The Ghost Country that Poisons the World

Prevailing winds across the Pacific are pushing thousands of tons of other contaminants—including mercury, sulfates, ozone, black carbon, and desert dust—over the ocean each year. Some of this atmospheric junk settles into the cold waters of the North Pacific, but much of it eventually merges with the global air pollution pool that circumnavigates the planet. _Discover

China's growth is nothing more than a credit bubble on steroids. Cities are vacant, yet China keeps building, and building and building. _Mish_Globaleconomicanalysis

China and Environs
The amount of toxins that China dumps into its water, soil, and air, is astounding. If China were only poisoning herself -- in the frantic attempt to over-build its ghost infrastructure to nowhere -- the rest of the world could only look on in horror. But since the effects of Ghost China's poisonous activity oozes out to affect many other nations, we need to take a closer look.

These contaminants are implicated in a long list of health problems, including neurodegenerative disease, cancer, emphysema, and perhaps even pandemics like avian flu. And when wind and weather conditions are right, they reach North America within days. Dust, ozone, and carbon can accumulate in valleys and basins, and mercury can be pulled to earth through atmospheric sinks that deposit it across large swaths of land.

...China in particular stands out because of its sudden role as the world’s factory, its enormous population, and the mass migration of that population to urban centers; 350 million people, equivalent to the entire U.S. population, will be moving to its cities over the next 10 years. China now emits more mercury than the United States, India, and Europe combined. “What’s different about China is the scale and speed of pollution and environmental degradation,” Turner says. “It’s like nothing the world has ever seen.”

Development there is racing far ahead of environmental regulation. “Standards in the United States have gotten tighter because we’ve learned that ever-lower levels of air pollution affect health, especially in babies and the elderly,” Jaffe says. As pollutants coming from Asia increase, though, it becomes harder to meet the stricter standards that our new laws impose.

...China’s smog-filled cities are ringed with heavy industry, metal smelters, and coal-fired power plants, all crucial to that fast-growing economy even as they spew tons of carbon, metals, gases, and soot into the air. _Much more at Discover

While China is certainly spewing more than its share of CO2, we should be much more concerned about the real pollutants gushing from China's over-revved production machine. Corrupt government officials are routinely bribed to look the other way. China's people suffer, but so do others who live farther from the source.

Why does a nation full of ghost cities, shopping malls, highways, and skyscrapers continue to push all-out for ever greater construction and production? It is likely that China's export markets will continue to shrink over time -- unless the US jettisons the Obama regime and re-institutes the rules of opportunity which made the US economy the driver of world prosperity.

The true state of affairs is China's banks are insolvent. China is building units for which there is little demand and few can afford. China will have to print money to pay for all of this malinvestment. The idea the Yuan is undervalued fails to take into consideration any of this. _Mish

The overbuilding of a toxic infrastructure by Ghost China. Just one of many important problems which the middle kingdom is thrusting upon the rest of the world.

More on China's ghost cities (via Mish)