Ch. 3 and 4

China is currently trying to move more people from the county into cities to help work on building the cities and getting them caught up with Western cities.  Making this happen is made possible because of the hukou system; this gives the government control of the amount of people given migrant permits.  To legally move somewhere, a person must have a migrant permit, or else they could be expelled from wherever it is they are trespassing.  Many people in the county are having their land seized, because they only lease their land from the government, to make way for factories and other commercial uses.  Most people are not being given enough financial compensation when this happens. Since the government actually owns the land, I suppose this is fair, although not being given enough money back for the land is not.  Because of China’s high population the hukou system does seem like it could help with property issues, otherwise it could be chaotic.  But I know I would not be happy having to live with their system.  Also, the idea of moving such a large amount of people into the cities makes me wonder if there will be enough people able to produce enough food and other agricultural goods.  

I found the section about how China’s pollution is spreading and hurting other countries’ environments the most significant part from Chapter four.  It’s pretty selfish of China to not only hurt its people, but also citizens of other countries that are stuck next to it and have China’s pollution forced upon them.  It’s bad enough that they are poisoning themselves, especially when the victims are unaware, for financial gain.  I’m not sure it this would actually work out, but one thought that crossed my mind is that in the long run it would be cheaper for them to follow China’s EPA standards than pay for later cleaning up their mess, plus any lawsuits and medical bills they may have to pay for from the people.  Maybe if the victim countries cut-off trading with China they would stop.  Either because they no longer have as many people to produce products for, or because they need their money, so they would then listen to their requirements on how the products will be produced.  This is a very drastic reaction and probably wouldn’t happen.  I doubt America would start producing or find new countries to get the many products we get from China just because of China’s pollution that get’s mixed into our West Coast’s pollution.