Heartland Famous Quotes

The heartland is the political, cultural, demographic and – crucially – the agricultural centre of gravity. About a billion people live in this part of China, despite it being just half the size of the United States, which has a population of 327 million. Because the terrain of the heartland lent itself to settlement and an agrarian lifestyle, the early dynasties felt threatened by the non-Han regions which surrounded them, especially Mongolia with its nomadic bands of violent warriors. China chose the same strategy as Russia: attack as defence, leading to power. As we shall see, there were natural barriers which – if the Han could reach them and establish control – would protect them. It was a struggle over millennia, only fully realised with the annexation of Tibet in 1951. By the time of the famous Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 BCE) there was a strong feeling of Chinese identity and of a divide between civilised China and the ‘barbarous’ regions which surrounded it. This was a sense of identity shared by 60 million or so people.

To experience economic poverty in a country famous for its abundance is to live with constant reminders of what you don’t have, like running a hot marathon next to a cool reservoir from which you’re not allowed to drink.

Carbon Dioxide: They Call It Pollution, We Call It Life.” Another, the Heartland Institute, which Exxon had helped found back in the 1990s, erected billboards comparing climate scientists to famous serial killers