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[-] Rooskie91@discuss.online 139 points 6 days ago

Unlike gigiachad America, which cuts down all its trees to build data centers.

Ugh seriously stop trying to paint China's achievements as disasters because every where else is succumbing to fascism.

[-] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 74 points 6 days ago

It's not about attacking China. It's a lesson that large scale terraforming needs to be done thoughtfully and may have unintended consequences.

[-] bunkyprewster@startrek.website 9 points 4 days ago

Or simply that humans can keep learning about ways our activities effect the environment

[-] x00z@lemmy.world 77 points 6 days ago

Uhm China is very fascist.

[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 46 points 6 days ago

Can we just... try to use words correctly?

[-] x00z@lemmy.world 75 points 6 days ago

What do you mean?

  • Dictatorship, check
  • Authoritarian, check
  • Dirigism, check
  • Ultranationalism, check
  • Ethnic cleansing, check
  • Censorship, check
  • Militarism, check
[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 30 points 6 days ago

Fascism is more complicated than that, and while China is nationalistic it's not running on the kind of ultranationalism that, say, Nazi Germany had. Modern China doesn't meet any credible definition of fascism.

[-] x00z@lemmy.world 20 points 6 days ago

I don't understand why you'd post that link. Almost all of those 14 points are true for China.

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 18 points 6 days ago

Um... hell no? There's no way more than 3-4/14 are true unless you're working with some kind of alternate universe China. Nothing about China is traditionalist, anti-modernist or anti-intellectualist, for one; they're probably the most technocratic nation on Earth.

[-] x00z@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago

Lmao. If you only read what they want you to read, sure.

[-] stumu415@lemmy.zip 8 points 5 days ago

You're describing the US to a tee. China is a unlike what you think. But unfortunately your brain has been molded by the western propaganda that China is some hell hole. Come and see for yourself. Maybe, just maybe you'll get an incling of how delusional you are.

[-] krull_krull@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 days ago

If china isn't fascist then America definitely ISN'T fascist

It's either both or neither

You can't have your cake and eat it too, you know?

[-] ushmel@piefed.world 5 points 4 days ago

so which one of those points are you disputing

[-] teft@piefed.social 51 points 6 days ago

Fascism - 1. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Which part doesn’t apply to china’s current government?

[-] Sxan@piefed.zip 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

E.g., for GP:

A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator

Have they already forgotten Jinping's purges ?

a capitalist economy

Do they believe China is communist?

subject to stringent governmental controls

Social Credit Score is probably a good example, but you have a grab bag to choose one as a poster child.

violent suppression of the opposition

Þere is no political opposition party.

and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism

c.f. Taiwan and þe entire S China Sea region.

and racism.

Uyghurs.

[-] frongt@lemmy.zip 9 points 6 days ago

I would not characterize Xi Jinping as a dictator. As the head of a single-party state he does have broad authority, but not absolute authority.

That's kind of American, TBH.

[-] Tiral@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

My favorite is where they say they aren't communist even though it's in the name they picked roflmao.

[-] krull_krull@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 days ago

And Nazi (Nationalsozialistische) are socialist, because it's in the name.

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[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

What does that have to do with trees? Or research about trees?

[-] treadful@lemmy.zip 60 points 6 days ago

Right, the Americans...

Scientists from Tianjin University, China Agricultural University in Beijing, and Utrecht University in the Netherlands found that between 2001 and 2020, increased vegetation reduced water resources in both the eastern monsoon region and the northwestern arid region.

The whole intro to the article even puts China in a favorable light. Why are you so ready to go to the mat for China without even trying to read what they're saying?

[-] plz1@lemmy.world 28 points 6 days ago

They clearly only read the headline

[-] backalleycoyote@lemmy.today 4 points 5 days ago

Byproduct of the US educational system. They can’t handle reading much more than a sentence before immediately posting their opinion about what they think the article is about.

Also, this article verifies what seems like it should have been a predictable cause/effect problem. Plenty of places have deforested their land and suffered mudslides, desertification, erosion. The US destroyed its prairies and got a dust bowl. The failure to predict that foresting grasslands and other areas not previously forest would result in ecological disruptions seems shortsighted. But, live and learn, do better next time.

[-] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 26 points 6 days ago
[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

There are all too many cities in the world that are poorly located or have outgrown their resources. This article was not about that

However I do remember seeing that discussion a few days ago. Perhaps you want to search for that and add your comments there

[-] Tiral@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Whataboutism activated!

[-] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 7 points 6 days ago

Your ignorance is astounding.

[-] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 51 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Not much substance to this article. But it is noteworthy that the trees also increased precipitation for their own benefit. The bluish haze you see as trees fade away toward the horizon is from compounds they release that act as nuclei for rain drops - yes forests do their own cloud seeding. You know who else has really messed up their water cycle? California, or probably most of the western states. Anyway.

[-] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 69 points 6 days ago

Nitpick, but:

have increased evapotranspiration, which is a portmanteau of evaporation and transpiration

Bruh, if you're going to explain a not-at-all unclear fancy word, why not just use the explanation in the article (e.g. "have increased evaporation and transpiration")

This smells of AI writing.

[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago

Yeah I mean if you are trying to clarify you might want to point out it happens through plant leaves.

[-] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago

Right, I mean why would you ever want to learn a new word while reading a science article???

[-] marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today 2 points 5 days ago

Pretty much all anti-China articles are AI written these days. It's cheaper than funding the NED.

[-] Worstdriver@lemmy.world 19 points 5 days ago

Wait.... 78 Billion trees. As in with a 'b' billion? In all seriousness, how?

[-] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 21 points 5 days ago

It's since 1980, they've had almost half a century to do it.

That's still 1,695,652,173 trees per year (78,000,000,000/46 years).

"In all seriousness, how?"

[-] angband@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

The us plants about 2.3 trillion corn plants per year. 25,000 per acre, 95,000,000 acres. Considering they plant 68,000,000 trees per year just for paper, in the US, the numbers aren't shocking. Worldwide tree nurseries probably dwarf that 1.6 billion, maybe.

[-] Simon_Shitewood@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago

It's not vastly more than every Chinese person planting 1 tree a year. If you pay people to plant 10 trees a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year you only need to employ one person in every 2400 to get close.

[-] Worstdriver@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

That's still over a billion trees a year. Actually that's over 1,500,000,000 trees a year. Again...HOW?

And this begs a side question. Out of those 78 Billion trees, how many are alive now?

[-] Tottakai@europe.pub 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

In Estonia we plant about 20-40 millions of trees every year.

RMK ( State Forest Management Center) alone plants about 20-25 million trees every year.

And we are nation with 1,3 million people. So for China that number over the years isn’t big at all.

I always laugh when in the western news there is some organization, what makes big words that they planted 2 million trees and if that is something of a big achivments what should be boasted around the news.

[-] pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

I should check out Estonia

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Just a matter of scale. Every seventh person lives in China.

Or to recontextualize: The article talks about a time span of around 45 years. That's around 1.7 billion trees. Remember, that's an english (short) billion, 1700 million. (In other languages a billion is a million millions, and not just a thousand millions.)

If a worker can plant 20 trees a day and works 200 days a year, that means around half a million people are more than enough to do it. In a country with around 1400 million people, that's 0.035% of the population, or roughly one in 3000 people.

Suddenly, it's not all that crazy anymore.

[-] Worstdriver@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Are we talking 10 to the 9th power or the 12th?

I also did some reading up on this. I live in British Columbia and reforestation is a big deal. Apparently a tree planter can plant 2,000 seedlings a day. More if the terrain is good and they're experienced. So yeah, I can see it now.

Though I still wonder about the survival rate of the plantings, but How question is indeed answered.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Popular Mechanics is US-based, so they use short billions: 1bio = 1 000 000 000.

You are right, long billions (1bio = 1 000 000 000 000) would be a lot more. Though even that would still be possible, but then ~35% of the chinese population would have to be employed in planting trees.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 26 points 6 days ago

I think this will get worked out pretty quickly. They need to get the water to the land, that's all. Planting trees is a great thing, not sure why this article tries to make it sound like "China fucked up."

According to the study, the country’s northern regions contain roughly 46 percent of its population and more than half of the arable land, but only 20 percent of water availability. The authors argue that these altered hydrological cycles need to be taken into account when planning future reforestation efforts.

[-] treadful@lemmy.zip 14 points 6 days ago

Moving water is like the hardest of the infrastructure projects.

[-] Fandangalo@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

“Not sure why” = American propaganda against “communism”

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago

Tbh, I think communism is stupid for anything bigger than 30 people, because humans have a percentage that are inherently corrupt and will abuse it. Imo, combine democracy and the socialism part, and we have ourselves a stew.

[-] dovahking@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

.... but at what cost?

[-] harambe69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 days ago

Reforest the oceans, shrubs and grasses are good enough for land.

this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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