Blogs Can Be Useful

Nature: China’s Burning Ambition

Wang Jian Shuo’s Blog

This week, I would like to continue discussing the topic of the environment. While writing my previous article, I came upon the idea of an Asian energy crisis. For those of you who don’t already know, the Asian energy crisis can be summed up simply as too many developing countries with not enough energy to power them all. I would like to further delve into the subject by focusing specifically on China where this problem seems most prominent.

China is one of the world’s most up and coming countries. With a rapidly growing economy, huge advancements in technology, and a population that rivals the world, China is quite possibly the most watched developmental country on the planet. It does, however, have one major flaw: its insatiable hunger for energy.

The articled in Nature refers to China as such, “The economic miracle that is transforming the world's most populous nation is threatened by energy shortages and rising pollution. It also risks plunging the planet's climate into chaos.” I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds kind of ominous. The article goes on to describe how China’s economic growth is increasing at a staggering rate and how China’s current energy resources cannot keep up. Due to massive economic growth, China’s demand and consumption of resources is growing steadily and proving to be quite a problem for the national government.

The latter source, Wang Jian Shuo’s Blog, is not a credible source by any standards. It is just a simple blog maintained by an average Chinese citizen in Shanghai. His posts are merely his own opinions and reflect his own views. This is why I chose this site. His blog provides day to day accounts of his own life. An excerpt from his blog states, “Not only Shanghai. The whole China is facing big challenge of electricity power shortage. Every morning, when I drive along the Zhao Jiang Bang road to work, the morning news from Beijing broadcasts about the shortage and measures the government has taken to overcome it. I have never seen such kind of storage before.”

Now, if you follow my blog, you might assume that this is the part of the article where I praise the Nature article as the better resource and denounce the blog for its absolute lack of credibility, but not today. I must admit that the Nature article is very informative and provides a very good overview of the Chinese energy crisis, but this week I’m going with the blog. Why, you ask? Because it’s more personal. The blog provides a more intimate view of the energy crisis. The accounts are given by an individual in the right in the middle of the situation and, to me, that’s important. Academic and news resources can provide us with a wealth of information and knowledge, but they lack personality. Blogs don’t include statistics and facts. They provide emotion and feeling, something lacking in most credible resources. And that my friends is why, for this week at least, a blog is superior.