Shush! Don't Mention It, Please

Only the most credulous might believe something so egregious, in any event. That a country, any country, would be so fixated on its economic advancement that it would sacrifice anything and everything to attain that goal. After all, a country's first duty is to the health and security of its population, is it not? Yes, economic advancement is another imperative to a country's success, but at the price of sacrificing huge swaths of its population?

Never. Yet, there is a country with such an immense population that it dwarfs that of most other countries. It is, in fact, the most populous country in the world. It boasts a long history as a country, as a society. And one that is celebrated for its traditions, its culture, its respect for the arts and sciences. Its people are industrious, highly intelligent and capable. While it hasn't the largest land mass of all the countries on this globe, it is a huge geography.

Its past historical splendour gave way to a position of far less prominence in the world as the fortunes of other countries rose. China underwent a huge political, social upheaval, a revolution of astounding proportions. In the process of overturning tradition and adopting a rigid ideology that proved, in the long run, inimical to human desires, progress and destiny, the country's administration channelled its energies into encouraging a mass human destruction.

For, as one of the founders of Communism remarked, one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, and the sacrifice of people, regardless of how many, was justifiable, to achieve the greater glory of success. Social justice would, in the end, prevail, and people would accommodate themselves to becoming part of a great social experiment which would benefit all who took part in it.

Now we have an amalgam of political Communism and social acceptance of expedient free enterprise. And anything goes. There is little regulation, and great enterprise, as China undercuts all other world markets in production, commerce and trade. Its exports are legendary, its huge workforce capable and productive. China is on an economic roll. The rest of the world sits back and gapes in astonishment.

And then there is the dreadful cost. Chinese consumers are being besieged with bogus and often poisonous foodstuffs. Their rivers and lakes have been polluted beyond safe usage. Their environment has been degraded, the air they breathe contaminated, and in the process their lives have been foreshortened. Capable of great medical and pharmaceutical advances, they've corrupted both, and the health of the population deteriorates accordingly.

Now, new figures compiled in a newly-released, but truncated World Bank study has revealed startling statistics. Not fully revealed, at the urgent request of the government of China, worried and embarrassed about the debilitating effect its economic success is having on the country's health. And so they should be. Their worry and fear, however, appears to be more related to the potential for mass 'unrest' as a result of this crisis, than that they've caused great numbers of Chinese to achieve early deaths.

Pollution in the country, it now appears, kills three quarters of a million Chinese annually. The state environmental protection administration and its health ministry demanded that the study, The Cost of Pollution in China, conducted by international and Chinese government scientists, be suppressed. For fear of causing "social instability", which is to say a backlash against the government by its outraged citizens.

One third of the report was omitted, according to a story in The Financial Times. Figures from the report reveal that 350,000 to 400,000 people died prematurely from outdoor air pollution; an additional 300,000 died from indoor air pollution (fumes from coal-burning stoves and boilers; the main source of heat in the country); 60,000 died from diseases ranging from cancer to diarrhea related to water pollution.

Economic prosperity at any cost? Take it, it's all yours.