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China Shuts Down Tens Of Thousands Of Factories In Widespread Pollution Crackdown (msn.com)
Buildings in China are shrouded in smog. From a report: China has implemented an unprecedented pollution crackdown in recent months as the country shuts down tens of thousands of factories. The effort is part of a national effort to address China's infamous pollution and has affected wide swaths of China's manufacturing sector. In total, it is estimated that 40 percent of all China's factories have been shut down at some point in order to be inspected by environmental bureau officials. As a result of these inspections over 80,000 factories have been hit with fines and criminal offenses as a result of their emissions. Safety officials have been moving from province to province (30 in total so far) shutting down factories as well as electricity and gas as they inspect the factories for meeting emissions requirements. This has resulted in late and missed orders, increased costs, and could ultimately result in higher prices on US shelves.
....China is a better environmental steward that your country.
Who knew that cleanliness was a resource and you could use it up and run out?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
sooner or later this had to happen...
40 percent of all China's factories have been shut down at some point in order to be inspected by environmental bureau officials.
Wouldn't you want to inspect them before you shut them down? I mean how bad can the emissions of a shut-down factory be?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
This happened to me. Anyone have a $50,000 a year job in IT in Beijing?
Once they pay their "fines" they can go back to polluting. Unless they complain and a firing squad is needed. Happened before, will happen again. I have stories from the eighties of execs being executed for "bad business practices and polluting". Didn't stop then, will not stop now.
Seriously, the author is worried about spending a tiny bit more at Walmart because school kids in China now get cleaner air?
The chinese overlords have started to figure out that they a pissing in their own cereals.
You can have cheap products, be the industrial center of the world, or have clean air. Pick any two.
It will be interesting to see how serious they are about this.
ZOMG, higher prices!
And we still are arguing over whether corporate taxes have nay impact on prices.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
what excuses America will take to now, to get to point fingers at the Chinese and pollution.
Is this why Dell keeps delaying my order?
I really respected the Chinese policy of not bending over for bullshit environmentalist ideals. Sad day. Trump will fix this though.
Colloquially and rhetorically, what sort of father gives his son a computer that is locked in software by such things as licenses, be they GPL or otherwise, and does not have nor come with free FULL hardware documentation! No wonder the planet is becoming polluted with computers, while the big computer companies whom use the assimilate small companies mantra, scream to the political left wing "what about the small businesses?" to keep the Royalty etcetera amused.
Strategy (that has worked flawlessly so far)
1. Offer goods at a fraction of real cost. (use slave labour, etc as needed)
2. Ensure all competition (factories outside of China) go out of business.
3. Slowly raise prices and therefore profits.
4. Expand stranglehold to manufacturing equipment and anything to do with manufacturing or production of anything and everything.
5. Raise prices, by masquerading "shortages", "cleanup", "regulation"., etc. Profit massively, dominate the planet.
With all of the rumors related to issues sourcing the parts necessary for Apple's forthcoming iPhone X and the anticipated short supply at launch, this causes me to wonder: where does Apple assemble their iDevices, again?
(Spoiler... it's predominantly Foxconn, in China.)
The thing is, those who have little knowledge of how China works fail to understand how patronage has allowed very inefficient factories to continue to exist.
Starting with the replacement of old WW I style mills and power systems based on coal, China has literally either forced them to be replaced with cogeneration coal plants that capture excess heat, allowing an old style to produce twice the power output with the same raw inputs. They closed down those which could not be retrofitted.
Now they are doing the same with many of the factories. New factory designs are far more efficient, and cheaper to operate, allowing far fewer raw inputs to produce valuable goods, and requiring far less power.
Which makes them more competitive, dropping prices, not raising them.
This is part of why the Western US, with high investment in renewable power and modern fabrication techniques, outcompetes the old style factories in other regions.
Does it cost? For a 2-5 year cycle, sure. But it drops your operating expenses and maintenance, and it lets you outcompete the fossil factories kept up with wire and tape.
Stop focusing on the short term quarterly results, and look to the operational cradle-to-grave results. Adapt or die.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Who will make my knock-off Sponge Bob keychain that I sell on Teh Internets for a 20X markup?
Labor costs in China are rising so they are moving polluting production to low cost countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia.
Great. Now where will all the cheap Christmas junk come from? Automakers are salivating over the Chinese market, their consumer economy is booming and western companies are eager to get a piece of the action.
"recent months" = ~ 6
"tens of thousands" = ~ 20,000
=> ~ 100 / day
Uh huh. I don't think so.
If any factory was shut down a second longer than it took to make a "donation" to the right cause I'd be surprised.
Our democratic traditions are to be cherished and protected, not denigrated. China is a shit hole compared to the US.
I'll bet half of those factories are shut down simply because they compete with some princeling or are not owned by the right people. Factories that are owned by the powerful can get away with anything. Remember that China recently specifically derided the rule of law.
Have a look at Document Number 9.
LA, at its worst, was an order of magnitude better. Largely because of climate.
The actual pollution is invisible!
That doesn’t mean it isn't bad. But it means that this is NOT the pollution!
It is simply morning fog and similar situations! Anyone who has actually been there, knows that!
I always see these pictures spread for propaganda reasons. I could make pictures, precisely like that, of any big US city where there is fog sometimes too!
How can one be so fucking moronic and fall for that shit? It’s like religion or TrumpHillary... People seeing what they (are made to) *want* to be true.
And yes, I do not agree with Chinese policies or how companies there treat their workers at all. Because is a centrally planned extreme capitalism. Ever more centrally planned than the US one.
... overpopulation, leading to famines, resource fights, and psychopathic anonymity due to even the smallest communities being way above Dunbar's number.
Yeah, the one child policy was cruel. I would have gone for “Use some fucking contraception, or be expelled from the country, so you can live in your own overpopulated shithole country with blackjack and hookers and not enough food so you'll starve! I won't limit your freedom. But I will not let you limit mine in my own country!”.
But do you really believe people would actually obey that? A species that is the result of billions of years of winning at natural selection by sucking up resources and pumping out children? lol, yeah, right!
How the fuck does a citation make anything any more true??
A logical argument does not care who said it! If Hitler himself said it, that would change nothing!
What matters, is that the statement is *logically* perfect, and based only on statistically reliable paradigms/axioms that one has *verified* or can verify oneself!
That can and SHOULD be done right in the comment. Wikipedia has this exactly the wrong way around, with forbidding original research. And given how obfuscated references are, and how the Wikipedia admins generally behave, not just according to my own observation, I hypothesize that this is *deliberate*.
This means here (Pacific Northwest) an upheaval in the the recycling of of solid waste (plastics especially). It's into the landfill for awhile (I hope just for a while). Some think this maybe a permanent thing others think it is a temporary interruption.