Apocalyptic vision

As a kid, Jonathan Watts had nightmares about China.

“If everyone in China jumps at exactly the same time, it will shake the earth off its axis and kill us all,” he thought. The apocalyptic thought came back to him in 2003 when he moved to Beijing as The Guardian’s correspondent. It spurred him to make a trip through most of China, from the satanic mills of Guangdong to the new railway lines in Tibet.

The result is an account replete with examples of selfdestruction. He visits billions of hectares of denuded grassland, finds the North China water table sucked so dry that it has become nearly impossible to plumb and is dumbstruck at vast expanses of plastic. Sometimes he finds a shaky commitment to low-carbon economy, but quickly discovers that the idea nature exists to be exploited is too entrenched.

Chinese authorities, ever on the lookout to lure tourists, have been identifying famed beauty spots as Shangri-la. One such designated treasure was Lake Bigu in Yunnan province. Once a place of great beauty, it is now a rubbish heap. In 2001, one of China’s most respected filmmakers Chen Kaige, encouraged by the local authority, drove 100 pilings into the lake for a bridge and built a five-storey house for love scenes. The house and the rotting bridge across the lake remain, and sheep choke on discarded rubbish.

It is easy to lampoon Chinese industrialisation. Watts shows how the global economy has impinged on it. Recycling, for example, is now fashionable in the West. But where do all those obsolete computers and plastic bottles go? To China. Watts argues that American companies claim to be recycling domestically while actually shipping e-waste to China. In one town Watts saw small recycling shops “breaking down the world’s discarded plastic bags, bottles and wrappers, Italian nappies, French-packaged Lego Tesco milk cartons, Marks and Spencer’s cranberry juice, Kellogg’s cornflakes boxes, Walkers crisp packets, Snickers wrappers and Persil powder containers”. These were turned into low-grade sheets. In return, the people of the town got ditches full of garbage and several health problems.

Mugdha Prasad is doing a PhD in international relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

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