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Bruce Humes
December 10, 2017 at 7:14 am
It goes without saying that no city-based party or government official would permit his or her constituents to go without some kind of heating in the winter, which can be bitterly cold in much of China. There would, quite simply, be riots.
The efficiency described here is admirable: the coal burning equipment that is so bad for the environment has been removed, perhaps even destroyed, earning brownie points for the local cadres. As for ensuring alternative methods of heating, that apparently didn’t make it on to this year’s budget.
As a result, we can expect a spike in deaths among the vulnerable — the very young, elderly and incapacitated — this winter.
Once again, this merely goes to show that for the authorities countryside dwellers are, well, just peasants — in the sense that the Shanghainese use the term 农民! as an all-purpose insult.