nick’s (n)-line life

There seems to be a popular misconception in the west that economic improvements in China have led to streets paved with gold and a rich and wealthy populous to rival Western Europe; some kind of ‘Chinese dream’ ?, perhaps? It’s scarily common for people to try and convince me that China no longer experiences many of the problems associated with developing countries.

Tempting though it is, I’m going to resist the urge to shout abuse at these people (at least for now). To be fair, much of the fault lies with the Western press, the way information and particularly statistics are used it’s not really surprising such misunderstandings creep in (and to be fair to the press there are some good commentaries on China’s problems tucked away in the back pages).

However, I do have a fairly major problem with people mouthing off in this way when they don’t have a genuine interest and awareness of the issues and start spreading misinformation. This is particularly true of people who cite “my mate Jim” and “The Sun” as their sources, and whose closest cotact with China was last week’s takeaway. This kind of dinner-table journalism is extremely unhelpful, comments such as these could at least be left to the Beijing propaganda machine. Having spent time in China, it’s manifestly apparent that the average person on the street is seeing very little of this so called economic miracle and the wealth gap between the urban elite and the rural poor continues to widen.

To do my part in dispelling such myths, I’ve posted the following links to galleris on Go Bannanas (via The Horse’s Mouth) and I really think this should be compulsory viewing material for anyone interested in the issues confronting China today. Be warned that some of these images are rather harrowing (which is, presumably, why Beijing has blocked the site :-/ )