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China's Toilet Revolution

China's Toilet Revolution
Willis Sparks
By Willis SparksDecember 01, 2017
Willis Sparks
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
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Multiply the strength of his hold on power by China’s growing international importance and it’s clear that Xi Jinping is the single most powerful man on Earth. Two years ago, Xi launched a “toilet revolution” to improve quality of life in the countryside. At the time, according to Chinese media, 25 percent of rural homes had neither flush toilets nor dry toilets with underground storage tanks. Tens of thousands of new toilets have since been installed, and Xi this week called for faster progress.

Toilets or not, China is no closer to becoming a democracy, and its people lack basic political rights and freedoms. But at a time when so many world leaders seem to have no idea and little interest in how ordinary people live, the world’s most powerful man has proven willing to invest his prestige in the most basic of sustainable development projects.

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