that point, it runs completely on electricity.
37. Although China plans to build thirty-one nuclear plants by 2020 (Associated Press, “China Begins Building New Nuclear Plant, First in Country’s Northeast,” August 18, 2007), Chinese energy specialists believe that nuclear power can have only limited use because the country lacks large supplies of uranium and does not want to be too dependent on imports for power. Worldwide, nuclear power cannot solve the earth’s energy problems. Nathan Lewis estimates that we would have to build a new nuclear fission reactor every two days for fifty years to meet humanity’s demand for power. But even if that were possible, there wouldn’t be enough uranium on the planet to fuel them all (Nathan Lewis, “Powering the Planet,” California Institute of Technology, 2007).
14. Fertility Treatment: Shandong
1. In 2007, Shandong’s population stood at 96.37 million (China National Bureau of Statistics). The province is home to the country’s biggest cement maker, its second-largest oil field, its third-biggest reserve of coal, and its leading brewer of beer.
2.
3. The province was a gateway to the creative and destructive influence of the outside world. At the low point of Chinese power at the end of the nineteenth century, the German navy made Qingdao their base. The failed Boxer Rebellion against foreign influence began in Shandong in 1899. This was the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting against Japanese troops in the 1930s and 1940s.
4. This concept is covered in more detail in Ch. 3.
5. The thirteen-year, $3.1 billion program will research dozens of varieties of GM rice, maize, soy, and wheat, according to a spokesperson for the ministry of agriculture. The initiative involves sixty-four projects on GM rice, maize, wheat, and soybean, and the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Science will be involved mainly in the project’s downstream work, including genetic transformation and evaluation of the performance of the transgenic plants in biosafety greenhouses and the field, according to Huixia Wu, CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) wheat transformation specialist (cited in
6. The father of China’s GM rice program, Professor Zhu Zhen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told me this (Jonathan Watts, “Illicit Rice Trade Endangers Biotech Barriers,”
7. Judith Shapiro,
8. Up until the 1960s, for every increase in the human population there was a corresponding expansion in the area of arable land under cultivation. But after that, all the gains in yield came from the green revolution (Joel Cohen, speaking at the Nature Conservancy conference ConEx in Vancouver, BC, 2008).
9. Construction accounted for more than half of the 25,000 square kilometers of cultivated land lost in the 1990s. Remote-sensing surveys show that China’s cultivated land area fell from 1,307,400 square kilometers in 1991 to 1,282,400 square kilometers in 2000—from 1.8 mu (0.0012 square kilometer) per head to 1.5 mu (0.0010 square kilometer) per head. Construction accounted for 56.6 percent of the decrease, 21 percent of land was forested, 16 percent was flooded, and 4 percent became grassland.
10. Vaclav Smil,
11. Italy was the only other country to adopt it, but not on the same scale (interview with Zhang Qiwen).
12. It is too cold for them north of Shenyang, too hot for them south of the Yangtze (interview with Zhang Qiwen).
13. China now has 7 million hectares of artificial forest—the most in the world—almost a third of which are poplar 107 and 108. China claims greater progress in afforestation than any other country in the world, yet its “success” is based largely on these species and similar “economic forests” of eucalyptus in the south.
14. In the gardens of the Forbidden City in Beijing stand four ancient junipers which were repeatedly split in the middle and the wounds were covered in burlap, then tightly bound in oilcloth so that the base of the trunk split in two parts that met higher up the trunk. The intended shape is the character for “person.” Even centuries ago, horticulturalists were shaping nature in man’s image.
15. The ministry of forestry has set a target of enough new artificial poplar plantations by 2015 to produce 143 million cubic meters of timber every year—almost equal to the entire amount that China currently imports.
16. This felt horribly familiar. It reminded me of Mao-era architecture in Beijing, all of which was initially constructed according to fifty standard Soviet blueprints. Even this was considered too diverse during the ultraegalitarian Cultural Revolution, when everything was built to one of just four designs. The rural landscape was following the utilitarian path of the postrevolution cityscape (Jasper Becker,
17. Interview with Jiang Gaoming.
18. Interview with Jiang Gaoming. We met in late 2008, soon after the government admitted that melamine, illegally added to milk, had killed at least six infants and left a further 860 babies hospitalized.
19. By one estimate, 2.7 billion tons of livestock manure are produced throughout China every year, 3.4 times the amount of industrial solid waste. But in most places less than a tenth of the manure is returned to the land (Wu Weixiang, Department of Environment Engineering at Zhejiang University, quoted in “A New Livestock Revolution,”
20. The World Bank is investing heavily in the project to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce indoor air pollution, and improve sanitary conditions.
21. But there is the problem of trust. In China today, few consumers believe “organic” labels are anything but a marketing gimmick. Their skepticism is understandable. Countless food-safety scandals have been caused by corruption, counterfeiting, and reckless shortcuts aimed at boosting profits. All too often a stamp of approval by the authorities merely shows that the regulatory officials have been paid a big enough bribe. Other checks and balances are missing. Journalists are frequently paid off with “taxi money” bribes. There are no independent courts. Consumer organizations are weak or nonexistent. Nothing is allowed to impinge upon the authority of the party. So if the party approves something, there is no comeback. Many commentators see this resulting “crisis of trust” as one of China’s biggest problems.
22. From a book of twenty-four stories about filial piety compiled by Guo Jujing during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368).
23. Cynics who thought Lei sounded too good to be true were almost certainly correct. Conveniently, however, the selected icon had died a year before the campaign started when a clumsy army colleague backed a truck into an electricity pole that flattened the soon-to-be national treasure. The propaganda authorities had, of course, already recorded his deeds and acquired a “diary” of his politically perfect thoughts. In addition to his dung donation, Lei’s altruism reportedly extended to scrubbing public toilets in his spare time, darning the socks of poor farmers, and giving away his meager savings to the needy.
24. She was supported both physically and financially by the villagers, including Professor Jiang. Some locals believed she was a shaman who could cure the sick by touching their heads.
25. Chinese anecdotal history contains numerous tales of people turning to cannibalism during famines throughout the ages, most recently after the Great Leap Forward.
26. In the English-speaking world, Lester Brown and Vaclav Smil are, on one side, warning that falling water tables and overuse of the land are threatening the nation’s ability to feed itself. On the other is Peter Lindert, professor of economics and director of the Agricultural History Center at the University of California, Davis, who suggests the depth of topsoil is relatively unchanged in China and the quality may even have improved. See Brown,
