scraps
The International Herald Tribune published an article this morning, exposing the incredible amounts of American scrap metal that are being used as cheap raw material for the urbanization of China. IHT hasn't posted the article on their site yet (they're a bit slow with putting up electronic content), but keep a look out for it in the next 24 hours. Here's the opener:
China last year became the first country ever to import more than $1 billion of American scrap, according to the newspaper American Metal Market. It would not be an exaggeration to say that China's transformation into an industrial powerhouse is being fueled by America's waste, and that of other countries as well. Much of the material being used to build China's skyscrapers, factories and telecommunications systems--along with many of the products it exports--is derived from scrap, which is usually cheaper than new metal made from ore.
I find it fairly exciting to think that the Chinese are buying American waste metal, cheaply converting it into consumer goods and selling it back to the Americans at a premium. This would be a really good historical joke--firstly, because it's an inversion of the way that colonial economics used to work (raw materials taken from the colonies, processed in the metropole and sold back to the colonies); secondly, because unlike the rest of the world, Americans have a cultural aversion to re-use. Disposability is First World, reuse is Third. Heh heh. Good work.
* joshua, 3/14/2004 08:18:49 PM
