One would be hard-pressed these days to not notice the ever-increasing role that China is playing in all affairs of the world. The hunger of this industrial juggernaut for more consumption and production seems to be constantly rising, swallowing in the process so much energy and raw materials that an increasing number of people around the world are now asking about the human and environmental cost of this manufacturing escalation. Naturally, the Chinese are responding that these people should also question the same cost produced by their own countries over the past 100 years, that China has a right to augment its productivity and the ‘well-being’ of its people and that the country is doing more than any others to combat the negative environmental effects of its alarmingly fast entry into the world of mass consumption and production.
Still, the statistics are alarming: 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, coal production to double until 2020, 400 new cities planned over the next 20 years (including 233 Eco-cities, if the Dongtan model proves successful), around 14,000 people dying per year in industrial accidents (Corpwatch), about 60 percent (700 million people) of the population are poor peasants, the second largest producer of CO2 after the US, which it will overtake next year, the list goes on…
How can such an incredibly growth take place without triggering a chain reaction of negative consequences for many of the Chinese people, for the planet and thus, for all of us?

Edward Burtynsky’s fascination with images of nature transformed by man has led him to create stunning photography of mines, quarries, dams, and other human interventions in locations where only nature existed before…In Manufactured Landscapes, he takes his camera to China and attempts to create an ‘objective’ account of its industrialization. He refrains from bombarding us with information about the country in general and about what we see on screen. Instead, he lets his images, moving and still, do the talking, occasionally punctuated by a simple and short voice-over whose economy serves to trigger a thought process rather than to fill our heads with data.
The result is fascinating, beautiful to watch at times, and mind-boggling at other times when the visuals force us to confront the absurdity of a worldwide system that forces most people to react in a similar fashion in similar circumstances: more is better, even if it means exhausting all of our resources in the process. In his very informative book ‘Collapse’, Jared Diamond shows how societies keep on making the same mistake and will drain their resources until it is too late. In most cases, the intention is not to do so. It is simply usually too difficult to assess the gravity of the situation until it is too late, and, often, as is the case with China today, other demands are placed on the society that seem to take priority over anything else.

One of the more powerful segments in the film is about the 3 Gorges Dam. Burtynski’s photographs show a ruined and nightmarish landscape around the dam, where dozens of cities have had to be relocated to give way to the new river. Most of the hundreds of thousands of people affected by this dramatic redefining of the landscape were poor to begin with, and then were asked to dismantle their houses, brick by brick, and transport them miles away where they could be rebuilt. The valley now looks like it has been bombed, a frightening and eerie scenery that could have served as the set of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. But the irony of it all is that, only a few days ago, the news came out, after much suspicion on the part of environmentalists that it would, that the valley has become an ecological disaster (landslides, pollution and water contamination….) and that all houses, which the people have rebuilt brick by brick, must now be moved again, even further away from the river. The cost of the dam and of the various relocations of the inhabitants of the valley must now be approaching 30 billion dollars.

Manufactured Landscapes, although using China as a canvas, is a reflection on the future of the planet, on the course of action we humans decide to take, and whether we are strong enough to do what is necessary to alter the path of destruction that seems to be our preferred choice so far.

This is a series of answers by various thinkers from all around the globe who were invited to The Table of Free Voices, a dropping knowledge (the NGO i work for) initiative that took place in Berlin, Germany on September 9th, 2006.

Mohammed Arkoun

It’s a scary future if you think about cities like Mexico City or Cairo, which are approaching 17 million habitants or more. But the infrastructures of these very old cities, especially Cairo, Bombay, Karachi or Jakarta, etc. are still the same as they were at the beginning of the 20th century in some districts. And the actual city policy is far from considering the new problems of urban areas and the pressures on urban areas. The cities are becoming a place of confrontation, a place where the collective memory disintegrates, a place of social ruptures, a place where frustration accumulates, where people backtrack to their individual level or to the level of a group what we fearfully call communitarianism which becomes more and more important in urban areas, and not only in rural areas as it was before.

Read more »