GHS208-01 Spring 2020 China and the Islamic Middle East

China is the largest developing country in the world. Their economy has continued to grow 10% each year over the past 20 years. Although China has achieved economic growth and development, the environment is deteriorating. The country struggles with outdoor and indoor air pollution, water shortages and pollution. These environment issues have become more pronounced recently and are putting Chinese residents at significant health risks. 

The greatest challenge among cities in China is outdoor air pollution. The source of air pollution has slowly shifted from conventional coal combustion to a mixture of coal combustion and motor vehicle emissions. China’s current air pollution is compared to developed countries in the 1960s. Studies have documented that the health effects of China’s outdoor air pollution could lead to increased respiratory symptoms, hospitalization, and premature death. The World Health Organization estimated that outdoor air pollution was associated with approximately 300,000 premature deaths per year. 

Many people in rural areas of China still use coal and biomass fuels in their stoves that produce substantial indoor air pollution. Lung cancer, acute respiratory infection, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are all potential health effects caused by solid fuels. The World Health Organization estimated that solid fuels used in Chinese households cause approximately 420,000 premature deaths each year.

Another serious health concern in China is water pollution, specifically in rural areas. The water in 2008 received the worst grade in the Chinese National Standard for Water Quality. The water couldn’t even be used for agricultural irrigation. Data from the 2003 National Health Services Survey indicates that two-thirds of people in rural China do not have access to piped water. Leaving contaminated drinking water, which has been associated with increasing rates of digestive cancers and infectious diseases. 

In addition, climate change in China is an important health problem. China compared to other countries is very susceptible to the adverse effects of climate change. The Chinese government has paid attention to climate change, but have not paid attention to its health impact. China also deals with about 70% of the world’s electronic waste, which is a substantial risk to human health and the environment. 

Resource: 

Kan, Haidong. “Environment and Health in China: Challenges and Opportunities.” Environmental Health Perspectives, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Dec. 2009, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2799473/.

There are many actions China is taking to put over half a billion people in partial or total lockdown as the coronavirus continues to spread. China has relied on a variety of low and high tech measures to help enforce quarantine in vast areas of the country. They also added the incentive that citizens are financially rewarded for reporting others that don’t follow quarantine rules. “These methods reflect a decades-long history of social control now being mobilized on an unprecedented scale”(Feng). There are additional ways the local and national authorities are keeping their citizens in check about quarantine rules.

One of the actions that’s been taken is full-blow lockdown. Hubei province has had the most intense lockdown measures since it was the center point of the coronavirus outbreak with nearly three-fourths of the confirmed cases in China. Since the week of January 23, when the capital city of Hubei prohibited people from leaving, government officials across the province have gradually intensified efforts to keep people inside. In a household only one person can be sent out every three days to buy groceries, apartment compounds only allow people to use one gate, and everyone’s temperature is checked before entering. Nevertheless coronavirus cases still continue to increase, so the Hubei government began enforcing “the strictest, around-the-clock, closed management” for all residential complexes, banning the use of private cars, and not allowing people to leave their apartments without permission. In addition they require anyone buying cold medicine to reveal their temperature as well as the address and id number at the pharmacy. Many community officials are now buying and delivering the medication and groceries to cut down on people needing to leave the house.

Most of China that does not struggle with nearly as many coronavirus cases does not have as extreme controls as Hubei. Many cities across China have been using a monitoring scheme that breaks down areas into small grid-like units that are monitored and enforce regulations. These enforcements are made by community officials, which are a mix of paid employees and volunteers. If people refuse to cooperate with anything involving quarantine orders, the grid workers can call for backup from the local police. Each person is supposed to get their temperature taken when entering a complex and note if they recently left the city, but travel records rely on individuals self-reporting, which can result in lax control measures.

The number of grid workers patrolling the streets has increased to attempt to offset weak enforcement of the quarantine rules in some neighborhoods. For example the Zhejiang province has one of the highest rates of cases besides Hubei now has 33,000 grid workers supervising neighborhoods.

Resource:
Feng, Emily, and Amy Cheng. “Restrictions And Rewards: How China Is Locking Down Half A Billion Citizens.” NPR, NPR, 21 Feb. 2020, www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/21/806958341/restrictions-and-rewards-how-china-is-locking-down-half-a-billion-citizens.

On page 155 of Reza Aslan’s “No god but God,” introduces a concept originally created by Spanish philosopher and physician Ibn Rushd dubbed the “two truths” theory. This theory idealizes religion and philosophy as two different ends of a spectrum, with religion being the truth of the masses, and philosophy as truth itself through the scope of human reasoning. I believe there are certain levels validity to this argument as well as discredibility.

As an atheist raised in the Greek Orthodox religion, I have always agreed with Rushd’s view of religion being the truth of the masses. While I personally believe that religion is a fabrication that has persisted through centuries in order to help rationalize what human perception cannot explain, I do also believe there is a sort of truth within the foundation of religions around the world. Many large religious groups such as Islam, Christianity and Catholicism have had such a tremendous impact on the history of the world, through events such as the crusades, colonialism in the new world, etc. It is hard to ignore and rebuke such powerful entities in their own belief systems after having such a profound effect on history. Simply put, I think that religions have created a sort of validity for themselves throughout their impact on history, which is why they are still so incredibly pertinent today.

However, I disagree with Rushd’s view of philosophy and its standing with religion. Primarily, I believe that the two are not opposing factors, but that philosophy is the marriage of past and present knowledge in the ever-evolving pursuit of trying to find “truth” in a world for those who seek meaning in it. What I mean is that to me, religion and science and any other sort of groups of knowledge and thinking are the building blocks for the concept of philosophy.

What are your guys’ personal views on your own religious beliefs and the “two-truths” theory?

At the beginning stages of the pandemic, there were many Western observers who noted that the outbreak could bring about the end of the Communist Party of China (CCP). However, it seems as though that may not be entirely true now. The Chinese government is known to come out with swift and evident policy responses in the face of crisis. This strategy combined with the ever-present censorship and propaganda has given the CCP regime a lot of wiggle room to operate within the pandemic and maintain control. Aside from the death of Chinese whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang, a physician who was one of the first to leak information regarding the developing outbreak, there has been little to shake the infrastructure of China’s current political regime.
So at this point, if anything, the CCP’s standing has been bolstered by the COVID-19 outbreak. This is especially due to the political narrative held in place that the authoritarian system is what creates superior leaders, and the “effectiveness” of China’s COVID-19 treatment in “flattening the curve” has been depicted as highly successful by the CCP. As we all have heard, however, that success may not be entirely true since the current regime is known for using censorship and false news in order to strengthen their own standing amongst the world and their own population. However, I don’t know what will happen if a second wave hits China. There will only be a certain level that public censorship can do for the CCP as it tries to maintain control.

Some questions for the class:
What do you think will happen if the CCP continues to censor information about COVID-19 for their own population, as well as the rest of the world?
How might a second wave affect the CCP’s control and the health of the Chinese population?
Do you think US-China relations will change after the pandemic? How?

I took a second look at the Layla and Majnun story from earlier in the semester and the inspiration that it had in other creative forums. I think the story in itself is very nice for the reader to follow and relate to. I think we all want to find someone that we would do nearly anything for. In my opinion that kind of love can translate to potentially any culture or religion let alone Islam. I think as a result thats why we have seen artists like Eric Clapton take to other creative forums in inspiration of the story. The Crazy about “Layla” reading was very interesting. It was cool to hear the backstory of how he took inspiration from the story and wrote his song. The fact that he wrote the song to convince George Harrison’s wife to leave her husband was amusing and intriguing.

I did some further digging and found a Washington Post article from a few years ago called “Muslim journalists no longer as rare in US newsrooms“. I thought it was quite interesting given the topic and its relation to my major and our class. The piece covers a need for more Muslim journalists in U.S. newsrooms since the rise in Islamophobia due to events like 9/11 and the emergence of other Islamic extremism. It profiles writers like Rummana Hussain who was the metro editor and reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times at the time of the story being published. Her parents wanted her to be in the medical field, where Muslims are more well-represented, rather than a journalist. While an exact number of Muslims working in U.S. newsrooms is not given the piece does say that minorities make up about 13 percent of editorial staffs. The article says that hiring a diversity of faith in the workplace can be “problematic”.

Maria Ebrahimji, a journalist who began working for CNN in Atlanta in the mid-1990s, is quoted in the article and said that she has seen an increase in the number of young Muslims who are interested in journalism for a career. Ebrahimji talked about that fact that when she first started working she wouldn’t address her faith but over time she began to change and identify as Muslim in the workplace.

I found a very interesting interview on Soundcloud with Janet Steele, the Director of the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. She was doing several talks at a few universities in Australia over Journalism in the Islamic world. One thing that I found most interesting from the 15-minute interview was Steele’s commentary on how basic journalism practices like truth and balance intersect with and diverge with the teachings of Islam. It comes at the 1:25 mark of the interview. She specifically references justice and how it intertwines with journalism and Islam and other religions. She says that “justice is a very important concept in Islam, much more important than freedom. So it was things like that, that got me to start asking journalists about the connection between journalism and religion.” I think this is a very interesting connection to make given how important bringing justice is to journalists around the world. I had never considered that relationship.

Here is the link for those that are interested in listening: LINK

There is also a transcript: LINK

Continuing today’s trend of journalism-related posts I decided to take a look at the top Islamic news sources in the world and what their impact is on their readers and the community around them. Given my earlier post about free-press in Islamic countries I was wondering how reliable the news sources in the Islamic world. My thoughts going into the research was that these sources are probably not very reliable and I was anticipating that most of them are probably state-owned publications. I found a very useful Lib-guide that lists Muslim news sources around the world.  Here are a few examples that I could find:

• Al-Ahram is the most widely circulating Egyptian daily newspaper according to the Lib-guide. I found that it is owned by the Egyptian government’s “Supreme Council of Press”. essentially the state owns shares of the paper. They view the journalists as “appointees of the state” so I found that the publication is not censored by the government because of this understanding.
• Donya-e-Eqtesad is one of the most widely circulated papers in Iran and it focuses on economic news. I found that it doesn’t currently have an affiliation to the Iranian government and it is often offers moderate criticism to it.

The list is obviously not limited to these two examples but this was still an interesting exercise for me as a journalism major.

I am a journalism major and I decided to do a little bit of research on how journalism is practiced in Islamic countries. As some of you may know the right to free press is not something that is guaranteed for everyone around the world. I found a “World Press Freedom Index” from Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit organization that safeguards the right to freedom of information around the world. The World Press Freedom Index ranks every country in the world based on how free its press is. I also found a list of the top countries in the world by Muslim population. From the top ten countries Nigeria, which ranks 115th in the world according to the site, has the highest free press rating. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world and it ranks 119th in the world. None of the other top-10 Muslim countries from that population list rank higher than 145th in the world.

From looking at the World Free Press Index the realization I came to is that most of the Islam world doesn’t have a very free press.  Roughly 21 million Muslims live in Niger and it ranks 57th in the world. If you made a list of the 25 countries with the largest Muslim population just three of those nations – Niger (57th), Senegal (47th) and Ethiopia (99th) – rank in the top-100 in the world by free press.

For those wondering, the United States ranks 45th on the list of free press in the world. Norway is No.1 in the world. Turkmenistan ranks 179th, the worst in the world.