Jonathan Watts - When a Billion Chinese Jump

The local government was taking countermeasures. As in many other cities, it was switching to gas-powered central heating instead of coal. Yang told me they had already shut down hundreds of small mines and were in the process of closing 160 of 196 iron foundries and 57 of 153 coking plants. Small, dirty, and dangerous plants were to be replaced by large, cleaner, and more carefully regulated facilities. But I had heard that before. Over the years, local governments announced coal-mine closures as often as crackdowns on markets of pirated goods. Neither usually lasted long. As soon as the price rose and attention shifted, the illegal mines and fake DVD shops reopened. Yang insisted it was different this time because the changes were being driven by business (nobody wanted to invest in a polluted place), bureaucratic self-interest (local officials needed to meet “green targets” to be promoted under a national reward scheme), and shifting political priorities. Cleaner skies and safer mines were a focus of the central government’s Scientific Outlook on Development.

“We have more power than before,” Yang said. “The mayor says we can sacrifice economic growth in order to improve air quality. That used to be unthinkable.”

Outside, there were signs of change. Many factories appeared to be closed: not a wisp of smoke emerged from their chimneys. Over the previous year, Linfen’s residents had breathed fifteen more days of “blue sky” 15air than during the preceding twelve months. But it was progress from a low base. Official statistics noted the air was unhealthy for 163 days of the year. Even those data were hard to verify. A political haze obscures the subject of pollution. In another off-the-record meeting, a local government official and a people’s representative told me about the city’s problems and the difficulties of dealing with them. But neither was willing to speak officially. It was too sensitive a subject, they said. It seemed that the authorities were genuine about pushing for a clear-up and had orders to do so from on high, but old habits would die hard. Precedent suggested many of the closed factories and mines would reopen. As long as the demand for coal persisted, the risks to the environment and health would not go away. Not long after I was there, 254 villagers were killed in a mudslide after a mine’s waste pond burst its banks. 16

The next morning as we were leaving Linfen, I made a bet with my assistant how long we would have to drive before we saw blue skies again. Ever the optimist, I guessed two hours. She opted for three. Neither of us came close. We never did escape the haze in Shanxi. It lightened slightly as we lifted out of the Fen River valley but persisted all four hours to Taiyuan Airport. Even on the plane, we failed to climb above it. The pilot saved fuel by flying at a low altitude, entirely through the smog. When we landed forty minutes later, the familiar murky shroud was there outside the plane to meet us. It was almost comforting.

Satellite images of northern China show this is far from unusual. In the energy-intense seasons of winter and summer, when millions of heaters and air conditioners are switched on, all it takes is a few windless days and a murky haze thickens over Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hebei, Henan, and Beijing. It is usually darkest in Shaanxi, where the smog becomes trapped by the Qinling mountain range. Traffic is only partly to blame. Coal-fired industrial boilers, furnaces, and home heaters are the main source. They belch out 85 percent of the country’s sulfur dioxide, 17which—mixed with another coal by-product, soot—forms the acid rain that now falls on 30 percent of the Chinese landmass, ruining crops and corroding buildings. 18The World Bank estimates the damage caused by acid rain at 37 billion yuan every year. 19

Air pollution is appalling in almost every city in China. The toll on human health is enormous. 20Barely 1 percent of the urban population breathes air considered healthy by the World Health Organization, and it is worst in northern China. The result is premature death, lung cancer, bronchitis, and other respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Another high-risk group are poor peasants who slowly poison themselves by heating their homes with dirty coal. But the full risks are obscured. The toxic buildup of lead, mercury, and other heavy metals in the soil and water near coal plants and smelting factories is not usually measured. Entire communities are being poisoned without realizing it. 21

Yet coal mines are as much a part of China’s civilization as paddy fields. Mining and industry have been crucial in ensuring the longevity of the Middle Kingdom. Despite its reputation as an agricultural civilization, for most of the last 2,000 years China has been by far the biggest producer of coal and iron in the world, a status lost only temporarily in the early nineteenth century when Britain began industrializing. It is no coincidence that the country’s recent return to great power status has come at a time when it is once again number one in these basic industries and when large numbers of peasants are working below rather than on the surface.

People in northern China have been burning coal since the Neolithic era 10,000 years ago, which is said (by the China Coal Information Institute) to be a first for the world. The fuel was a source of power and survival. Coal was used to smelt iron as early as the Warring States period (475–221 BC), when it was considered essential to mass-produce weapons. By the Song dynasty (960–1279), smithies were so expert at steel production they could equip an army of a million men with swords, armor, and steel-tipped arrows.

The black fuel was the basis of the world’s earliest military-industrial complexes. In the late sixteenth century the army commander on the northwestern frontier, Tian Le, sent out excavation teams into the mountains to search for the ore and trees needed to smelt iron for weapons. He requisitioned foundry workers from Shanxi and Shaanxi to help. Their success was lauded in dispatches.

“In Hexi, the region where the wars are conducted, iron smelted in the morning can be put to use the same evening,” wrote an admiring deputy. “The barbarians within our frontiers have repeatedly been given a bloody nose in recent times, and have been sticking out their tongues in astonishment, speaking of an ‘iron wall’! When they now further hear that we are smelting iron here, won’t they be inclined to behave themselves?” 22

As in films and art today, the misery and dangers of mining were another frequent theme of poems. Few are more evocative than Wang Taiyue’s description of environmental destruction and the grim life of a copper miner in the eighteenth century: