“1949: Only socialism could save China
1979: Only capitalism could save China
1989: Only China could save socialism
2009: Only China could save capitalism”
- Joke doing the rounds in Beijing after the global financial crash

China, the world’s most populous country, with a population of 1.3 billion and the fourth largest country by land and area is the only country with a growth rate of 10 percent GDP. As a child, Jonathan Watts used to pray for China, he understood that if all the billion Chinese jump together, the earth will shake and shift from its axis creating an apocalypse. One can’t tell about the different kinds of calamities that could prevail but in the extraordinary book of Jonathan Watts’, “When a billion Chinese jump”, he describes a self-destructive cold war. 

The author has traversed to most provinces of the country giving an in-depth understanding of China’s development and industrial revolution. The book examines how China’s ideals, landscapes and face of the country have been uplifted, affected by the religion of consumerism and the misunderstood nature of modernism. In his book, there is a sense of vastness, colossally radical to capture its entirety; however the author represents changes within cultures and communities starting from the world’s high, wild places and descending into the crowded polluted plains.

This book fascinated me for its details about China’s undiscovered forests and the presence of the existing biodiversity within its holy mountains. But like all good things come to an end, sadness unravels while reading about China. It is known to be the globe’s most important centre for biodiversity, now under threat with the uncontrollable need to acquire. Compared to a global rate of loss of species at 10 percent, China has a rate of loss of species estimated at 15-20 percent.

His understanding of China’s culture and heritage with a consistent contradiction in the name of progress helps him build a solid case about China’s current environment challenges. The book has many interviews and people’s anecdotes of their version of transitions as he travels to various parts of China and each one has a great story on spiritual beliefs and practices like Taoism. Taoism’s main preaching was ‘no interference contrary to nature’. Watts is a senior environment correspondent with the Guardian; he is constantly working to understand the relationship between people, government and the environment.

His genuine concern about the environment and its people is portrayed with integrity as he illustrates every region by its places and people. His conscience displays a good reasoning in light of the past, present and future. A country like China perceives and attributes; China’s determination in becoming a superpower, energy efficient with solar power as a sustainable alternative in addition to the stellar technological usage of electric cars, dams etc. Although what usually gets left unspoken is the backup power that are mainly large quantities of coal to run highly mechanised power plants and machines.

What we call China’s urbanisation is actually globalisation, each city or town looking exactly the same, it has destroyed the characteristics of China’s architectural heritage; citizens who have seen this change, remorse. Decades ago, there were banners and slogans chanting anti-imperialism but now values have changed, the rivers have turned black, the air seems to be fouled and its produced is poisoned. One out of every six Chinese dies of cancer.

Kentucky Fried Chicken has become the biggest restaurant chain in China and one out of every seven Chinese adults is obese. 

Jonathan Watts has made available an outstanding account of apt measurements in his book on the deteriorating environmental factors in China’s progress to becoming a superpower. What was once paradise on earth has been degraded into dumping grounds of industrial waste, burdening the land with the entire world’s supply and leaving behind rubbish.

Watts describes China, as a 3,000-year-old civilisation in the body of an industrial teenager, a mega rich, dirt-poor, overpopulated, under-resourced, ethnically diverse mass of humanity. But what you also come to realise after reading this book is the pattern of similar phases China has had in the past. To begin with, Confucian China’s attempt to exclude foreign ideas resulted in restricted trade. Except for the Spanish silver coin as a payment for the exotic commodities that Europeans craved from China. This directly led to the opium wars as a result; 90 percent of Chinese males under the age of 40 became addicts. Now in comparison with contemporary, post Mao and the Great Leap Forward, Watts elucidates similar dichotomies, the only difference is that the world then came to China to destroy their internal superior ethics and norms of being an efficient country but now they are letting the world come in, to do the same. China is well on the way to being the first country in human history to poison and destroy the ancient lands that were known to be paradise.

This book does give a dystopian sense of balance between risk and opportunities but it is clear to many and very well put out by Watts, that the decision is in the hands of the people and the government of China; from Red China to a greener China would need diligence to constrain. There have been many global conferences relating to China and is also a common knowledge that China is an emerging country, however it is difficult to reach such fine literature that elucidates on so many layers of a country.

Finally, what Watts is really asking us to do is to visually comprehend the life that is chosen by the people, a slow degradation of thousands of living beings because of a country’s ambition. But on the flipside, he also points out economic empowerment that penetrates into spheres that were unimaginable. He emphasises on the country’s monetary efforts towards sustainable development but realistically these efforts will marginally be affective.During Mao’s time, “Some asked why we should care about the environment” and the Chinese students responded “we should care about nature because we are an integral part of it”.