By MUNEEZA NAQVI, Associated Press Writer

NEW DELHI – The 15-year-old son of two doctors performed a filmed Caesarean section birth under his parents’ watch in southern India in an apparent bid to gain a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest surgeon.
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http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-06/../../html/media/200706/06/935e5493403c51258d.wmv

A video clip from a CCTV news program shows that about 100,000 kilograms of fish died from the polluted water at a fish farm in Caidian District, Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province, June 5, 2007. CCTV said that polluted water from upriver was discharged into the fish farm under the cover of heavy rain, causing the outbreak of blue-green algae and leaving the fish dead for reduced oxygen in water. Xia Xiaofang, one of the four owners of the fish farm, told CCTV that all fish in his farm died and the largest one weighed about 20 kilograms.

BEIJING (AFP) – Air and water quality in Chinese cities is worsening despite a national push to reduce notorious pollution levels, the country’s environment watchdog said in a new report.

Only 38 percent of 585 cities surveyed recently registered air quality that reached national health standards, down from about 45 percent in a 2005 study, the State Environmental Protection Administration report said.

Overall levels of water deemed to be healthy also slipped by 7.24 percent, the report said, providing no other details.

“The environment situation in the country’s cities remains serious,” it said. The report was released on Monday and highlighted in Tuesday’s state-run press.

China, whose economic boom has given rise to massive and harmful pollution nationwide, last year missed targets to reduce emissions of major air and water pollutants by two percent, with levels actually rising by nearly that amount.

The report, however, noted some faint glimmers of hope.

It said 39 cities, four less than in 2005, made the administration’s “black list” of urban areas with severe air pollution, the lion’s share located in the northeast industrial belt or in major coal-producing regions in northern China.

It also said cities were making progress in handling waste water and garbage thanks to increasing numbers of treatment facilities, especially in more prosperous regions.

More than 42 percent of urban sewage was being treated in the cities surveyed, up from just 23 percent in 2005.

Meanwhile, nearly 60 percent of household garbage was being properly disposed of, compared with less than 20 percent in 2005.

However, 200 of the cities surveyed, or more than one-third, still lacked a centralised sewage management system and 187 cities had no garbage disposal plants.

The environment watchdog has blamed provincial and local-level governments bent on achieving economic growth at all costs for the failure to make clear progress on pollution.

(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2006-06-06 08:30

China’s pollution problems are costing the country more than US$200 billion a year, a top official said yesterday as he called for stronger action to balance environmental protection against economic development.

Environmental damage is costing the government roughly 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, estimated Zhu Guangyao, deputy chief of the State Environmental Protection Agency. China’s GDP for 2005 was US$2.26 trillion.

Despite the efforts of half a million environmental officials in his agency and other organizations, China’s environmental picture is worsening and “allows for no optimism,” he said as he issued a report that described the situation as “grave.”

Zhu’s assessment came during a news conference tied to the release of China’s second white paper on environmental protection since 1996.

The report, titled “Environmental Protection in China (1996-2005),” was published by the Information Office of the State Council, China’s Cabinet.

The conflict between protecting the environment and encouraging development is becoming more serious, the paper said. A shortage of resources, a fragile ecological balance and insufficient environmental protection capacity are becoming critical problems hindering China’s development, it said.

As such, environmental protection must now become a “brake” on China’s economic macrocontrol policies and play a more prominent role in the approval process for large construction projects, Zhu said.

Projects will be canceled if they cause over-development of land resources or affect the surrounding environment negatively, he said.

The paper pointed out that since the late 1970s, China’s economy has developed rapidly. In the process, many environmental problems that have challenged developed countries over their 100-years or so of industrialization occurred in China all at the same time.

China has established several main goals for environmental protection for the next five years.

Among them, by 2010 environmental quality in key regions and cities will be improved and ecological deterioration will be brought under control even as rapid economic development continues.

The five-year plan requires energy consumption per unit of GDP to decline by 20 percent from the previous planning period.

The total amount of major pollutants discharged will be reduced by 10 percent, and forest coverage will be raised from 18.2 percent to 20 percent.

Despite the challenges that lie ahead, there were several bright spots noted in the white paper.

Discharges of industrial wastewater, sulfur dioxide, smoke and dust per unit of GDP have decreased by double-digit percentages from 1995.

The biggest increase in China’s commitment to environmental protection occurred in the past decade, the paper noted. Between 1996 and 2004, China’s investment in pollution control totaled 952.27 billion yuan (US$118.7 billion).

In 2005, investment amounted to 238.8 billion yuan, 1.3 percent of GDP

USA Today
July 4, 2005

Thanks to China’s incredible boom, the local economy here has nearly doubled in just four years. More than 100 factories occupy what were once unbroken fields of rice and cotton. Even the Petro China station, boasting 30 gasoline pumps, reflects a sense of abundance. But in this corner of northern China, about 60 miles east of Beijing, prosperity has come at a fearful cost. Dozens of local chemical factories — makers of toxins including sulfuric acid — disgorge wastewater directly into the Feng Chan river, which is black as ink and clotted with debris. Another nearby canal is so discolored, locals call it xiao hong he, or “little red river.”

Decades of such pollution have allowed industrial poisons to leach into groundwater, contaminating drinking supplies and leading to a rash of cancers, residents say. In this village, where the air has a distinctive sour odor, the rate of cancer is more than 18 times the national average. In nearby Liukuaizhuang, it’s 30 times the national figure, according to state-owned media. “The water is terrible,” says Li Baoqi, 41, a veterinary medicine salesman. “Drinking this kind of water is basically like suicide.”

Xiditou’s plight is far from unique. No country has lifted more people out of poverty faster than modern China. But in its pell-mell rush to create a xiaokang, or well-off society, Beijing is sacrificing its environment and public health on an altar of unbridled commerce. Now, environmental damage — by threatening China’s ability to maintain rapid growth — is commanding the attention of Chinese leaders. “The environment is beginning to bite back,” says Elizabeth Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The past two decades, China’s economy has grown at an average annual rate of more than 9%. But the economic cost of environmental harm, measured in public health, worker absenteeism and remediation efforts, is becoming prohibitively high. “This miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace,” Pan Yue, deputy director of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration, told the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Environmental injury costs China 8% to 15% of its annual gross domestic product, Pan said. In the north, encroaching deserts are prompting human migrations that swell overburdened cities. In the south, factories have closed periodically for lack of water, according to Economy, who wrote a book last year on China’s environmental woes. The World Bank estimates such shutdowns cost $14 billion annually in lost output. “What we’re going to see is changes in local or regional economies,” she says. “Certain types of industrial development simply may not be feasible.”

Finding balance won’t be easy

Yet, altering the balance between economic development and environmental protection won’t be easy. In the United States, citizen activism, a free press and an independent judiciary forced corporations to respect the environment. In China, the ruling Communist Party regards all three with suspicion, if not hostility. Residents of Xiditou found that out the hard way. They began complaining to government officials about their water five years ago, when the first batch of unexplained cancers appeared. National environmental officials, they say, were sympathetic and repeatedly told their local counterparts to act.

But local environment officials don’t answer to Beijing. Their funding, perks and promotions come from local party leaders — who typically place economic development above everything else. Over time, a familiar pattern emerged: Villagers would complain to Beijing. Officials there would tell local leaders to respond. Nothing would happen. “It’s obvious these factories are the economic support of the area. … It would be a very hard decision by the local government to close them all down,” says Wang Canfa, director of the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims in Beijing.

Cancer-causing substance

The center, one of the few non-governmental organizations tolerated by the Communist government, detected high levels of bacteria and fluoride in the villages’ water in 2003. It also found in Liukuaizhuang’s water concentrations of a cancer-causing substance called hydroxybenzene that exceeded government limits. Exposure to hydroxybenzene, an acidic byproduct of chemical manufacturing, causes cancer by depressing the immune system. Small amounts of fluoride help prevent tooth decay. But at high levels, the substance makes bones brittle.

Wang Peiting, 41, was diagnosed in March with cirrhosis of the liver and leukemia. “Prolonged exposure to environmental toxins” can trigger cirrhosis, according to the American Liver Foundation. And benzene is a potential cause of leukemia, according to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Her doctor says Wang, a mother of daughters ages 16 and 11, is doomed. But her husband, Li Baoqi, hasn’t broken the news to her yet.

By Chinese standards, the villages here are not poor. Some people own cars. Others enjoy totems of affluence — cell phones, microwave ovens, small televisions with rabbit-ear antennas. But the price tag for this comparative comfort is widespread, unexplained illness.

Cotton farmer Liu Dequan, 52, initially ignored the persistent cough he developed last year. But after he began losing weight, he visited the hospital in Tianjin, about 12 miles away, where doctors stunned him with a lung-cancer diagnosis. So far, his treatment has cost him his 50,000 yuan savings (about $6,038) and forced him to borrow an additional 65,000 yuan ($7,850) from friends and relatives. Liu blames the factories for his fatal illness. “It’s definitely the air and water around here,” he says. “I’m absolutely sure about that. I don’t smoke, and our family has no history of lung cancer. In fact, my family doesn’t have a history of cancer at all.”

People here now regard their drinking water as little better than liquid poison. But unable to afford bottled water for all of their daily needs, most adults continue to drink it. They buy mineral water only for their children.

A list of those who’ve died

Villagers have compiled a list of 261 people who have died in Xiditou and Liukuaizhuang since 1999; it bears the fingerprints of relatives who provided the information. Because some of the people died in their 70s and 80s, not all of the deaths likely resulted from pollution. But there are far more people who died before their time, ages 25, 28, 19, 37, 4, 34 and 36. One 9-year-old boy died of brain cancer. “These young people should not be dying,” says Lu Xiurong, 63, whose daughter-in-law, another non-smoker with no family history of lung cancer, became ill in 2002. Lu Delan, a mother of two, was 42 years old when she died. Lu Xiurong is convinced pollution killed her. “I have five neighbors who died of lung cancer,” she says. “That’s why I started to think this was caused by the pollution.”

The privately owned factories date to the early 1980s, when China began turning to private enterprise. They are clustered alongside the Yong Ding Xin River, which ultimately feeds the Bohai Sea, 25 miles east: Jing Bei Yo Qi, maker of paints and varnishes; Feng Tian Chemical Co., which produces sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide; and ink maker Yong Ming.

The Xian Dai Chemical Factory, located between the Yong Ding and Feng Chan rivers, produces dyes for leather and cotton products. Each day, its roughly 100 workers pass a slogan emblazoned on the wall in bright red: “Protect the environment and create a better world for the next generation.” A woman surnamed Zhao, who answered the factory phone and identified herself as a secretary in the general manager’s office, said the company complies with government regulations. She refused to provide her full name and referred a caller to another phone number, which turned out to be a facsimile machine.

Xiditou officials certainly don’t have to go far to see evidence of pollution. Less than one mile from the county government office, foaming green wastewater spews from a pipe directly into the Feng Chan. A thick, emerald scum coats the water’s surface. Even the riverbank is dyed a mottled green. But the local government appears more interested in quieting the problem than in solving it. On June 5, officials confiscated villagers’ rented bus and blocked about 60 people from traveling to Beijing to mark World Environment Day, residents say.

Most of the protesters gave up. But about 20 continued to Beijing by train. When they reached the capital, they were intercepted by Xiditou police who followed them to the offices of the State Environmental Protection Administration. Once back home, Li says, a local party official threatened him, saying, “I can put you in jail any time.”

A family moved

Li moved his family out of Xiditou several weeks ago because of harassment from local officials. Fearing government reprisals, the half-dozen villagers who described the pollution would speak with a foreign journalist only outside their village or on the telephone. Finally, in March of this year, stung by Beijing press coverage, the municipal government ordered the offending factories closed. And the factories complied — at least while the sun is up. Most of them simply switched to nighttime operations, several villagers said. Now, Wang’s legal aid center is preparing a lawsuit against the chemical factories. But Xu Kezhu, the center’s deputy director, says the complex case will be difficult to litigate because the local environmental bureau refuses to release its reports on the factories. And with so many companies involved, apportioning legal responsibility for the pollution is a nightmare.

The villagers plan to gather 30 to 40 cancer patients and try one more visit to Beijing’s environmental mandarins. If that fails, they are mulling a protest in Tiananmen Square — sacred ground to the Communist leadership, which routinely crushes any who dare to dissent there. “There’s nothing else we can do. It’s our only choice,” Li says. “It’s better than sitting in our homes waiting to die.”

China’s ocean environment, especially the shallow waters just off the coast, has been severely polluted by an increasing run-off of contaminants into the sea. A report released by China’s State Oceanic Administration says the country is faced with severe challenges in handling the pollution of the ocean.

The report, China’s Oceanic Environment Quality 2005, says that the ocean has been polluted by a harmful algal bloom, a sudden, massive growth of microscopic and macroscopic plant life.

It is estimated that last year there were over 80 incidents of algal blooms in the shallow waters off China’s coast, leading to direct economic losses of nearly 8.6 million US dollars.

A spokesperson for the State Oceanic Administration, Li Chunxian, says a run off of pollutants from the land is the source of the contamination.

“The run-off of pollutants from the land is heavy. That causes the deterioration of ecological system in the ocean, rivers, bays and wetlands. The pollutants contain substances that aid the growth of harmful algae. The excessive run-off of pollutants also damages the ecosystems of coral reefs.”

In addition, algal blooms cause fish to die by lowering the oxygen concentration of the water.

Over the past five years, China has seen increased contamination of the ocean. The total amount of waste water flowing into the ocean was over 31 billion tons, 9.6 billion tons more than in 2000.

The severe pollution has attracted the attention of environmental protection authorities. Many provinces and regions have adopted measures, including control on the run-off of pollutants and strengthening the monitoring of sea pollution.

Yantai, a city in east China, has been actively working on controlling pollution of the ocean. Jiang Qingchun is an official working in this area.

“The oceans have a limited capacity to absorb pollution. Now we have less and less fish and the ocean environment is deteriorating. We cannot endlessly exploit the oceans any more. We should protect them. And we also cannot pour rubbish into the ocean indiscriminately any more.”

He adds that it is difficult for oceans to recover from pollution, and so the pressing task is to reduce pollution in the future.

At present, China cannot recycle all the pollutants it produces due to lagging recycling facilities and poor environmental awareness in some areas.

But the authorities have pledged to make more efforts to improve this situation.

Source: China Daily