Another cause of growing unrest is uncontrolled air and water pollution. For example, the government is pressuring the United States to halt the use of an air quality monitor on the roof the Beijing embassy, and releasing the data, hourly, on the Internet. This began in 2008, before the Olympics that year, as an aid for American tourists. The Chinese government only publishes data on sand storms that blow in (as they have for over 10,000 years) from the Gobi Desert. Pollution from coal burning, vehicles and factories, and the thick smog is creates, is simply called "fog" and officially ignored. The citizens of Beijing know better and pay close attention to the U.S. Embassy pollution reports. Increasingly, the pollution is ten times the legal limit in the West. This is no trivial matter, as more people are getting sick from the pollution and dying. Despite government efforts to suppress this information, the Internet provides ample sources for what is happening, and how much worse it is going to get.
One shudders to think how bad it would be if China's rulers weren't reasonably enlightened on Green issues. Eh?
