Because China is the environmentalist's nightmare that we were talking about in the 60s-80s. It happened, just not to us. We moved it to Asia, and there it is. Thick smog, poisoned water, people eating stuff our dogs would turn their noses up at, humans needing masks because of pollution and for the exact same reason intensively-farmed livestock are given antibiotics* (because crowding encourages rapid spread of disease). People falling dead is probably an everyday thing, and no one made note of it until January. Probably to deliberately scare us! I bet those images were not just allowed to get out, but seeded by CCP itself, and that Chen guy was WORKING FOR THEM and pretending to be a dissident.

This is what I would do if I were Xinnie the Pooh.

*Steroids and hormones are for faster/more growth. The effect on growth of not having little riders is negligible. And all these are used in the modern system because it's the only way to feed an ever-growing population, and the real environmentalists warned everyone about that 50-60 years ago, too. "the population bomb is a myth" my fucking eyeball. EVERYTHING we were warned about HAS COME TO PASS.

And the West is starting to look a lot like Universe 25, but with the "Beautiful Ones" taking over as spiteful mutants who have reached a certain saturation point in society.