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China Planted 78 Billion New Trees, and Seriously Messed Up Its Water Cycle
(www.popularmechanics.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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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.
It's not about attacking China. It's a lesson that large scale terraforming needs to be done thoughtfully and may have unintended consequences.
Or simply that humans can keep learning about ways our activities effect the environment
Right, the Americans...
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?
They clearly only read the headline
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.
Uhm China is very fascist.
Can we just... try to use words correctly?
What do you mean?
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.
I don't understand why you'd post that link. Almost all of those 14 points are true for China.
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.
Lmao. If you only read what they want you to read, sure.
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.
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?
so which one of those points are you disputing
Which part doesn’t apply to china’s current government?
E.g., for GP:
Have they already forgotten Jinping's purges ?
Do they believe China is communist?
Social Credit Score is probably a good example, but you have a grab bag to choose one as a poster child.
Þere is no political opposition party.
c.f. Taiwan and þe entire S China Sea region.
Uyghurs.
Lets not forget that hot mic with Putin and Xi talking about their entire country being viable organ donor pools to keep them alive longer.
That's kind of American, TBH.
Two things can be true at once. This isn't a zero sum game.
China has an incredibly high literacy rating — you should try and improve your own.
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.
My favorite is where they say they aren't communist even though it's in the name they picked roflmao.
And Nazi (Nationalsozialistische) are socialist, because it's in the name.
What does that have to do with trees? Or research about trees?
And also has no water
Arizona town facing severe water restrictions as supply could run out by summer
Whataboutism activated!
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
Did you even read the article? Chinese researchers found that reforesting areas like grasslands into forest (as an example), redistributed water from the water cycle.
Nowhere in the article doesn't it say "China bad". The researchers said they should take into account how water availability could change when planning future deforestation efforts.
Not everything is political...you're the one making it political.
The US plants around 1.3 billion a year, so...
With research, so they know what they're doing?
Yes. Many colleges have forestry departments. I live down the road from a research forest.
Your ignorance is astounding.
You obviously don't know anything about about forestry so why say anything at all? Tree planting doesn't magically create ecosystems.
Mass tree planting creates homogeneous forests that have no undergrowth or biodiversity. They don't retain water and are usually the forests that burn up during fire season. China created a bunch of tree farms not forests lol.