Thursday, January 24, 2008

It’s All in The Numbers

Numbers can be mind numbing sometimes; especially when you hear numbers around here with over 1 billion people.

Northern China has been impacted by a lot of snow recently. Hubei Province got up to 30 cm of snow, or almost a foot. Over 9200 homes have been toppled by the snow! Can you imagine the outcry if that happened in the US?

In the meantime, the economy has been racing along. It expanded 11.4% in 2007, even though that rate is slower than earlier in the year. Of course, the recent stock woes hit here too. The markets have been down decidedly before finally rebounding Tuesday. In Hong Kong it was even up almost 11% yesterday.

In another surprising number, a farmer was recently compensated by the government after having been attacked by a bear. There were 997 such attacks last year in China! Where? I can’t imagine a bear surviving with this many people. But I don’t want to visit the attack area either!

Back here in Dongguan, the city just got recognized for having 213 days of haze last year. Of course, you know why don’t you? Smog! Yes, over half the year you can’t see the mountains due to intense smog.

In Beijing they hope to have 256 “blue sky” days in 2008 by actions they are taking. That will be 10% more than in 2007. Of course, they are counting on those 25 days as being during August when the Olympics will be in Beijing! Let’s hope the actions spread down here to increase our “blue sky” days too! If we have a 10% increase, that will be 168. That is not even close to the number of “blue sky” days they hope to have in Bejing! Shows how bad it is around here, doesn’t it!

Click on any of the underlined blue comments to see more detailed reports.

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posted by A Bryson (formerly) in China @ 6:14 PM Comments: 0