Why? Japan is more valuable as a trading partner and a future strategic partner against the US. China has little history of expansionism; even the Tibet matter is a return to what China considers its original historical roots. Taiwan is still seen as province of China. In the end China is the natural power in East Asia just as India comes to dominate South Asia and ultimately Muslim Indonesia as the dominate power in SE Asia.

As I recall, China leads the world in coal reserves, comparable to those of the US. Air and other pollutions have become such problems that the government has been pushing more modern energy from petroleum and natural gas.

China has long exploited the peasant classes, long before the Commies drove out the Kuomintang. The rural people drove the economics behind Chinese industrial modernization until the end of the 20th century. Now, rural people are in excess, in the way, and in trouble as China acquires modern economic, financial and technological systems and major export-import status in the world. Subsistence farming is loosing out to modern industrial systems, making rural peasantry superfluous. The rural young move to the burgeoning industrial centers while the old remain to fight against the inevitable privatization of prime lands.

The latter group are far weaker in china than here; the situation appears to be precarious. What will be the impact to the rest of the world when the most populous country on the globe chews up its food-producing lands for quick individual profits and burns up most of the coal?

Just one of the obvious reasons, at least to me, for the US Congress to not ratify the Kyoto Treaty that allows the Chinese and others free rein to increase industry output (read increase pollution here) until the they achieve a similar standard of living as the current major industrial nations of the world. Until that major loophole is fixed, no one with any sense should support the Kyoto Treaty.

Unfortunately, the rest of the brainwashed countries (Read Russia as most recent here) in the world don't seem to see the writing on the wall. When the dust, or should I say soot, settles, the world will have more pollution and GHG like carbon dioxided generated than it does now and we will have the Kyoto Treaty to thank.

Just one of the obvious reasons, at least to me, for the US Congress to not ratify the Kyoto Treaty that allows the Chinese and others free rein to increase industry output (read increase pollution here) until the they achieve a similar standard of living as the current major industrial nations of the world. Until that major loophole is fixed, no one with any sense should support the Kyoto Treaty.

Well stated Monte. I was initially a Kyoto supporter until I read some of the small print especially about loopholes for countries like China, India, and Brazil. It seems to me that with these three countries who comprise almost 40% of the world's population having a big excemption puts the goal of the treaty at risk from its onset.

I have said it before and I will say it again--what a treaty should be is more comprehensive in scope. It should not only regulate (or control) greenhouse gas emmissions but ways of removing them from the air. It seems we would be better stopping deforestation in the above named countries and trying to reforest more lands. At least trees remove the CO2 from the air. Other CO2 removing technologies could be implemented down the line as they become available. That way instead of always adding more CO2 to the air, we can also remove some of it to slow down effects of global warming.

Pat--the displacing of peasants, farmers etc is a sign that the economy of China is moving towards the industrial age. Economies usually move from an agrarian society to industrial to service based economies as they mature. What is going on in China is what happened here in the turn of the 20th century. We are experiencing the pains of moving from an industrial society to a service based economy. Nothing that hasn't been predicted or should be surprising. For more information, read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations which was written in the 18th century.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Wealth of Nations (online book)

Thanks, Az, but that book is already one of my favorites. I don't recall Adam Smith used the term 'service economy'.

What is happening in china if it is at all as described in that article seems quite more extreme and egregious than occured here during the rural flight. The situation seems rather different, for in america it was something of a voluntary flight (in general) from farms to industrial cities. Certainly that has been happening in china as well, but now those who choose to stay on the land and live frugally are forcibly removed and abused by local businessmen/politicians?

Clearly greed has run amuck with more abandon and less protection for individuals over there. I'm glad china has no history of expansion and I hope it stays that way, but I wouldn't count on it. They never had today's population pressure to deal with before, and it's quickly going to get worse.

I think they will go after Japan primarily out of revenge. Remember what happened to the chinese not so long ago? I'm sure they do.

A couple of points. There are hundreds of millions of overseas Chinese and many of these have maintained their cultural identity through many generations -- such is the strength of family and tongs in Chinese life.

I doubt that the Chinese are as unforgiving of the Japanese as say the Phillipinos and Koreans. Seems to me that China's history with the US (beginning with the Boxer Rebellion, our support of Nationalist Chinese during and after the Second World War, and Southeast Asian wars/counterinsurgencies) should have driven the Chinese to resent us and counter our interest in Asia. But this is not the case. The Nixon China initiative began even while were were still engaged in VietNam. I suspect that the Chinese leadership, especially the remaining Communists among them, are not real friends of the US today.

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China's more urban and urbane/educated classes and regions have "enjoyed" a long history of conflict and revolutionary reactions with the much larger rural peasantry. Nearly every dynastic revolution in China, including the Red Revolution, arose first in the rural provinces.

Harsh exploitation of the rural peasantry has been the rule; human rights is a set of Western values. Wealth has traditionally come from exploiting the peasants working lands owned by the few; or more recently, working lands owned by the Communist State. The State seems now to have decreed other uses for certain rural lands just as they did in the special economic zones a decade or more ago. We all loved that didn't we even though many people were displaced. That was greed run amok too?

Millions of farmers were displace (some relocated) with the completion of the giant river damming project in central China. Where were the complaints about greed and loss of human rights over that much larger displacement? Let's let the Chinese run their own country and let's stick our own one's.

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Let's be honest. The Kyoto Protocol was directed at the developed countries whose economies already supported high productivity and standards of living. To make the process more palatable, other countries had to sign on to the process, each contributing to future reductions the best they could. Who said the world affairs are fair?

OTOH, the world's largest countries, yet to be industrialized and yet to raise their standards of living to Western norms, are given byes for a time to allow them to continue to expand economies (and to pollute even more). Wouldn't it be fair if China and India were allowed to reach the levels of emissivity enjoyed by the developed world on a per capita basis? Thus, the Western nations and Japan would be producing perhaps only a fraction of the emissions in question today.

In the meantime the US and the EU would at least maintain current volume of emissions augmented by the current trade in carbon sinks/credits.

No, this is politically and economically unacceptable to the US.