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Answered by
Eric Jenott

Jan 15
In thousands of years of its history, China is clearly having its absolutely best years during the past 3 decades. Why so many people, especially Westerners are so convinced they know better even than China & Chinese what China & Chinese should do?
I grew up in and lived in the US for 36 years. My impression was that most Americans I knew thought that they knew enough to argue their point about any topic as long as they’d seen a few news stories about it, or overheard some of their friends or
colleagues talking about it, and that anyone else who disagreed with what they thought, especially if what they thought was inline with mainstream American thought, just had to be wrong and needed to be corrected.

There’s something else special about Americans. I’m not sure how to describe it. They sort of tend to subconsciously feel that America is the “real thing”, the standard to aim for, the place where things really matter and the really important
decisions are made, the place where everything is “normal”, and that other countries are just some kind of strange, outlying, sub-normal little societies that want to be like the US but lack the means or the intellectural capacity to catch up. They
can’t really imagine any other country doing as well as or even beating them in any way they believe matters.

This isn’t a perfect analogy, but its kind of like they see themselves as wise adults and everyone else as children—either good children that need to be taught and nurtured, or bad children that need to be disciplined and brought under control. And
just like adults who see themselves as wise and deserving of respect from little children, they are very offended when any other country has the disrespect and audacity to insinuate that it doesn’t need to follow everything about the US’s example,
doesn’t need to listen to all its teachings, isn’t going to submit to its control, and that it has its own ways and its own ideas that it thinks are better for itself.

And they’re more than offended, they’re shocked and dismayed, if another country actually does do better than them and starts to surpass them in many ways. They can’t accept this as actual reality. They have to enter a state of denial. It can’t
really be true. The numbers must be falsified. The videos must be staged; the Chinese people can’t really be happy, they only say they are because they’re being forced to. It’s all lies and false propaganda. They don’t want it to be true, so they
won’t really try to find out the facts and analyze them with intellectual honesty.

I remember as early as elementary school in the US, trying to argue with adults that there was no reason to expect that America was guaranteed to always be the greatest nation on earth. I would point out that throughout history many nations had achieved
international preeminence at one point only to decline and become insignificant, so how could they be so certain America wouldn’t eventually suffer the same fate? I was always told that America would forever be the greatest nation on earth and the
leader of the world because its constitution and form of government were the best the world had ever seen and there would never be any better. Perhaps it is exactly this overconfidence, and consequent lack of vigilance, that is more fundamentally
responsible than anything else for America’s decline.

It’s not all American’s that are this way to the extreme, but it does seem to be an overwhelmingly obvious trend to anyone of a different mindset that spends much time engaging with a broad variety of Americans in conversation about controversial
subjects.

It is really sad that so many deceive themselves like this. In many ways most Americans I know (though certainly not all) are really quite good people, but this self-deceit and national narcissism only makes them hold on to outdated views that hurt
themselves and prevent them from seeing the real problems that they need to focus on solving, rather than blaming everything on countries like China that they can’t hope to control anymore.

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rst88.. wrote:

In thousands of years of its history, China is clearly having its absolutely best years during the past 3 decades. Why so many people, especially Westerners are so convinced they know better even than China & Chinese
what China & Chinese should do?

--------------
The Chinese Companies Polluting the World More Than Entire Nations
By Bloomberg News, October 24, 2021

Curbing China’s output of greenhouse gas will do more than almost
anything else at this point to decide the fate of the planet.
That primacy comes from being, by far, the world’s top source of
new emissions. But few outside of the Chinese government can examine
the true drivers of this crucial planet-warming pollution: dozens of
gigantic state-run companies.

As world leaders and diplomats head to Glasgow, Scotland, to discuss
how to keep rising temperatures in check, understanding the role of
China’s industrial titans has never been more important. These companies won’t be party to United Nations-backed negotiations. Yet no deal will
be effective in practice without their strong cooperation.

China’s companies drove the country’s greenhouse gas emissions above
those of all developed nations combined in 2019, according to a study
by Rhodium Group. To deliver on President Xi Jinping’s promise to zero
out emissions by 2060, these same companies will have to shift away from
dirty energy, embrace new technologies and change the way they operate.

“Emissions of numerous state-owned enterprises in the power, steel,
cement, oil refining, and other major emitting sectors are equal to
those of entire nations,” says Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst with the
Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air who produced the estimates
used in this project. “Once these enterprises align their investments
and business plans with the emissions-neutrality target, they can make
an enormous contribution, if they choose to.”

To measure the task ahead, CREA, a Finland-based environmental research
group, focused on some of the largest emitters in China’s most-polluting sectors. Companies were chosen based on the availability of public data showing metrics such as coal use and manufacturing capacity, drawn from financial statements of listed units and corporate sustainability reports.

All the estimates include emissions from company operations and electricity use. In sectors where significant greenhouse gases are generated along the supply chain, CREA added those estimates as well. Doing so takes into
account the steel used to build cars and the gasoline required to power
them, as well as emissions from burning oil products and steel or cement
used in construction.

In some cases these emissions overlap, as when Petrochina Co.’s gasoline fuels cars built by SAIC Motor Corp. Experts argue that holding both
companies accountable for the same gallon of gasoline raises the chance
that those emissions will be eliminated, whether at the source or by the
end user. None of the companies responded to questions about their emissions.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-china-climate-change-biggest-carbon-polluters/

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