Adam's (Smith) apple

"Like farmers in the bigger apple-producing states, they are increasingly anxious that China could flood the U.S. market with its fresh apples - an event many believe is inevitable, even if it could be years away.

China's advantage is its cheap labor. A picker makes about 28 cents an hour, or $2 a day, according to the U.S. Apple Association. In 2005, workers in Pennsylvania made about $9 to $10 per hour, and those in Washington State about $14 per hour, the association said.

To gain access to the U.S. market, China must prove that it meets U.S. standards for pest and disease control. The U.S. Apple Association said the Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service sent a list of more than 300 insects and diseases of concern to the quarantine inspection agency of the Chinese government in 2003. Beijing responded the next year, and then Washington asked for information on 52 pests from the list.

Most apples already carry the labeling, but Mark Barrett, a grower in Yakima Valley in Washington, said full implementation was the best way to help U.S. apple growers.
"I believe if we had country-of-origin labeling that the consumers would buy U.S. all the time," Barrett said."

Rice crackers

"Yang was sentenced in 2005 to seven and a half years in prison for planting 17 explosive devices in public places to protest rice imports that were mandated by agreements with the World Trade Organization. The explosives had notes that read, "Opposing rice imports.""

Still bandits

""Companies that are polluting in China are owned by American, European, Japanese and others. They are benefiting from the cheap labor, from the resources and at the same time accusing China of pollution," the Malaysian official said.
"Let's take the hypocrisy out of the equation," he said.

Chen Feng, the chairman of China Hainan Airlines, said now was not the time to assign blame but to create an international solution, saying developed nations were the original polluters.

"So the way I see it is, you were bandits before you became right-minded people," he said. "

They're still bandits, Chen, and of the worst kind.

Deserting China

"The shifting sands have swallowed thousands of Chinese villages along the fabled Silk Road and sparked a sharp increase in sandstorms; dust from China clouds the skies of South Korea and has been linked to respiratory problems in California.

Since 2001, China has spent nearly $9 billion planting billions of trees, converting marginal farmland to forest and grasslands and enforcing logging and grazing bans.

The policy is driven in part by concerns over food, as farmland yields not only to the deserts but also to pollution and economic development. China has less than 7 percent of the world's arable land with which to feed 1.3 billion people -- more than 20 percent of the world's population. By comparison, the United States has 20 percent of the world's arable land to feed 5 percent of the population."