A side not seen...

A colleague recently handed me a news report on China few days ago showing some statistics that are pretty scary to hear about, here is my feeble attempt to translate some of it.

The article discusses: Is China truly a prosperous world? Considering that China's GDP growth rate have been averaging over 9%, the fast growth has led to increasing wealth for many but the impact on the environment and on the widening rich and poor gap seems to need definitely some or more attention.

- Out of 140 of all the forests within China, almost half have been depleted or close to depletion. Most of them have been used to produce chopsticks, furniture, paper etc. 90% of grassland have also been destroyed or desertified

- In year 2000, the volume of waste water released is 90 billion tons which makes up of one tenth of the world's total waste water volume. In comparison, its total production volume is only 3% of the world's total

- Water: Half of the cities in China face water shortage issues, 1/6th faces serious shortage issues, 50 cities are in a critical water situation. Out of 7 main cities, 70% of the water source within 5 of them is not fit for drinking. A sales colleague from one of the poorer provinces has never had fresh water flowing from the tap in her hometown; a long track is needed to obtain fresh water.

- Animal: 50 years ago there were 4000 tigers within China, now only 50 over of them remains

- Wealth: in 2004, the average yearly income of a farmer is 2936rmb while the average yearly income of someone in the city/town is 9422rmb. In an extreme situation, the yearly income can be as low as 668rmb (26.1 million people are within this income category). That's 1.8rmb a day, how often have we spent it within a blink of an eye?