China’s denial of truths to maintain a false sense of progress is getting to a new level. Lately there’s more and more reports on China’s new no mask campaign.
Apparently wearing a mask is spreading the fabricated falsehood about the state of China’s air quality and its link to certain health risks, and an upfront to the government’s policies.
The smog problem has gotten so bad that angry citizens have been going around putting masks on statues. The government is also now censoring any discussion about smog.
Instead of owning up to their own policy errors placing growth over the environment, Chinese officials instead declare people are no longer allowed to wear masks in public.
Things got particularly bad in Chengdu, Sicuan. Smog hadn’t been as big a problem there as most Northern cities like Beijing. However, since the toppling of local authorities there, air quality deteriorated. Anti-smog protesters were met with riot police.
Since face masks is the rallying item, similar to umbrellas for the Hong Kongers Umbrella Revolution, there’s now a ban on wearing face mask in public. To prevent the protest from spreading, such policy has been adopted by other local governments as well.
As if that isn’t ridiculous enough, the government subsequently banned installing air purifiers, and demanded doctors to stop telling their patients that their health issues are caused by the smog. Anyone attempting to buy masks also gets reported to the police.
And of course Radio Free Asia run by the US State Department is a totally unbiased source.
"The International Broadcasting Act of 1994 is explicit about the mission of RFA: “the continuation of existing U.S. international broadcasting, and the creation of a new broadcasting service to people of the People’s Republic of China and other countries of Asia, which lack adequate sources of free information and ideas, would enhance the promotion of information and ideas, while advancing the goals of U.S. foreign policy.”
Why not at least give both sides of the fence. A quick search at globaltimes turns up this
i knew it would come to this at some point. when it comes down to it pointing out the smog is making the country lose face and being critical of the government. so it doesn’t surprise me that this would happen. if anything was done about it i would be surprised.
Yeah, is this one of those ‘fake news’ things? I’m not known as a big China supporter but i find that a bit hard to believe.
I do know there are activists protesting against the astonishing air pollution in China, and sure, the authorities probably are trying to catch and torture them, but, they did issue a Red Alert for pollution in several cities recently and closed certain heavy polluting industries and banned a large percentage of cars for a couple of days - why would they do that if they were trying to totally sweep it under the carpet?
And remember, China has a peak pollution problem because it is the world’s chimney for all the products that we consume. If we don’t want China to pollute so much, we should set the example by consuming way less of the products that cause the pollution. So far, we’ve shown no real inclination to do that.
On the bright side, I assume all this is a moot point and i missed something early in the American election where they definitively solved the world’s pollution problem - coz for all the malarkey that went on, i didn’t hear climate change mentioned even once. Ok, Trump did say he was all for it a couple of times, but that was it
