but one of the "living Buddhas" designated by the Buddhist hierarchy as spiritual leaders throughout this Tibetan region of China, and not the mythic Shangri-La of "Lost Horizon," but this lush western China countryside near the border with Burma that has renamed itself Shangri-La to attract more tourists.
But don't underestimate this Shangri-La. Its spectacular wetlands, pine forests and mountains (this is where your rhododendrons originally came from) make up one of the 34 biodiversity hot spots designated worldwide by Conservation International as places with large numbers of unique plant and animal species threatened by human development - which, once lost, may never come back.
And that's why I came here. Because Shangri-La County is a microcosm of the biggest challenge facing China. Put simply: if development doesn't come to Shangri-La and other rural areas, the divide between haves and have-nots will widen and destabilize China. But if the wrong development comes here, it will add to global warming and ravage the rural environment where many of China's indigenous cultures and species are nested.
Yes, China must get its smoke-belching factories out of the coastal cities because they are making the cities unlivable, but if it just pushes them into the countryside, they will destroy way too much of China's farmland, and the natural areas that are the home of things like Tibetan culture.
The living Buddha, Ang Weng, is right in the middle of this drama, trying to promote a higher living standard for his people - without destroying the "sacred forests" essential to Tibetan spirituality. The living Buddha wears a sunny smile and a cowboy hat. His wife, who makes a mean butter tea, a traditional Tibetan drink, translated from his Tibetan dialect into Chinese for my translator.
He got right to the point: "The human brain is moving much faster into the modern world than the environment, and this fast move is having an impact on the environment. Build this and build that, and you lose the environment."
The good, and surprising, news I found in Shangri-La was how much the poor villagers here were coming up with their own green growth solutions. For instance, the 39 families in the village of Hamugu have bundled their savings to build a lodge for ecotourists drawn by the wetlands. "We just need a Web site," the manager told me. A local botanist has built Shangri-La Alpine Botanic Garden, which employs two dozen people and shares profits with the local village.
It also has the finest public toilet I've ever used, a solar-powered composting toilet with an automated plastic green seat cover - in the middle of nowhere! It was labeled "The Lavatory of Environmental Protection of the Travel."
A U.S. multinational, 3M, is financing the restoration of the local forests to reduce climate change and protect the watersheds. And the old log-and-mud town of Zhongdian here is a Disneyland-like traditional Tibetan village, with hot-pot restaurants that attract droves of Chinese tourists.
"All the basic elements of a network solution to safeguard environment and culture are here," said Lu Zhi, Conservation International's director in China and my traveling companion. (My wife's a C.I. board member.) "But the challenge is how do you organize this business-N.G.O.-government network more effectively so you can provide ecofriendly alternatives to industrial development that could be replicated in the rest of rural China."
Not only would this be enormously important for China's environment, but it could also be a model for other developing countries. What we don't want is for China to protect its own environment and then strip everyone else's in the developing world by importing their forests and minerals.
"For 30 years, the business of development has been Americans and Europeans lecturing poor countries about how they need to do things differently," said Glenn Prickett, a senior vice president with Conservation International. "What we hope to see here is a new paradigm, where China, itself a developing country, offers a new model of sustainable development to other developing countries."
I sure hope so. We all need China to start assuming an environmental leadership role commensurate with its impact on the world. Imagine a day when China is sharing its own approaches to environmentally and culturally sustainable development with other developing countries - not just pursuing them for its resources.
