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This Is The Chinese Documentary That Got Over 30 Million Views In One Day
While the citizenry of America remains transfixed by the ever-changing color of some Scottish wedding dress; this weekend saw an even more massively viral social media phenomenon as tens of millions of Chinese watched, gripped and outraged, a 104-minute video entitled "Under The Dome" exposing the ugly truth about Chinese air pollution. What is perhaps most stunning - aside from the fact that something so 'important' can go viral without Kim Kardashian's ass all over it - is that the Chinese government, so far, has not shut off the documentary, and recently appointed minister of environmental protection, Chen Jining, even praised the video; suggesting a growing conflict between Beijing and the Chinese industrial complex.
Full documentary here - with English subtitles (with over 35 million views since its release yesterday on YouKu)
English audio translation of the first section can be found here.
As The NY Times reports, the documentary, funded and narrated by a former Chinese TV reporter, recounts her journey of discovery, hunting for the sources of China’s bad air and inquiring why repeated government promises have done so little to clear it up, while coping with a daughter born with a tumor...
[In 2013], she did not pay much attention to the smog engulfing much of China and affecting 600 million people, even as she traveled for work from place to place where the air was acrid with fumes and dust.
“But,” Ms. Chai says with a pause, “when I returned to Beijing, I learned that I was pregnant.”
Since its online debut on Saturday, Ms. Chai’s documentary, “Under the Dome,” has inspired an unusually passionate eruption of public and mass media discussion. Many messages were from Chinese parents identifying with Ms. Chai’s fears that pollution has imperiled their children’s health.
“When I heard her heart beating, the only thing I wished for her was good health,” Ms. Chai explains of her then-unborn daughter in the documentary.
“But she was diagnosed with a benign tumor and had to have surgery after birth,” she adds. “I’d never felt afraid of pollution before, and never wore a mask no matter where. But when you carry a life in you, what she breathes, eats and drinks are all your responsibility, and then you feel the fear.”
On Youku, a popular Chinese video-sharing site, “Under the Dome” had been played more than 14 million times by Sunday afternoon. The Paper, a Chinese news website, estimated that by Saturday night, the documentary had been opened more than 35 million times across various websites.
Many Chinese viewers praised Ms. Chai for forthrightly condemning the skein of industrial interests, energy conglomerates and bureaucratic hurdles that she says have obstructed stronger action against pollution.
* * *
While the documentary has gripped almost 40 million Chinese so far, what is perhaps more intriguing is that the Chinese government has not shut it down yet...
So far at least, the government has not shut off the documentary, and some officials may welcome the chance to build greater support for cutting pollution. The website of People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s main newspaper, was one of the first to post “Under the Dome.” And the recently appointed minister of environmental protection, Chen Jining, praised the video. He told Sina.com, a Chinese website, that he had watched it and sent a message to Ms. Chai.
“Chai Jing’s documentary calls for public environmental consciousness from the standpoint of public health,” Mr. Chen said. “It deserves admiration.”
Does this suggest there is a growing conflict between Beijing and the Chinese Industrial Complex (as the corruption probe grows and impacts multiple industries). Further, this of course, means even more Chinese growth slowdown if and when there is a crackdown on pollution/rampant industrialization.
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Don't know about you guys but I stopped eating KFC whenI found out all their chook comes from there.
Don’t refer to our kilts as dress’ because we will bring back our IRA boys to recount wearing a dress after not releasing a 300 page bill on the FCC title II bill, yet you passed it. Do you remember the Templars? Did you think that part of history was erased by the internet? It will come so fast and quick, the MSM won’t comment on event over fear for their miserable lives from reading a CFR taxpayer funded teleprompter called the news.
Tell you know who, greed got the best of them. Hug your kids, tell them you made mistakes. A solid family unit can build an empire without deceit and fraud . Tell that to your kids, you know who. RIP.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Look. If you want to keep pollution under control, you need to keep enterprises on a small enough scale that suing a budding industrialist out of business when he poisons the village well is a realistic option.
You do that by abolishing the limited liability corporation.
If our budding industrialist knows that poisoning the village well could easily cost him everything he has in the world, he'll think much more carefully before risking it than will the typical shareholder of a chemical company, who, at the very worst, will only lose what he paid for his shares.
So the rest of us wouldn't get a new iPhone we don't need every year. I can live with that. So could most people.
This,
is the primary solution to most of the world's problems. Corporations are considered legal, immortal people. They concentrate wealth and power in a way that no family dynasty ever could (families ended up breeding retards who lost it all at some point) and are the bane of human existence.
Iain M. Banks also had this proposition (surface details, I think)... May be a good point...
careful, Terminus C. You just took the small biz vs big biz issue: "keep enterprises on a small enough scale", which can be handled, and has been handled before (anti-trust, for example) and inflate it to a radical proposition that leads to probably nowhere, except philosophically
Big Biz can grow to the point where it can dominate markets and industries. It's then either oligopoly or monopoly situations
by doing that, they kill the very free market system that fostered them, in the same way as pines kill all small vegetation where they flourish
"red wood" giant sequoy tree forests look beautiful, and nearly all living matter in them is devoted to giant trees
just don't except any fast adaptation from such a forest, or a chance of growth for other trees. then ask a fireman if he does stomach any of those giant trees to burn, from time to time, and you have a picture of crony capitalism, bail-out programs and Too Big To Fail
the limited liability corporation is a fine thing... for small and medium-sized businesses. outgrow that size, and the human scale of them is lost
Artificial people who can't be imprisoned, but who have all the rights of us fleshies, are necessary to "Merica you sonsabitchin commie.
Before outsiders jump in to scream about how bad it is in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc, they should just remember that the residents of these large Chinese cities live longer than Americans.
Yes but these people were born long before pollution settled in. Their descendents will not last as long...
In the past decade in Beijing, as pollution worsened, the life expectancy went up by two years.
Clearly there are factors other than air quality in longevity. Yes, air pollution is not desirable, but there is no need to be alarmist about it. America went through its manufacturing era in the Forties and Fifties. The air in cities like Pittsburg was awful. The snow was gray and everything was dirty. I was recently in Bethlehem, PA and toured what was once the largest steel mill in the world. The air pollution was dreadful when that facility was in operation. America has no steel mills now, or any heavy industry to speak of, so it is easy to keep the air clean.
China needs its coal-fired plants to supply heat for the cities and electricity for the factories and homes. Nobody has a workable substitute at the moment. Solar and wind are like a fart in a hurricane when it comes to powering the world's largest economy and 1.3 billion people. The government is working to put in cleaner coal heat facilities and build nuclear generating plants. It's hard to strike a balance between progress and clean air.
Americans like to say "We got ours, but can't have any"
"China needs its coal-fired plants to supply heat for the cities and electricity for the factories and homes." Can't argue with this and Ms Chai doesn't. She takes the example of the killer fog of 1952 in London which moved the UK into action. She could have taken the example of Tokyo in 1972 or indeed Pittsburg.
"It's hard to strike a balance between progress and clean air." Indeed but in China there is no "balance". This is what they need to introduce and in the short term it will probably be very negative for growth. Yes, they are doing "things", I was surprised to see that all the bikes in Suzou (North of Shanghai) are already electric but considering the scale of the problem, they must do much more and "now". The documentary shows many practical and cheap ideas. (All will not be cheap.)
"In the past decade in Beijing, as pollution worsened, the life expectancy went up by two years." This is a terrible statement. Unless people start dropping like flies, of course, life expectancy will keep rising... for a while. Then it will go down for 20 or 30 years regardless of what you do. That's how demographics moves!
Chinese pollution is now way beyond what most people imagine in the west. Due to the weather, it last almost all winter and is sporadic at other times.
If you want to check, here's a good link:
http://aqicn.org/map/
It is unconfortable at red. Unbearable at purple. I have never experienced the brown as it mostly occur in the upper north and center of the country where I never go.
The terrible thing is that it's spreading west. Kyushu, in the south of Japan and Taiwan are now covered.
It is difficult to think that it can get any worse. Things will have to change and soon. End of the Chinese boom?
Boom, then bust
not far behind. Rinse and repeat.
Hey, China - it's been a good fast ride - now get ready for a faster fall.
Former because she's now dead.
We only have one planet, we all need water to drink, air to breathe and food to survive.
When we screw up one of these things we are commiting suicide aren't we?
Are we that stupid?
Yes...
Haha. Yep.
All that matters is getting those federal reserve notes asap.
Paging Al Gore...
Blame Clinton.
Pollution in China went supernova when the traitor in chief declared Red China the preferred trading partner of the U.S.
"human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache,"
- Chairman Terry Gou invites a zookeeper to instruct Foxconn managers how to 'manage one million animals' at an annual meeting of parent company Hon Hai Precision Industry.
I joinned this site becuase of it's intelligent commentary., but is seems to have dissapeared in a cloud of smoke. I was hoping to learn something new from someone anyone, but I all i read is shit. The air pollution os China is very bad. I'm not trollling or trying to be disrespectful to anyone, I'm just a little dissappointed
SH
Only occasionally are there evidences of intelligence on the Hedge. But there are gems. And LMAO laughter. So one tries to scan through the sliming of minorities, Putin trolls and assorted personal animosities because the gems are really there.
But some just come to fight. Seems to depend on the time of day and time zone and day of the week. And who can tell where those who post are really resident.
But really, nice to see you here and don't let the door slam when you leave the portal, please.
Disappointed - sheeesh. Google is for something new. Come back later.
On 60 minutes tonight they were talking about a class action law suit filed against Lumber Liquidators for Chinese flooring with ridiculous levels of formaldehyde. Not one word about the health of the Chinese factory workers making the stuff. I'm getting the feeling that the Chinese may be swinging to the left and western capitalism will be blamed for about everything already going wrong in the middle kingdom.
What that is a "Feature" - it is intended to go with your hi-sulphur Chinese drywall!! (with the added benefit that it corrodes all the copper wiring in a house.) Luckily most of that shit was confined to shipments to Florida.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_drywall
Not sure if there have been studies about the interaction between formaldehyde and sulphur, but I suspect that the results could be Monstrous - Abby Normal so to say. Humm looks like you can have your own homemade Marquis reagent - just scrape it up off your flooring: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_reagent Great for testing your pills to make sure they are the real thing.
I took note of that also. It was as if the Chinese workers making that crap where farm animals.
I also thought " if formaldehyde is that bad, these workers should have three eyes or horns". They must be steeping in it. As a benefit, when they croak, that won't need embalming.
Ah, the beauty of "development"! Japan is toasted because of radioactivity; so is Hawaii, The US is half done with all the fracking shit, radioactivity, geoenginieering, the North Pacific Ocean is in real danger and so on, and we keep building atomic energy facilities all over the world, fracking worldwide, throwing depleted uranium's ammunition around the middle east and elsewhere... Isn't that nice? Aren't we so fucking smart?
The video was made available by the funding from NGOs and NASA. She came to the US to have her baby delivered as a part of the deal. The American policy makers naively expected the Chinese consumers would likely demand more "freedom" or even "democracy" as they've become richer. But it ain't happen. In 2010 they started to switch gear to target bad air quality to arouse their anti-party attitude. The US embassy in Beijing has started to publish the so-called air quality index on some hourly basis in China when a Chinese American guy headed the embassy.
>Japan is toasted because of radioactivity
Sure, it is sure... Let's go over this again for the mentally handicapped amongst us.
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/protection_basics.html (or Time, Distance, and Shielding.)
So what mathematical rule apply to radiation? Why it's the inverse-square law...
https://www.nde-ed.org/GeneralResources/Formula/RTFormula/InverseSquare/...
Standard Disclaimer: As far as I can tell, the only known place mathematics doesn't work on the planet is in the confines of each of the Federal Reserves
Standard Disclaimer #2: Look its an on-line calculator... http://www.radprocalculator.com/Gamma.aspx
So, now that your understanding of radiation is better than it was before reading those links and fiddling with an on-line toy, the real question is can you eat enough bananas in a single sitting to kill yourself from a lethal dose of naturally occurring radiation?
HOWEVER, on the topic of the intelligence of the human race, we will kill ourselves off before we ever get off this rock. Which is a shame too, because every war wastes resources that will be needed in order to try.
This is utter baloney and you know it.
First of all bananas produces a naturally occuring radioactive isotope that is utilized int he body as a nutrient, and when too much is ingested more of it is expelled out of our body via pathways for homeostasis. All life on planet earth is acclimated to this naturally occuring radiation and is adapted to tolerate it due to superior genetic selection.
What Fukushima is producing - nonstop - and dumping into the air and ocean at varying quantities but will likely not end till the end of time - is deadly, manmade radioactive isotopes that NO life on the planet is capable of tolerating, and so even one single atomic particle ingested of the stuff has a GOOD chance of causing you cancer or other injury, because the body cannot and does not recognize it or tries its best to expel the alien particle with its immune system which itself is not truly capable of dealing with weaponized isotopes.
Unless you are willing to live in the Fukushima exclusion zone (just Bananas right?) You are a lying shill
Bullish for Chinese "green" stocks! They have to find another bubble to inflate, so looks like they've found it.
My best friend in high school came from a very poor rural family. Even though she and her siblings were/are extremely smart, none of them went to college. After HS graduation in the early 80s, she worked for years in an car parts factory, where her hands were constantly burned and scarred from handling hot sharp metal. Then she worked for years in an American flag factory, where there were huge open vats of chemicals burping up all the time, and she constantly got terrible respiratory infections. Then the factory moved to the South, and she got free community college training (as a displaced worker) and now works in an office doing computer work for a private company for the defense industry.
My point is that factory jobs often suck. Even in rural New England they were pouring the flag factory chemicals into the waterway behind the building; it is still polluted decades later. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to get these jobs back, but you have to understand that localities will overlook very bad things in order to not mess up employment. There is no free lunch, at least not for the 99 percent.
We can do better than this. Attempt to create biodegradable equivalents would put the Masters in the red. This is keeping us from exploration into environment friendly industries. and employee considerate. How much money does one man need? The thought that the assault on local environments intentionally, perhaps to lower real estate prices so they can return and purchase it latter as a vulture capitalist would.
We have obstacles. Rich families that refuse to unseat and who don't want to cover the cost of a retirement of baby boomers. They have strategically and covertly undermined every major industry, and I believe every country on our planet is in the same position. Gangsters are running the show. Our lives are important to us and this magnificent world deserves better.
Sounds like that flag company in Putnam, CT. Or Amerbelle in Rockville, CT. The water in the Hockanum River, which flows under the building, would turn the color of whatever dyejob they were doing. This didn't stop until the 1990's.
Very good guesses, but different factory.
I worked in a dealership as a kid. Young man. Brake jobs started with blowing the dust out with compressed air. And that was when brakes where made with the good stuff, asbestos.
Then later, I worked replacing boilers. We got a white surgical mask for removing asbestos. And instructed to wet it down. Mickey, ( GRHS) would poke a hole in the mask, and slide in his Newport.
Dad's shop was an old lead smelting facility. They melted and recast lead used in the printing industry. As a pup, I would peel spattered lead off the wall, roll it into balls. I don't remember licking it, ha. I laugh at lead paint concerns, when I remember those days.
52 yo, smoker. So far so good. I know I'm poking fate just writing this, but, I'll keep y'all posted.
Tempered in raw shit. ( G. Carlin)
This is why Apple designs the iPhone so you can't change the battery. When you open the case, all that smog floats out.
Windows phone and Android are made there and do the same thing! dickless!
i wouldnt travel to china for all the tea in china.
The ongoing environmental first strike is showing us that we have the power to destroy international cities, international ports, international infrastructure, international food ecosystems, international forest ecosystems, international ocean ecosystems, and the global climate system (we are already way into doing so).
IV. ConclusionIn other words, we are at this moment actively destroying the things that make possible, and support, our global civilization.
Since this post is long enough already, I won't address why the Epigovernment and its government minions want to add another first strike (nuclear attack) to their death-wish list.
That must be left to the psychiatrists for now (but if you must read some psychoanalysis of it, see MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 5).
Any individual or group doing this to themselves would be seen as wittingly or unwittingly killing themselves by way of a conscious or unconscious murder-suicide pact (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact, 2, 3, 4, 5).
Our global culture, as well as our local cultures, can't seem to allow us to grasp that horrid notion.
That is because of the trances our cultures generate for us to grow up in, and to eventually make our own (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2).
If only the only whores of civilization were simple male and female street walkers doing so because of their survival struggles during personal economic problems.
But, that unfortunately is not the case (The War Whores Ride The War Horse - 2).
blogdredd.blogspot.com/search/label/environment
the trans said over 100,000,000 views and even more by now
remember when London had pollution so bad people were dying daily? (from coal)
so I watched a video recently of a niche industry reviewer.. went to china to check out a company at their factory.
the company dorms.. made me only know one thing. china's boom ( and coming bust ) is basic wall st tatics. wall st executives went in there and sold them west virginia coal mine business model.
the wretched pollution is from the same.. thats why wall st went there.. no epa or any regs at all.. "shit jo, just pour that shit outside. fuck it"
de-regulate everything bitchez! cause we can trust the good people of wall st! (LOL)
this is the west's crowning glory. export the worst of wall st tatics for exploiting a population, destroy the planet.. make $$ bernanke bux!!!1!
where's galt gulch? fucking china, thats where.
the threat never was commie, socialists, etc. those are only tools of the real boogey men.
monopolization is the real end game. for they will have us all returning to their glory days of west virginia coal mines. we will all slave endlessly in their mines, live in dorm housing, shop in the co store.
its inevitable when P < P + I
They need a union.
yawn... nothing all that new or special here. pollution has been improving since they started measuring it back in 2000. what we have here is a chinese moron stumbling across a problem and latching onto a theory about it... then without any actual basis, blasts it out there for the sheep-like chinese to (without any actual understanding) take as "evidence" for a thing they barely understand.
The only reason it's allowed to stand is because she's being a useful idiot for something the government wants to clean up anyways.
Troll. Pollution has been worsening y-o-y since the late 90s. The only time I noticed a significant drop in pollution was immediately following the 2008 financial crisis. Since then, it's returned with a vengeance.
Go pocket your 50 cents. While you're at it, change your handle to wumao.
Cur.
according to who? because according to the UN, a third-party investigator with no interest in blaring propaganda using improperly configured and unmaintained devices... it HAS gotten better. And that is confirmed using historical data.
http://wombathole.com/images/BJ-air.jpg
whoops.
KA-ching. Another 50 cents. Keep posting. You'll be able to buy yourself some cup noodles in no time. I don't need you or a fucking chart pulled from your ass to tell me what good air quality is. When I look outside into the shit-brown toilet bowl air with less than 200-feet visibility I know what time it is.
Unreal.
This article appeals to the China bashers. It focuses on a negative and presents it like it is the situation everywhere. They take a very polluted city and try to make the Americans who have never left their trailer park think the whol country is like that. All the responses remind me of the scene in the movie 1984 called "Two minutes of hate".
China was brought into the WTO due to its history of lack of civil rights. Infinite supply of cogs, no worker rights, no enviro rights, an industrialists wet dream. All by design.
"What is perhaps most stunning - aside from the fact that something so 'important' can go viral without Kim Kardashian's ass all over it - is that the Chinese government, so far, has not shut off the documentary,..."
It could mean they know they can not prevent the spread of this video anyways. And trying to shut it could broaden its appeal and open the CCP up to attack.
It is a known tactic of CCP to identify with protestors.
( see Susan Shirk 's book China Fragile Superpower, p 66 )
there is a growing conflict between Beijing and the Chinese Industrial Complex
<facepalm>
So will there soon be unrest and civil war in China because of that?? Does everything have to be blown out of proportion these days on ZH?
yes, ZH is the tabloid for self-professed intellectuals
Chinese officials are obviously very worried about the safety of senior executives at multinational corps (especially Americans), who are almost solely responsible for the massive pollution crisis in China.