Pollution cover-ups exposed in Chinese provinces

Re:Pollution cover-ups exposed in Chinese provinces by baybal2 on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @03:54AM (#20037712)

Reminds me of story how "desert greening" was run in Hebei.

Trees were planted, counted by officials, and then uprooted and the same plants were replanted again the next day.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pollution cover-ups exposed in Chinese provinces by Ultramanoid on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @05:51AM (#20038336)

And yet...

https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144540/china-an...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pollution cover-ups exposed in Chinese provinces by retSava on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @07:13AM (#20038743)

Ouch. Good analog to when the metric is of highest importance rather than the spirit the metric is supposed to capture. Eg "be productive programmer" -> "code commits per time unit" -> bork.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pollution cover-ups exposed in Chinese provinces by mistermann on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @11:06AM (#20041036)

I'd love to read about this, do you have a link?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pollution cover-ups exposed in Chinese provinces by UberofXplsgo on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @05:05AM (#20038107)

Yes, this is a significant problem because of the strange irony that for a communist country, the Chinese government is run like a business. There are targeted metrics and goals and promotions and pay increases tied to them. They've had a long documented history in the past with suspected gdp reporting fraud. Every time they add a new metric to monitor as a target there is the possibility of potential fraud or gaming the metric in an unproductive way such as planting and unplanting trees.

[ Parent | on HN ]