NEWS AND VIEWS: The Chinese are destroying coral reefs over vast areas in two ways and it is highly distressing. I don’t know how anybody can simply report this without feeling anger. A lot of anger, and a desire to stop it but why isn’t the international community trying to stop it? It has been written about but I would be surprised if many people knew about it.
Destroying coral reefs to unearth giant clams
The first way that the Chinese are destroying precious coral reefs is by physically destroying them with the propellers of boats in order to unearth giant clams which live in the reefs. They do this because these massive bivalve creatures, which can weigh up to 500 pounds (227 kg), can sell for between $1,000 and $2,000 a pair. The Chinese love to eat them and they are incredibly valuable. So the fishermen charge over to the coast of the Philippines and dig up the reefs and charge off with the clams in their boats. They appear to travel to the site of the crime in an armada of boats protected by the Chinese navy. You can tell why because it is outrageous behaviour and a wanton destruction of marine habitat.
One boat in 2014 was caught by the Philippine police. On board the police found 500 hawksbill sea turtles, most of them dead. This is a critically endangered and protected species. A Philippine court sentenced the 9 Chinese poachers to a year in prison. Beijing was furious and the usual arguments ensued. More Beijing bullying of the most horrendous kind. Is there no end to the abuse of nature that the Chinese will get up to combined with the abject passivity of the international community for failing to do anything about it?
Destroying reefs by building islands on them
This is even worse and this method destroys far more precious coral reef. China is building islands in the South China Sea in disputed areas which are claimed to belong to other countries. America has become agitated about this but it continues. One island was completed in about 2015 at Mischief Reef. It’s about 9 Km long so the Chinese have poured 9 km of concrete over a coral reef completely obliterating it. It pretty much leaves you speechless.
Aggressivity
For years now China has behaved very aggressively on every front not only with respect to the destruction of nature and wildlife but economically as well. Perhaps one of the good things that President Trump did was to challenge the Chinese economically. He placed tariffs on Chinese goods and they retaliated, of course.
The only way to stop the Chinese bullying the rest of the world is to hurt them financially. The rest of the world should stop buying from Chinese producers. We should be producing our own products. They’ll be more expensive but the citizens of these countries need to be educated as to what is going on and then they will hopefully accept the higher cost of consumer items. In any event consumerism needs to be curbed as it has got out of hand. And the manufacturers feed on this with built-in obsolescence and un-repairable computers et cetera.
China must be stopped and it is going to need a bold leader to do it. But they’re all too scared particularly after the devastation that the coronavirus pandemic has caused to the economies of the developed nations. There’s no money left. It’s all been spent therefore we have to go cap in hand to China for help even though they ostensibly started the bloody pandemic in the first place. Some conspiracy theorists will probably believe that China deliberately started the pandemic to hurt the economies of competitor nations. If they did start it deliberately for that purpose then it’s definitely worked because the Chinese are doing well and the rest of the world is doing horribly, economically speaking.
The leaders of the world won’t even say anything bad about the Chinese for fear of economic repercussions. That is how weak the top Western nations are. It’s frankly pathetic and there’s no chance that the world is going to stop the Chinese damaging coral reefs and forests in Africa to mine precious metals. There is no end to the damage and no end to the apathy from the rest of the world.
