Smoging China and Europe

A town in England during industrial revolution (www.playbuzz.com)

For sometime now I have been really interested in the development of China economical. Not in hard cash, but from a historic perspective. In particular the parallel to the development of Europe during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800's.


Migration to the cities
China has the most inhabitants of all nations worldwide. I am always amazed to hear how many cities of over 1 million people there are in China. And still (young) people are migrating to those cities. Looking for a job, living in tiny houses or rooms in tall apartment buildings. During the industrial revolution in Europe the same happened. In in numbers as large as in China, but cities grew enormously. Take for example the city of Amsterdam. In 1815 the city had 140.000 in habitants. In 1899 that number grew to 510.900 (wikipedia).

SMOG en other pollution

Smog in Lianyugang (www.theguardian.com)

Another parallel between China now and Europe back than are the pollution and smog. The cities are not able to cope with the enormous pile of garbage and all the factories (and cars too in China nowadays) in a sustainable way. What happens; landslides due to rainfall and smog. And probably all the other things that come with mass growth of the population.




History repeats
There are probably lots of other similarities between Europe during the 1800's and China nowadays. And there are also a lot of differences. I am more interested in the fact that in my opinion history is repeating itself only in another part of the world. And that it happens, despite earlier experiences. Because in Europe we know what the consequences of the 1800's are, and we also know for a long time how China is able to produce cheap stuff for the west. And it looks we are not able to learn from history. The Chinese are in their Industrial Revolution at the moment, just as we were in the 1800's.