Thoughts on China

With all the headlines in the US newspapers over the last year about all the horrible transgressions of the Chinese, I immediately thought of America over a century ago.Sweatshops in China?

Where do you think child labor laws in the United States came from?

Pollution? That pea soup London Fog was caused by coal burning smog…

In other words, I felt like we are blaming the Chinese for going through a phase of capitalism that we went through ourselves.

While I was too lazy to write an article summarizing all of my thoughts, I am glad to see that a very good article on this subject has already been written.

So, while China definitely has to clean up its act, we would do much better to have the attitude of “how can we help you avoid the mistakes that we made in the same circumstances” than a holier-than-thou attitude that acts as if the US has always been “green”. Remember the Cuyahoga River burning at Cleveland? That wasn’t 100 years ago, it wasn’t even 50 years ago, it was 38 years ago in 1969.

It always helps communication if we start any chastising by looking in the mirror and recognizing that we aren’t exactly a pillar of perfection, either. Then, work together to solve the problem, rather than pointing the finger.