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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: January 29th, 2025

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  • @Jason Kraus

    has flat lined their CO2 emissions for the last 18 months

    This is misleading and incomplete information that makes it outright false.

    China is set to miss its target to cut carbon intensity – the CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – from 2020 to 2025. The country would need steeper reductions to hit the it’s 2030 goal.

    Emissions from the production of cement and other building materials indeed fell by 7% in the third quarter of 2025, while emissions from the metals industry fell 1%. This is due, however, not to environmental policy in Beijing, but rather to the ongoing real-estate crisis, as the construction sector uses most of the country’s steel and cement output.

    Power-sector emissions were also flat year-on-year in Q3/2025, with emissions from transport fell by 5%, but oil consumption in other sectors grew by 10%, driven by chemical industry expansion. This resulted in a 2% rise in oil consumption overall. Gas demand and emissions grew by 3% overall in Q3, with consumption in the power sector up by 9% and by 2% in other sectors.























  • The world cannot dump all their high volume manufacturing on China and then turn around and blame them for the pollution.

    I could elaborate a lot on that. This view is oversimplified to a degree that it is outright false.

    However, it is not necessary to engage in such a discussion as it is not relevant here when we look at the data and how it is calculated.

    According to the scientists at the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) cited in the linked report, China is behind by any metric, including by what the CAT scientists call a country’s “fair share.” This reflects the “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances”, as stated in the Paris agreement (Article 4.3),

    Here you can find China’s CAT rating. As you can see, China’s ‘policy and actions against fair share’ is rated as insufficient, with its overall rating highly insufficient.

    As you can also see in the CAT rating, no country is on track, but China is among those countries most behind by any comparative standards.

    [Edit typo.]





  • How do you differentiate whataboutism from highlighting the antichinese hypocrisy?

    This is quite obvious.

    Chinese cities are - by far - leading the questionable ranking of the world’s cities with the most CCTV cameras per capita. It doesn’t help to say that Europe, the U.S., others will be gaining ground. We must stand up against this development instead of downplaying it.

    But the saddest thing is that this whataboutism goes only into one direction. If you read negative news about surveillance of Western technology - and there are a lot of such news that is absolutely justifiable -, there are no comments like, “But China …” The 50 cent warriors are working for China, and that’s a bit annoying.



  • It’s unfortunately not so easy. Many Chinese people poured a lot of money - some even their life savings - into property that is now worth much less than they paid or have never been built as the developer went bankrupt.

    As one report on Evergrande said already in 2023:

    In 2021, just months before the Chinese property giant Evergrande showed the first signs of crisis, Guo Tianran (whose name has been changed on request) and her husband bought an apartment off-plan for their only child from the top-selling developer.

    The couple, nearing their 60s, had scrimped to afford the $30,000 (£24,500) down payment on the yet-to-be-built flat. They bit the bullet in pledging to use 75% of their income to pay for the mortgage.

    “We wanted to help our son, to give him a place to start out on once he graduates from college,” Mrs Guo told the BBC earlier this month. But just months after their purchase, Evergrande’s facade began to crack.

    In Henan, the central Chinese province where they had bought the home, building work ground to a halt.

    “We saw the main frame being built, and suddenly we heard that Evergrande was falling. Then construction stopped last year,” she says […] “When I think about it, I cry,” says Mrs Guo about the home she had bought. “It’s hard, and I feel sorry for my son and myself.”

    You’ll find more reports than this one, and they are devastating not only for institutional investors but also for retail customers like Mrs. Guo in this report.