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As Chinese companies have increased their overseas mining operations, allegations of problems caused by these projects have steadily risen.
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, an NGO, says such troubles are “not unique to Chinese mining” but last year it published a report listing 102 allegations made against Chinese companies involved in extracting critical minerals, ranging from violations of the rights of local communities to damage to ecosystems and unsafe working conditions.
These allegations dated from 2021 and 2022. The BBC has counted more than 40 further allegations that were made in 2023, and reported by NGOs or in the media.
People are already dying. Our existing system which is built on exploitation causes countless people to be sacrificed to support the way we live right now. How many people are you willing to sacrifice with poisoned waterways and medical conditions caused by unsafe working conditions, as mentioned in the article?
That’s not an answer. There are approximately 2 billion children in the world today. How many are you willing to sacrifice to a slow and agonizing death through starvation and disease? Let’s have a percentage.
Those people are still going to die you realize. This isn’t a binary. It will take decades to eliminate those issues. We’re better off spending that time to figure out how to maintain our current quality of life while also solving those problems.
Edit: Especially if we maintain modern medicine and agriculture. Those aren’t intrinsically safe and non polluting.