Choking on Growth: China's Environmental Crisis

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Choking on Growth: China's Environmental Crisis

A series of articles and multimedia examining the human toll, global

impact and political challenge of China's epic pollution crisis.

 

THE OVERVIEW

As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes

Part 1 of 9

By JOSEPH KAHN and JIM YARDLEY

Published: August 26, 2007

 

BEIJING, Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major

industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage

that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.

 

But just as the speed and scale of China's rise as an economic power

have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has

shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe,

with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that

pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese

public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist

Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic

juggernaut.

 

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China's leading

cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution

alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly

500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

 

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some

countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where

people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead

poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped

by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain

marine life....

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html

 

 

CHINA'S WATER CRISIS

Beneath Booming Cities, China's Future Is Drying Up

Part 2 of 9

 

SHIJIAZHUANG, China — Hundreds of feet below ground, the primary

water source for this provincial capital of more than two million

people is steadily running dry. The underground water table is

sinking about four feet a year. Municipal wells have already drained

two-thirds of the local groundwater.

 

Above ground, this city in the North China Plain is having a party.

Economic growth topped 11 percent last year. Population is rising. A

new upscale housing development is advertising waterfront property on

lakes filled with pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the

Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points in the city's

water table.

 

" People who are buying apartments aren't thinking about whether there

will be water in the future, " said Zhang Zhongmin, who has tried for

20 years to raise public awareness about the city's dire water

situation.

 

For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the

rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now,

China's galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing

the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant

nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north

China — even as demand keeps rising everywhere....

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/world/asia/28water.html

 

 

THE ACTIVIST

In China, a Lake's Champion Imperils Himself

Part 3 of 9

 

ZHOUTIE, China — Lake Tai, the center of China's ancient " land of

fish and rice, " succumbed this year to floods of industrial and

agricultural waste.

 

Toxic cyanobacteria, commonly referred to as pond scum, turned the

big lake fluorescent green. The stench of decay choked anyone who

came within a mile of its shores. At least two million people who

live amid the canals, rice paddies and chemical plants around the

lake had to stop drinking or cooking with their main source of water.

 

The outbreak confirmed the claims of a crusading peasant, Wu Lihong,

who protested for more than a decade that the region's thriving

chemical industry, and its powerful friends in the local government,

were destroying one of China's ecological treasures.

 

Mr. Wu, however, bore silent witness. Shortly before the algae crisis

erupted in May, the authorities here in his hometown arrested him. In

mid-August, with a fetid smell still wafting off the lake, a local

court sentenced him to three years on an alchemy of charges that

smacked of official retribution.

 

Pollution has reached epidemic proportions in China, in part because

the ruling Communist Party still treats environmental advocates as

bigger threats than the degradation of air, water and soil that

prompts them to speak out....

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/world/asia/14china.html

 

 

THREE GORGES DAM

Chinese Dam Projects Criticized for Their Human Costs

Part 4 of 9

 

JIANMIN VILLAGE, China — Last year, Chinese officials celebrated the

completion of the Three Gorges Dam by releasing a list of 10 world

records. As in: The Three Gorges is the world's biggest dam, biggest

power plant and biggest consumer of dirt, stone, concrete and steel.

Ever. Even the project's official tally of 1.13 million displaced

people made the list as record No. 10.

 

Today, the Communist Party is hoping the dam does not become China's

biggest folly. In recent weeks, Chinese officials have admitted that

the dam was spawning environmental problems like water pollution and

landslides that could become severe. Equally startling, officials

want to begin a new relocation program that would be bigger than the

first.

 

The rising controversy makes it easy to overlook what could have been

listed as world record No. 11: The Three Gorges Dam is the world's

biggest man-made producer of electricity from renewable energy.

Hydropower, in fact, is the centerpiece of one of China's most

praised green initiatives, a plan to rapidly expand renewable energy

by 2020.

 

The Three Gorges Dam, then, lies at the uncomfortable center of

China's energy conundrum: The nation's roaring economy is addicted to

dirty, coal-fired power plants that pollute the air and belch

greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Dams are

much cleaner producers of electricity, but they have displaced

millions of people in China and carved a stark environmental legacy

on the landscape.

 

" It's really kind of a no-win situation, " said Jonathan Sinton, China

program manager at the International Energy Agency. " There are no

ideal choices. " ....

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/world/asia/19dam.html

 

 

ENERGY RULES

Far From Beijing's Reach, Officials Bend Energy Rules

Part 5 of 9

 

QINGTONGXIA, China — When the central government in Beijing announced

an ambitious nationwide campaign to reduce energy consumption two

years ago, officials in this western regional capital got right to

work: not to comply, but to engineer creative schemes to evade the

requirements.

 

The energy campaign required local officials to raise electricity

prices as a way of discouraging the growth of large energy-consuming

industries and forcing the least efficient of these users out of

business. Instead, fearing the impact on the local economy, the

regional government brokered a special deal for the Qingtongxia

Aluminum Group, which accounts for 20 percent of this region's

industrial consumption and roughly 10 percent of its gross domestic

product.

 

Local officials arranged for the company to be removed from the

national electrical grid and supplied directly by the local company,

exempting it from expensive fees, according to an electricity company

official who asked not to be named, an official of the aluminum

company and the official Web site of the nearby city of Shizuishan.

As a result, Qingtongxia continued to get its power at the lowest

price available.

 

It was a cat-and-mouse game grimly familiar to Chinese officials, who

have a long tradition of spearheading ambitious nationwide campaigns

that are all too often thwarted at the local level, partly because

local priorities clash with national ones.

 

Concerned about China's roaring economic engine consuming too much

energy, national officials aimed to cut energy use by 20 percent per

dollar of output within five years. China's energy consumption has

more than quadrupled since 1980.

 

The environmental toll is staggering. The country is already the

world's largest user of coal, the dirtiest type of energy. China's

coal consumption alone is projected to double in the next 20 years,

according to the International Energy Agency....

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/world/asia/24evaders.html

 

 

WILDLIFE THREATENED

China's Turtles, Emblems of a Crisis

Part 6 of 6

 

CHANGSHA, China — Unnoticed and unappreciated for five decades, a

large female turtle with a stained, leathery shell is now a precious

commodity in this city's decaying zoo. She is fed a special diet of

raw meat. Her small pool has been encased with bulletproof glass. A

surveillance camera monitors her movements. A guard is posted at

night.

 

The agenda is simple: The turtle must not die.

 

Earlier this year, scientists concluded that she was the planet's

last known female Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle. She is about 80

years old and weighs almost 90 pounds.

 

As it happens, the planet also has only one undisputed, known male.

He lives at a zoo in the city of Suzhou. He is 100 years old and

weighs about 200 pounds. They are the last hope of saving a species

believed to be the largest freshwater turtles in the world.

 

" It's a very dire situation, " said Peter Pritchard, a prominent

turtle expert in the United States who has helped in trying to save

the species. " This one is so big and it has such an aura of mystery. "

 

For many Chinese, turtles symbolize health and longevity, but the

saga of the last two Yangtze giant soft-shells is more symbolic of

the threatened state of wildlife and biodiversity in China.

Pollution, hunting and rampant development are destroying natural

habitats, and also endangering plant and animal populations.

 

China contains some of the world's richest troves of biodiversity,

yet the latest major survey of plants and animals reveals a bleak

picture that has grown bleaker during the past decade. Nearly 40

percent of all mammal species in China are now endangered, scientists

say. For plants, the situation is worse; 70 percent of all

nonflowering plant species and 86 percent of flowering species are

considered threatened.

 

An overriding problem is the fierce competition for land and water.

China's goal of quadrupling its economy by 2020 means that industry,

growing cities and farmers are jostling for a limited supply of

usable land.

 

Cities or factories often claim farmland for expansion; farmers, in

turn, reclaim marginal land that could be habitat. Already, China has

lost half of its wetlands, according to one survey....

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/world/asia/05turtle.html

 

POLLUTING TRUCKS

Trucks Power China's Economy, at a Suffocating Cost

Part 7 of 9

 

GUANGZHOU, China — Every night, columns of hulking blue and red

freight trucks invade China's major cities with a reverberating roar

of engines and dark clouds of diesel exhaust so thick it dims

headlights.

 

By daybreak in this sprawling metropolis in southeastern China,

residents near thoroughfares who leave their windows open overnight

find their faces stiff with a dark layer of diesel soot.

 

After Mary Leung opens her tiny open-air shop along a major road soon

after dawn, she must wipe the soot off her countertops and tables;

the tiny yellow-and-olive bird that has kept her company is harder to

clean.

 

Trucks are the mules of this country's spectacularly expanding

economy — ubiquitous and essential, yet highly noxious.

 

Trucks here burn diesel fuel contaminated with more than 130 times

the pollution-causing sulfur that the United States allows in most

diesel. While car sales in China are now growing even faster than

truck sales, trucks are by far the largest source of street-level

pollution.

 

Tiny particles of sulfur-laden soot penetrate deep into residents'

lungs, interfering with the absorption of oxygen. Nitrogen oxides

from truck exhaust, which build all night because cities limit truck

traffic by day, bind each morning with gasoline fumes from China's

growing car fleet to form dense smog that inflames lungs and can

cause severe coughing and asthma.

 

The 10 million trucks on Chinese roads, more than a quarter of all

vehicles in this country, are a major reason that China accounts for

half the world's annual increase in oil consumption. Sating their

thirst helped push the price of oil to nearly $100 a barrel this

year, before a recent decline, and has propelled China past the

United States as the world's largest emitter of global-warming

gases....

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/world/asia/08trucks.html

 

 

FARMING FISH

In China, Farming Fish in Toxic Waters

Part 8 of 9

 

FUQING, China — Here in southern China, beneath the looming mountains

of Fujian Province, lie dozens of enormous ponds filled with murky

brown water and teeming with eels, shrimp and tilapia, much of it

destined for markets in Japan and the West.

 

Fuqing is one of the centers of a booming industry that over two

decades has transformed this country into the biggest producer and

exporter of seafood in the world, and the fastest-growing supplier to

the United States.

 

But that growth is threatened by the two most glaring environmental

weaknesses in China: acute water shortages and water supplies

contaminated by sewage, industrial waste and agricultural runoff that

includes pesticides. The fish farms, in turn, are discharging

wastewater that further pollutes the water supply.

 

" Our waters here are filthy, " said Ye Chao, an eel and shrimp farmer

who has 20 giant ponds in western Fuqing. " There are simply too many

aquaculture farms in this area. They're all discharging water here,

fouling up other farms. "

 

Farmers have coped with the toxic waters by mixing illegal veterinary

drugs and pesticides into fish feed, which helps keep their stocks

alive yet leaves poisonous and carcinogenic residues in seafood,

posing health threats to consumers.

 

Environmental degradation, in other words, has become a food safety

problem, and scientists say the long-term risks of consuming

contaminated seafood could lead to higher rates of cancer and liver

disease and other afflictions.

 

No one is more vulnerable to these health risks than the Chinese,

because most of the seafood in China stays at home. But foreign

importers are also worried. In recent years, the European Union and

Japan have imposed temporary bans on Chinese seafood because of

illegal drug residues. The United States blocked imports of several

types of fish this year after inspectors detected traces of illegal

drugs linked to cancer....

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/world/asia/15fish.html

 

 

TWO STEEL TOWNS

China Grabs West's Smoke-Spewing Factories

Part 9 of 9

 

HANDAN, China — When residents of this northern Chinese city hang

their clothes out to dry, the black fallout from nearby Handan Iron

and Steel often sends them back to the wash.

 

Half a world away, neighbors of ThyssenKrupp's former steel mill in

the Ruhr Valley of Germany once had a similar problem. The white

shirts men wore to church on Sundays turned gray by the time they got

home.

 

These two steel towns have an unusual kinship, spanning 5,000 miles

and a decade of economic upheaval. They have shared the same hulking

blast furnace, dismantled and shipped piece by piece from Germany's

old industrial heartland to Hebei Province, China's new Ruhr Valley.

 

The transfer, one of dozens since the late 1990s, contributed to a

burst in China's steel production, which now exceeds that of Germany,

Japan and the United States combined. It left Germany with lost jobs

and a bad case of postindustrial angst.

 

But steel mills spewing particulates into the air and sucking

electricity from China's coal-fired power plants account for a big

chunk of the country's surging emissions of sulfur dioxide and carbon

dioxide. Germany, in contrast, has cleaned its skies and is now

leading the fight against global warming.

 

In its rush to re-create the industrial revolution that made the West

rich, China has absorbed most of the major industries that once made

the West dirty. Spurred by strong state support, Chinese companies

have become the dominant makers of steel, coke, aluminum, cement,

chemicals, leather, paper and other goods that faced high costs,

including tougher environmental rules, in other parts of the world.

China has become the world's factory, but also its smokestack.

 

This mass shift of polluting industries has blighted China's economic

rise. Double-digit growth rates have done less to improve people's

lives when the damages to the air, land, water and human health are

considered, some economists say. Outmoded production equipment will

have to be replaced or retrofitted at high cost if the country

intends to reduce pollution.

 

China's worsening environment has also upended the geopolitics of

global warming. It produces and exports so many goods once made in

the West that many wealthy countries can boast of declining carbon

emissions, even while the world's overall emissions are rising

quickly....

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/world/asia/21transfer.html