(I got the Walter Benjamin quote about revolutions and emergency brakes from Richard Smith's new book.)
Pan Yue was certainly prescient. The Chinese "miracle" has come to an end because the environment can no longer keep pace. The question is, can the Chinese find a way to grab the emergency brake and wrench this locomotive of destruction to a halt? One thing seems certain: The locomotive is not going to be stopped so long as the Communist Party has its grip on the controls. The CCP is locked in a death spiral. It can't rein in ravenous resource consumption and suicidal pollution because, as a national superpower-aspirant, it needs to maximize growth to "catch up with overtake the USA," maximize jobs to keep the peace, provide more bread and circuses to distract the masses, and build the glitziest "blingfrastucture" to wow the masses and the world with the "Amazing China" that it has built. The Communist Party doesn't do subtlety or understatement. Given these drivers, I just don't see how China's spiral to ecological collapse can reversed by anything short of social revolution—one way or another.
