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The report analyses objective materials from 10 aspects:
— In China's land area of 9.6 million sq km , mountains , hilly land and plateaus account for 65 percent and the various fragile ecological belts account for 9.7 percent.
The improper utilisation and development of these land areas are liable to cause large- scale soil erosion and accelerate the loss of ecological balance . In the early 1950s China's total area of soil erosion was 1.16 million sq km; but it has now reached 1.6 million an increase of 38 percent. Of the 540,000 sq km of loess highland in China's northwest the eroded area has reached 90 percent.
— China is under the influence of monsoons. In the past 2,200 years and more, there have been more than 1,600 serious floods and over 1,300 serious droughts, and the frequency is becoming higher with the passage of time. Since the 1950s there has been a tendency towards rising temperatures and less rainfall, causing irreversible ecological changes.
— China's forest coverage is only 12.89 percent, far lower than the world average of 31.3 percent. China falls into 120th place among all the countries in the world in this respect. In the 50 years since the founding of New China, despite the great efforts made in a forestations, the consumption of timber has surpassed the rate of growth. Remote sensing has established that the present forest cover rate is only 8.9 percent.
— Shortage of grasslands. China now has a total area of 224 million ha of usable grassland, averaging about 0.2 ha per capita and one -third of the world's average.
Because the input in grassland management is too low and large areas of grassland have been destroyed by farmers to make cropland or by overgrazing, the soil has been seriously eroded.
— Desertification. China is one of the countries with the most serious desertification problem. In the northern parts of China the area of deserts and
decertified land has reached 1.49 million sq km, accounting for 15.5 percent of the total
land area of China. Of this, the area of decertified land is 334,000 sq km. Sixty percent of the poorest counties in the country are concentrated in the wind-swept and ecological belts.
— Serious shortage of water. The total runoff of China's rivers ranks sixth in the world. But the average runoff per capita is only 26,00 cu m and ranks 88th in the world.
Cultivated land in and south of the Yangtze River valley accounts for 36 percent of the national total, with water resources accounting for less than 18 percent of the national total. The water resources of most of China's cities are insufficient. In 1979, 154 out of the 600 cities in China were short of water and the number increased to 188 in 1984.
Statistics now shows that 50% of the cities are short of water.
— The distribution of natural resources is uneven. The potential of the ecological climate along the southeastern coast of China is the best and the potential of areas to the northwest decreases progressively and becomes the poorest in the western desertified areas. Judging from the relationship between land productivity and population and between resources are overtaxed in such developed areas as Beijing, Tianjin and
Shanghai, and Liaoning and Guangdong provinces, and the remote areas of Fujian, Guangxi, Tibet, Gansu and Qinghai. Hunan, Shangdong, Jiangxi, Anhui, Zhejiang,
Jiangsu, Heilongjian and Jilin are rich in resources whose capacities are greater than the needs of their population.
— Serious atmospheric pollution. China's atmospheric pollution is characterised by coal smoke. In some areas there is acid rain. The amount of waste residue discharged into the atmosphere is also on the increase.
— Environmental pollution of the countryside. At the same time as rural enterprises make positive contributions to the rural economy, they pollute the ecological environment. The volume of waste — water, residue and gas — discharged by rural enterprises has surpassed that of state-owned enterprises.
— The damage to the ecological environments has caused a huge amount of economic losses. It is estimated that China's economic losses caused by ecological destruction is about RMB 50 billion Yuan a year. This does not include the ill effects on such material wealth as cultivated land, water resources, forests, grasslands and mineral resources, which are difficult to calculate.
According to the report, human exploitation of natural resources in China exceeds what nature can sustain and has caused an imbalance in the ecological system. This manifests itself as forest cutting surpassing growth, the loss of top soil, pollutants discharged surpassing the ability of natural purification, etc. China's high economic growth has caused an excessive consumption of resources and has inevitably damaged the ecological environment. And this daily-expanding ecological deficit has a great influence on the existence and development of the Chinese nation.
Causes of Deterioration of the Ecological Environment
The report holds that the causes for the deterioration of China's ecological environment are very complicated. It is the result of both natural and manmade factors, and an objective reflection of the interaction of historical factors accumulated over a long period of time.
Geologically speaking, China is located between the world's two major active belts, the colliding zone between the Asian plate and the India plate and subduction belt between the Asia plate and the Pacific plate, where new active tectonic movements, landslides and mud flows.
China's mountainous area is large, The topography is high in the west and low in the east, with marked differences of altitude, leading to frequent losses of soil and water. China has a continental climate with marked monsoons. The rainfall is uneven in space and unbalanced in time, easily bringing about severe droughts and floods.
As a result, ecological destruction can stem from the work of natural forces even without the interference of human activities.
The sustained population growth and changes in the proportion between population and resources are dangerous shortcomings for China's ecological environment. Although the total amount of many of China's resources is in the front ranks in the world, per capita possession is much lower than the average world level.
The acute contradiction between the surplus population and the scarce natural resources is the fundamental cause of the continuous destruction of China's ecological environment.
The excessive population and the scarce resources, a pair of inherent contradictory factors inside the productive forces of traditional agricultural society over the past 2,000 years, have not taken a turn for the better with the promotion of industrialisation. On the contrary, because of a sudden increase of population and the swelling of demand since the 1950s, the contradiction has become more acute and has led to a deterioration of the ecological environment.
The continuous pounding by man-made factors at the already fragile foundation has accelerated the destruction of China's ecological environment. In the early stages of its industrialisation, China chose the strategy of giving priority to developing heavy industry, which brought about high consumption and low benefit. Afterwards, the setting of high targets in the development of industry and agriculture, the starting up of small industrial and mining enterprises in a big way, the destruction of forests to reclaim land, the diking of lakes to make fields and the fast growth of the national economy in the 1980s all led to the damage to the ecology and pollution of the environment.
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Participants: a reporter (Chinese) Mr. Derrick Copp from the U.S. Interpreter
Situation: Practicing Chinese martial arts require a lot of efforts. You must be able to stand as straight as a pine tree, sit as squarely as a stone, and move as swiftly as a gust of wind. It doesn't sound easy, does it? But some people are just determined to try. A few of them are foreigners. One of these enthusiasts is Mr. Derrick Copp from the U. S. , who is even setting up a martial arts school in Beijing. He talked with the reporter about his understanding of and experiences with Chinese martial arts.
Derrick: Actually, I've exercised all my life. When I was a child, I did some ballet. I did some gymnastics. And I used to like swimming. So when I am studying Chinese, I decided that I would need some sort of exercise. So I thought, well, since I was in China, I might just do some typical Chinese thing. While at the same time, learn Chinese and Chinese culture.
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Each year, American universities, such as Yale, Harvard, and Columbia, offer a number of scholarships1 to Chinese high school graduates to study as undergraduates in their universities. Four years ago, I received such a scholarship from Yale.
What are these Chinese undergrads2 like? Most come from middleclass families in the big urban centers of China. The geographical spread is highly skewed3, with Shanghai and Beijing heavily overrepresented. Certain well-known schools, such as the Shanghai Foreign Language Middle School and Beijing No. 4 Middle School, have supplied many students to American college campuses. Outside the main pool4, a number of Yale students come from Changsha and Ningbo, where each year American Yale graduates are sent to teach English.
The majority of Chinese undergraduates in the US major in science, engineering or economics. Many were academic superstars in their high schools, gold medalists5 in international academic Olympiads or prizewinners in national academic contests. Once at US universities, many of them decide to make research a lifelong commitment. A Shanghainese friend of mine, who had won a very high physics prize in high school, majored in physics at Yale. In his senior year, he rejected a job offer from Microsoft and studied for the physics graduate program at Harvard. Others jump at7 the opportunity to enter fields like engineering and finance. Working for a major financial firm on Wall Street is the dream of many Chinese undergraduates. In my freshman year at Yale, there were seven undergraduates from China's mainland, and now two of them are employed by big-name8 Wall Street investment banks. Many Chinese students also study biology in college and then go on to medical school. And occasionally undergraduates choose different careers: One Yale undergraduate, a history major, took up9 magazine writing after graduation. An autobiographical10 essay of hers entitled Coming to America was published in The New York Times and won praise from both Western and Chinese readers.
Life outside the classroom constitutes an important part of college life. At American universities the average student spends less than thirteen hours a week in class. Many Chinese students use their spare time to pick up some extra pocket money. At Yale, one of the most common campus jobs is washing dishes in the dining halls. In fact, all Chinese undergraduates at Yale work part-time in the dining halls at some point in their college years. As they grow in age and sophistication11, they upgrade to better-paying less stressful positions. The more popular and interesting jobs include working as a computer assistant, math homework grader12, investment office assistant, and lab or research assistant. The last three of this list of jobs often lead to exciting summer jobs.
Student activities are another thing to enjoy about American college life. Each week there are countless student-organized events of all sorts — athletic13, artistic, cultural, political, or social (i.e. just for fun). New student organizations are constantly being created, and Chinese undergraduates contribute to this ferment. The year before I went to Yale, they staged14 Cao Yu's play Leiyu. The whole Chinese undergraduate student body plus some Singaporeans and Chinese-Americans were mobilized to make props15, act, and persuade their American friends to come to the show, which was entirely in Mandarin. The physics student I mentioned earlier was very active in social life. He was on the Yale solar-car team, took part in a student theatrical performance, and studied dance, which he once demonstrated for us on a dinner table in the dining hall. Sports loom much larger at US schools than at Chinese schools. At Yale, sports from soccer to water polo16 go on all year long; therefore athletic talent is a real social asset. One of the Chinese students at Yale several years ago was a versatile "sportsman. His athletic abilities and active participation in sporting events, combined with his other fine qualities, made him a popular figure in his residential18 college. Years after his graduation, his teachers and friends at Yale still remember him with great fondness.
Of course not all Chinese undergraduates in the US cut such prominent figures on campus. At Yale, plenty of Chinese students are like me, content with finishing their homework and using the rest of the time for relaxation. Many evenings were chattered19 away in the library, where we sat around a table supposedly to "study" together. True to our upbringing20, we Chinese Yalies marked all our important events and holidays (welcoming new students, celebrat¬ing Christmas and Chinese New Year, and saying goodbye to graduates) with a banquet21, usually in an Asian restaurant.
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Twenty years ago, I began studying how people become millionaires. Surveying residents of posh neighborhoods across the country, I discovered something odd. Many who live in expensive homes and drive luxury cars:: don't have much wealth. They may earn a fair amount of money, but they spend it all.
Then I discovered something even odder: many who have a great deal of wealth don't live in posh in posh neighborhoods. In one large metropolitan area I surveyed, fewer than half the millionaires lived in high-rent districts.
That small insight changed my life. It led me out of an academic career (I was a professor of marketing at Georgia State University), inspired me to write three books on affluence, and made me an adviser to corporations that sell products to individuals with high net worth.
What most people don't realize is that wealth isn’t the same as income. If you, make 1 million a year and spend $1 million, you're not getting wealthier, you're just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend.
How do you become wealth? There, too, most people have it wrong. It's rarely luck or inheritance or even intelligence that builds fortunes. Wealth is more often the inexorable result or a person's hard work, perseverance and, most of all, self-discipline.
Who tends to become wealthy? Not the exotic back-stabbers and dabblers in high finance you see depicted on TV. The average person with a net worth of $1 million or more is usually a businessman who has lived all his adult life in the same town. He owns a small factory, a chain of stores or a service company. Married once, and still married, he lives in a middle-class neighborhood, next to people with a fraction of his wealth. He's compulsive saver and investor. And he's made his money on his own:80percent of American's millionaires are first-generation rich. So millionaires are dull? By Hollywood standards, maybe. But these dull folks have something exciting to teach about money.
Attitude is the greatest difference between millionaires and the rest of us.
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One windy spring day, I observed young people having fun using the wind to fly their kites. Multicolored creations of varying shapes and sizes filled the skies like beautiful birds darting and dancing. As the strong winds gusted against the kites, a string kept them in check.
Instead of blowing away with the wind, they arose against it to achieve great heights. They shook and pulled, but the restraining string and the cumbersome tail kept them in tow, facing upward and against the wind. As the kites struggled and trembled against the string, they seemed to say, "Let me go! Let me go! I want to be free!" They soared beautifully even as they fought the restriction of the string. Finally, one of the kites succeeded in breaking loose. "Free at last," it seemed to say. "Free to fly with the wind."
Yet freedom from restraint simply put it at the mercy of an unsympathetic breeze. It fluttered ungracefully to the ground and landed in a tangled mass of weeds and string against a dead bush. "Free at last" free to lie power-less in the dirt, to be blown helplessly along the ground, and to lodge lifeless against the first obstruction.
How much like kites we sometimes are. The Heaven gives us adversity and restrictions, rules to follow from which we can grow and gain strength. Restraint is a necessary counterpart to the winds of opposition. Some of us tug at the rules so hard that we never soar to reach the heights we might have obtained. We keep part of the commandment and never rise high enough to get our tails off the ground.
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Small boats loaded with wares sped to the great liner as she was entering the harbor. Before she had anchored, the men from the boats had climbed on board and the decks were soon covered with colorful rugs from Persia, silks from India, copper coffee pots, 5 and beautiful handmade silverware. It was difficult not to be colorful rugs from Persia tempted. Many of the tourists on board had begun bargaining with the tradesmen, but I decided not to buy anything until I had
disembarked.
I had no sooner got off the ship than I was assailed by a man who wanted to sell me a diamond ring. 1 no intention of buying one, but I could not conceal the fact that I was impressed by the size of the diamond.
Some of them were as big as marbles. The man went to great lengths to prove that the diamonds were good.
As we were walking past a shop, he held a diamond firmly against the window and made a deep impress in the glass. It took me over half an hour to get rid of him.
The next man to approach me was selling expensive pens and watches. I examined one of the closely. It certainly looked genuine. At the base of the gold cap, the words 'made in the U.S.A.' had neatly inscribed. The man said that the pen was worth £50, but as a special favor, he would let me has for £30. 1 shook my head and held up five fingers indicating that I was willing to pay £5. Gesticuk wildly, the man acted as if he found my offer outrageous, but he eventually reduced the price to £10. Shagging my shoulders, I began to walk away when, a moment later, he ran after me and thrust the pen into 20 hands. Though he kept throwing up his arms in despair, he readily accepted the £5 I gave him. I felt daily pleased with my wonderful bargain — until I got back to the ship. No matter how hard I tried, it is impossible to fill this beautiful pen with ink and to this day it has never written a single word!
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The quiet life of the country has never appealed to me. City born and city bred, I have always regarded the country as something you look at through a train window, or something you occasionally visit during the weekend. Most of my friends live in the city, yet they always go into raptures at the mere mention of the country. Though they extol the virtues of the peaceful life, only one of them has ever the gentle pace of living gone to live in the country and he was back in town within six months. Even he still lives under the that country life is somehow superior to town life. He is forever talking about the friendly people, if atmosphere, the closeness to nature and the gentle pace of living. Nothing can be compared, he match with the first cockcrow, the twittering of birds at dawn, the sight of the rising sun glinting on the pastures. This idyllic pastoral scene is only part of the picture. My friend fails to mention the lots friendless winter evenings in front of the TV — virtually the only form of entertainment. He says i about the poor selection of goods in the shops, or about those unfortunate people who have to travel to country to the city every day to get to work. Why people are prepared to tolerate a four-hour jury day for the dubious privilege of living in the country is beyond me. They could be saved so much expense if they chose to live in the city where they rightly belong.
If you can do without the few pastoral pleasures of the country, you will find the city can provide with the best that life can offer. You never have to travel miles to see your friends. They invariable nearby and are always available for an informal chat or an evening's entertainment. Some acquaintances in the country come up to town once or twice a year to visit the theatre as a special to them this is a major operation which involves considerable planning. As the play draws to its close wonder whether they will ever catch that last train home. The city dweller never experiences anxieties sort. The latest exhibitions, films, or plays are only a short bus ride away. Shopping, too, is always i sure. There is so much variety that you never have to make do with second best. Country people when they go shopping in the city and stagger home loaded with as many of the exotic items as the carry.
Nor is the city without its moments of beauty. There is something comforting about the warm shed by advertisements on cold wet winter nights. Few things could be more impressive than the peace descends on deserted city streets at weekends when the thousands that travel to work every day are turn away in their homes in the country. It has always been a mystery to me why city dwellers, who appreciate these things, obstinately pretend that they would prefer to live in the country.
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To people from the South of the USA, Yankee may mean a Northerner. To people from other countries, Yankee means an American. But, properly used, Yankee has a more specific meaning: it refers to people who live in New England.
The New England Yankee has a distinct character, shaped in part by the history and geography of the region. New England was settled in the 1600s by Puritans from England. The Puritans were a religious group who objected to the rituals of the Church of England. The Puritans wanted to "purify" the religion, making it stricter and simpler. They were also very strict about the way people lived. For example, when a sea captain back from a three-year voyage kissed his wife on their doorstep, he was publicly punished.
The land was even harsher than the people. Its soil was thin and poor for farming. And before any land could be farmed, large stones had to be cleared away. The stones were used for walls, many of which still exist.
What, then, is the Yankee character? Yankees are known for being honest but shrewd; realistic and to-the-point; practical rather than romantic; un-talkative, thrifty, principled, and independent.
Many stories illustrate the realistic and un-talkative Yankee nature. In one story, a tourist asks a Maine fisherman whether the fisherman has lived in the same village all his life. "Not yet," the fisherman replies. In another story, a tourist who has lost his way in Vermont stops a couple to ask for directions. "I want to go to Bennington," he says. "We've no objections," one of the New Englanders replies.
Calvin Coolidge, the thirtieth President of the US, was a Yankee. Once he and a friend took a ride from Boston to a town 30 miles inland. " It's cooler here," Coolidge said as they returned to Boston. These were the only words he spoke during the entire trip. (When Coolidge was elected president, Americans called him "Silent Cal.")
Yankee thrift is well expressed by a New England saying: Eat it up, wear it out, make it do, do without.
Frederick Tudor, a Bostonian, is an example of the business shrewdness of the Yankees. As a young man, Tudor heard someone say jokingly that, if ice were a crop, New England would be wealthy. Tudor remembered this joke and, years later, figured out how to break up ice and ship it south. Tudor became a very rich man.
The Yankee character may partly explain the special role that New England has played in United States history. In the eighteenth century, the American Revolution began in New England. Yankees were among the strongest supporters of independence. In the nineteenth century, many New Englanders said slavery did not fit with their beliefs and principles. New England Yankees led the movement to end slavery in America.
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One of the most famously flawed stamps in US history was sold at an auction for $825,000 to a New York man who bought it slightly cheaper than the record price another "Inverted Jenny" copy was sold for last month.
The rare 1918 24-cent stamp, depicting an upside-down Curtis JN-4 biplane known as "Jenny", was sold privately this week to a Wall Street executive who did not want to be identified.
Heritage Auction Galleries president Greg Rohan, who brokered the sale, said the buyer was the same collector who lost an auction last month in which another "Inverted Jenny" sold for $977,500. Rohan said his client, whom he described as not being a rare stamp collector, was glad to get another chance at the prized misprint.
"I suspect he's going to enjoy owning it and showing it to a few close friends," Rohan said.
The red, white and blue stamp is one of the finest known surviving stamps from the original sheet of 100 misprints. The original 100 were bought at a Washington, DC, post office in 1918.
Randy Shoemaker, founder of Professional Stamp Experts, said there were probably fewer than 1,000 collectors in the world with the money and desire to seriously pursue such a rare item.
"This is the Rolls-Royce," Shoemaker said. "It's the most expensive airmail stamp in the world."
