China: 5 Great Things About Toxic Air

As Time Magazine writer Emily Rauhala notes, you can’t make this stuff up. China and neighboring nations are blanketed in dangerous pollution and smog – and Chinese state-run media offered five “surprising benefits”; these include unifying Chinese people, making China more equal, making people more knowledgeable and providing a topic for humor. Perhaps the broadcasters were trying their hand at satire, but the report was greeted with ridicule and has since been pulled. Other Chinese media chimed in. “On Monday, the Global Times published a piece that said air pollution might help the Chinese military by obscuring sight lines, reducing the effectiveness of surveillance and weapons systems,” Rauhala reports. She points out that the Chinese widely agree that the government is treating the smog problem as a joke. And it might be added that the smog is also raising global awareness about the high price of so-called “low costs,” the result of failure to regulate manufacturing or coal-fired power plants. – YaleGlobal