China's Next Big Boom Could Be the Foul Air By JIM YARDLEY October 30, 2005 BEIJING -- The steady barrage of statistics trumpeting China's rise is often greeted elsewhere as if the figures were torpedoes and the rest of the world a sinking ship. Economic growth tops 9 percent! Textile exports jump 500 percent! Military spending up! Manufacturing up! The numbers inflame the exaggerated perception that China is methodically inhaling jobs and resources and, in the process, inhaling the rest of the planet. Burp. There goes the American furniture industry. Burp. Thanks for your oil, Venezuela. But one statistic offered last week by a top Chinese environmental official should stimulate genuine alarm inside and outside China. The official, Zhang Lijun, warned that pollution levels here could more than quadruple within 15 years if the country does not curb its rapid growth in energy consumption and automobile use. China, it seems, has reached a tipping point familiar to many developed countries, including the United States, that have raced headlong after economic development only to look up suddenly and see the environmental carnage. The difference with China, as is so often the case, is that the potential problems are much bigger, have happened much faster and could pose greater concerns for the entire world. "I don't think it will jump four or five times," Robert Watson, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of the pollution prediction by Mr. Zhang. "But it could double or triple without too much trouble. And that's a scary thought, given how bad things are now." China is already the world's second-biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions and is expected to surpass the United States as the biggest. Roughly a third of China is exposed to acid rain. A recent study by a Chinese research institute found that 400,000 people die prematurely every year in China from diseases linked to air pollution. Nor does China's air pollution respect borders: on certain days almost 25 percent of the particulate matter clotting the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental experts in California predict that China could eventually account for roughly a third of the state's air pollution. The air problem could become a major embarrassment if, as some experts believe, Beijing does not meet its environmental targets for 2008, when the Olympic Games will be played here. For the Chinese government, the question is how to change the country's booming economy without crippling it. President Hu Jintao has made "sustainable development" a centerpiece of his effort to shift the country from unbridled growth to a more efficient economy. Mr. Hu and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have repeatedly mentioned environmental protection in speeches. The political attention comes as environmental problems are begetting social and economic problems. Violent riots have erupted in the countryside over contaminated water, stunted crops and mounting health woes. In a handful of villages, farmers have stormed chemical factories to stop the dumping of filthy water. Roughly 70 percent of China's rivers and lakes are polluted. In cities, people drink bottled water; in the countryside, most people are too poor to pay for bottled water, so they boil polluted water or simply drink it. Public anger is also rising in cities. In some, air pollution is so thick that on the worst days doctors advise, impractically, against going outside. Last week, hundreds of people living in the Beijing outskirts protested plans for a factory they fear would inundate the neighborhood with pollution. The severity of the situation has created an opening for environmentalists in and out of the government. Environmentalism is a chic issue for college students, who have participated in garbage cleanups and joined the growing number of nongovernment organizations focused on pollution. The once-meek State Environmental Protection Administration, or SEPA, has become more aggressive in identifying and going after polluters and calling for reforms. But the political and practical obstacles are formidable. Car ownership has become part of the Chinese middle-class dream, and the car industry has become a major contributor to tax coffers and a force in the overall economy. Industrial pollution is difficult to control because local officials often ignore emissions standards to appease polluting factories that pay local taxes. SEPA has closed factories, only to see them reopen weeks later. To make a serious reduction in air pollution, experts say, tougher, enforceable standards are needed, and many factories would need new pollution control equipment. "There has to be the political will," said Steve Page, director of the E.P.A office of air quality planning and standards. "The challenge they face is how will these plants be lined up and told this will happen?" Politically, the Communist Party has based its legitimacy on delivering economic growth and understands that the boom cannot be taken for granted: high growth is needed simply to keep unemployment in check, and top leaders fear that a slowdown could lead to social instability. Local officials are promoted, foremost, for delivering economic growth. This is why environmental officials have pushed for a new "green G.D.P.," which would alter how gross domestic product is calculated to reflect losses inflicted by environmental degradation. The party is suspicious of environmental groups because of the role similar groups played in promoting grass-roots democracy in the "color" revolutions of central Asia. Human Rights Watch reported that some environmentalists were recently arrested. But if there is resistance, there is progress, too. A law taking effect next year will require that China produce 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Fuel efficiency standards for new cars are already stricter than those in the United States. At an air pollution conference last Monday, environmental officials solicited advice from their peers in Europe and the United States. Mr. Page, the E.P.A. official, praised Chinese officials and said China is considering the sort of regional pollution abatement strategies used in the United States. "They are wrestling with a lot of the same pollution problems that we wrestled with several years ago and that, to some extent, we still are grappling with," said Mr. Page, who attended the conference. Ma Jun, an independent environmentalist based in Beijing, also praised the efforts by SEPA. Mr. Ma said China's status as the "workshop of the world" made it inevitable that its share of the world's pollution would increase. But he also cautioned that too many government ministries remained consumed by economic development. He said the government also needed to recognize the "environmental rights" of citizens. "The pollution problem," he said, "is very serious." ----------------------------------- July 19, 2005 Anger in China Rises Over Threat to Environment By HOWARD W. FRENCH Correction Appended XINCHANG, China, July 18 - After three nights of increasingly heavy rioting, the police were taking no chances on Monday, deploying dozens of busloads of officers before dusk and blocking every road leading to the factory. But the angry residents in this village 180 miles south of Shanghai had learned their lessons, too, they said, having studied reports of riots in towns near and far that have swept rural China in recent months. Sneaking over mountain paths and wading through rice paddies, they made their way to a pharmaceuticals plant, they said, determined to pursue a showdown over the environmental threat they say it poses. As many as 15,000 people massed here Sunday night and waged a pitched battle with the authorities, overturning police cars and throwing stones for hours, undeterred by thick clouds of tear gas. Fewer people may have turned out Monday evening under rainy skies, but residents of this factory town in the wealthy Zhejiang Province vow they will keep demonstrating until they have forced the 10-year-old plant to relocate. "This is the only way to solve problems like ours," said a 22-year-old villager whose house sits less than 100 yards from the smashed gates of the factory, where the police were massed. "If you go to see the mayor or some city official, they just take your money and do nothing." The riots in Xinchang are a part of a rising tide of discontent in China, with the number of mass protests like these skyrocketing to 74,000 incidents last year from about 10,000 a decade earlier, according to government figures. The details have varied from incident to incident, but the recent protests all share a common foundation of accumulated anger over the failure of China's political system to respond to legitimate grievances and defiance of the local authorities, who are often seen as corrupt. A sign of the leadership's growing concern over the increasing turbulence can be seen in a proliferation of high-level statements about the demonstrations. In a nationally televised news conference this month, Li Jingtian, deputy director of the Communist Party's organization bureau, complained that "with regard to our grassroots cadres, some of them are probably less competent, and they are not able to dissipate these conflicts or problems." In another widely remarked statement, Chen Xiwen, an economics vice minister who oversees agricultural affairs, saluted the Internet's role in allowing the central government authorities to learn of unrest more quickly and praised demonstrating farmers for "knowing how to protect their rights." The people of Xinchang were reluctant to speak openly about the uprising, since they would be subject to immediate arrest if they were identified. But from conversations with numerous residents, many of whom took part in the protests, it was possible to put together a detailed picture of the events that unfolded. In Xinchang, as with many of the recent protests, the initial spark involved claims of serious environmental degradation. An explosion at the Jingxin Pharmaceutical Company this month in a vessel containing deadly chemicals reportedly killed one worker, and previous leakages contaminated the water supply for miles downstream, said villagers and one chemical plant worker who was injured in the accident. Villagers say they appointed a small group of representatives to present demands for compensation, including free health examinations and medical care for people who live near the plants, which produces a strain of antibiotics called quinolones. When they sent a group on July 4 to demand an audience with factory officials, they say, security guards beat the representatives. The next day, the villagers returned in larger numbers and managed to grab a security officer, whom they acknowledge beating. In the meantime, as word spread of the beating of the village representatives and of the worker's death in the explosion, villagers raised the stakes, demanding the outright closing of the factory, which they had complained about for years. "Our fields won't produce grain anymore," said a 46-year-old woman who lives near the plant. "We don't dare to eat food grown from anywhere near here." Her husband, a former machine operator, said he had to quit working recently because of persistent weakness and nausea. When local officials posted a notice saying they would reopen the plant a few days after the fatal explosion there, he had been one of the first demonstrators to arrive on the scene, charging the gates and bursting into the factory with a small crowd of fellow protesters. "They are making poisonous chemicals for foreigners that the foreigners don't dare produce in their own countries," the man said. Explaining why he had been willing to rush into the plant, despite signs warning of toxic chemicals all about, he said, "It is better to die now, forcing them out, than to die of a slow suicide." Local officials in Xinchang were able to buy some time in the conflict by temporarily suspending operations at the plant, sending teams door to door in many of the neighborhoods surrounding the factory to urge residents not to harbor troublemakers or outsiders and promising to consider the villagers' grievances carefully. Tensions spiked again, though, on Thursday when the city posted a notice saying production would resume at the plant the next day. It warned that an explosion could take place inside the factory unless the chemical processes already begun were allowed to run for another week. Sensing a ruse, the villagers refused, demanding a guarantee in the form of a security deposit of more than $2 million to allow the plant to start up again temporarily. "We don't trust them," said a man who lives near the plant. "They have told us lies many times before and have never addressed our problems." The next day and each day since, the villagers have massed by the thousands outside the factory's gates, smashing the company's sign, wrecking a guard post and smashing windows with stones. The factory, meanwhile, has remained closed. In many of China's other recent riots, word has spread fast among organizers and protesters by way of mobile phone messages, allowing crowds to mass quickly and helping demonstrators to coordinate tactics and slogans. In Xinchang, however, residents say new technology, like the cellphone, has played little part. Instead, many residents say they were moved to action after years of unhappiness about industrial pollution by copies of newspaper headlines from Dongyang. That city, a mere 50 miles away, was the scene this spring of one of China's biggest riots, in which more than 10,000 residents routed the police in a riot over pollution from a pesticide factory. Despite tight controls on news coverage of the incident, the riot in Dongyang, where the chemical factory remains closed months later, has firmly entered Chinese folklore as proof that determined citizens acting en masse can force the authorities to reverse course and address their needs. "As for the Dongyang riot, everyone knows about it," a man in his 20's exulted. "Six policemen were killed, and the chief had the tendons in his arms and legs severed. Perhaps they went too far, but we must be treated as human beings." Correction: Wednesday, July 20: An article yesterday about rioting by residents of Xinchang, China, angry over what they called an environmental threat from a pharmaceutical factory, referred incorrectly to the location in some copies. It is 180 miles south of Shanghai, not a suburb. In some copies, the article also misspelled the drug company's name. It is Jingxin Pharmaceutical, not Jinxing.