Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. - Albert Einstein

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The incomparable Tim Blair has a link-filled post full of claims from various left-wing morons and assorted environmentalist detritus who claim that (gasp!) China’s air quality standards are so much higher than America’s that you can’t sell an American vehicle in China.

As someone who has lived in China, allow me to retort.  I’m at work right now so I don’t have time to go digging up links to verify everything I write here, but these are the facts as I remember them.  General Motors (American car company—boo hiss) operates a plant in Shanghai.  It is, if memory serves, a joint partnership with the Chinese communist government.  Indeed, on the tail end of the cars they specifically say “GM Shanghai” on their name plates.  There are similar deals in Beijing with some of the European car manufacturers, I forget whether it was Citroen or Fiat.  At any rate, the ChiComs know that western companies want into their market badly, and they’re prepared to split the profits with the Chinese government in order to do it.

So, what kind of vehicles do these endeavors produce?  Basically a new model car in China is the same model you could buy in the US five years ago.  When they make the injection molds to produce the plastic bodies for US cars, they will recycle those same molds in their Chinese plant, since the average Chinese doesn’t know what the latest and greatest minivan looks like anyway.  In other words, no matter how clean our technology gets here, the vehicles made and sold in China by western companies will always be 3-5 years behind us.

So, let’s look at air quality.  I live and work in Los Angeles, one of the cities in America with the worst air quality.  The air in Shanghai is, to put it mildly, disgusting.  It’s so dirty we used to joke that any time we could see blue sky it was actually some kind of new light-blue pollutant.  Imagine putting your face between Michael Moore’s asscheeks after he’s eaten a lunch of cabbage and sardine burritos and you’ll begin to get an idea of what it’s like.  Here’s a few photos to show what I am talking about.  The first is taken from the observation deck of the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai.

Note the copious levels of filth extending from the sky all the way down to the street level.  The second is taken from the Summer Palace outside Beijing.

See those buildings hidden off in the haze above the treeline on the left?  That’s downtown Beijing.  The air is so filthy that you can barely even make out the entire cityscape. 

Before any of these treehugging celebrity lunatics rant and rave about the tranquil beauty of China and its air quality they might want to, y’know, actually visit there.  The air is so dirty that I actually went outside with a knife, cut a cube out of the air, and took it home with me in my suitcase.

Los Angeles on its worst day is less polluted than China is on its best.

Update: But wait… there’s more!