
-
-
When a Billion Chinese Jump, by Jonathan Watts

As a young child, Jonathan Watts believed if everyone in China jumped at the same time, the earth would be shaken off its axis, annihilating mankind. Now, more than thirty years later, as a correspondent for The Guardian in Beijing, he has discovered it is not only foolish little boys who dread a planet-shaking leap by the world’s most populous nation.
When a Billion Chinese Jump is a road journey into the future of our species. Traveling from the mountains of Tibet to the deserts of Inner Mongolia via the Silk Road, tiger farms, cancer villages, weather-modifying bases, and eco-cities, Watts chronicles the environmental impact of economic growth with a series of gripping stories from the country on the front line of global development. He talks to nomads and philosophers, entrepreneurs and scientists, rural farmers and urban consumers, examining how individuals are trying to adapt to one of the most spectacular bursts of change in human history, then poses a question that will affect all of our lives: Can China find a new way forward or is this giant nation doomed to magnify the mistakes that have already taken humanity to the brink of disaster?
In the nineteenth century, Britain thought the world how to produce. In the twentieth, the US thought us how to consume. If China is to lead the world in the twenty-first century, it must teach us how to sustain.
excerpt from When a Billion Chinese Jump - How China Will Save the World - or Destroy It, by Jonathan Watts (edição portuguesa) -
-
-
Vida Moderna

A burguesia portuguesa nunca foi nem é liberal. Pobre e fraca, precisou sempre dos favores do Estado. Os seus pedidos de condicionamento industrial, proteccionismo externo e contenção salarial atravessam a História contemporânea. A monarquia oitecentista e a Républica deram-lhe algumas migalhas; o Estado Novo satisfaria as suas aspirações, ao conceder-lhe aquilo que ela precisava, inclusivamente um chefe que a pusesse na ordem. Sem pudor, Salazar interveio em todas as esferas da vida nacional, da economia à cor do batom das professoras. Nunca se conhecera tamanha interferência estatal. Durante 50 anos, sem que tal facto a incomodasse minimamente, a direita viveu à sombra de um Estado tentacular. Só depois de 1974, o Estado lhe apareceu como um Leviatã. A explicação é simples: quando este deixou de servir exclusivamente os seus interesses, a direita deixou de amar o Estado.
excerto de Vida Moderna, de Maria Filomena Mónica (Quetzal)Comentar:
-



