Chinasage : All about China

With China in the middle of the Chinese New Year it seems appropriate to report a good news story. In this case it has worldwide benefit, not just to Chinese people.

China has been busy planting trees for decades and the effect is on such a vast scale that it is visible from space. A NASA satellite has found increased vegetation worldwide 2,000,000 sq miles [5,179,976 sq kms] and about 25% of this is in China. The total area added is similar to the size of the Amazon rain forest and so this is very significant change. An early push for reforestation was to help prevent flooding in the Yellow River basin. Intensive farming in the north had removed all the trees that stabilized the friable loess soil. In flash floods the soil easily liquifies and creates dangerous thick mud that easily blocks river channels. Tree planting began back in the 1970s and now heavy rain does not cause as big a problem. Shelter belts have also been planted to try to hold back the sands of the Gobi desert that are often deposited in Beijing in summer.

A good proportion of the greening seen by the NASA satellite is not due to trees but from other vegetation - including crops. Much of this effect was seen in India, this is due to increased plant growth from the use of fertilizers and pesticides. In China it is mainly from forests rather than agriculture. This is partly because in China people continue to move from rural farming into the burgeoning cities. Small scale agriculture has become increasingly uneconomic and plots of land are reverting to patches of woodland.

Although this greening is to be welcomed it is unfortunately not sufficient to mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions and reduce climate change significantly, but every little helps. The government is on target to achieve its aim of 23% forest coverage by 2020 -by comparison the UK, widely considered a green and pleasant land, has only 13% forest coverage. March 12th each year is designated the official tree planting day where everyone is encouraged to go out and plant a tree. This was instituted in 1981 and is now showing great benefits.

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It is little known that for China it was the trade across the Pacific in the 16th and 17th centuries that really opened up international trade and not the Portuguese at Macau. When the pope divided the world between the Spanish and Portuguese the line drawn had wide repercussions. Portugal could trade from Europe via the Cape of Good Hope to the Spice Islands and China while Spain had the control of trade to Mexico ('New Spain') and then over the Pacific to East Asia. The discovery of huge amounts of silver in Mexico and Peru gave the Spanish something with which to buy Chinese luxury goods. The Spanish dollar 'pieces of eight' became the common currency and it was on this coin that the American dollar was based (and later the Hong Kong dollar). Many of the luxury items from China that arrived in Mexico were carried over to the eastern coast and from thence by sea to Europe. It was a very lucrative trade and only ended when Mexico gained independence and the opium trade began. The trade is less well known because the main port was not on the Chinese mainland but at Manilla in the Philippines where a thriving Chinese colony rapidly expanded.

This page on SCMP gives a huge amount of interesting information about this trade route, including the details of how the mighty galleons were built.

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The Chinese appetite for the sweet and sticky Durian fruit is causing a few issues.

In four years the price has tripled to over $22 a kilo. The tropical fruit is mainly grown in Thailand and Malaysia and the much higher profits are driving farmers to clear ancient, unspoilt forests to expand their orchards. The most sought after variety is Musang King and farmers can make nine times the profit from growing it than producing palm oil. The environmental damage from forest clearance has poisoned the rivers and driven out indigenous tribes. The forest used to be home to wildlife and many rare medicinal plants. The Orang Asli tribe are particularly badly hit and are now trying to block further encroachment. It seems that some pressure from the central Malaysian government may be slowing down the dash to grow more Durian fruit trees.

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While scanning through the pages during January 2019 we spotted a number of layout/coding issues on many of the web pages. We've now gone through and put most of these right. If you spot any further problems please use the contact form to let us know.

We discovered a bug that would cause some quizzes to occasionally not function at all and also cause some to mark the given answer incorrectly. This should now be fixed. If you still see any problems let us know.