Jonathan Watts - When a Billion Chinese Jump

On paper, the results were stunningly successful, particularly by the standards of what was then still a nascent environmental movement. 7In 1992, China won international plaudits for signing up to the Ramsar Convention, an international agreement on wetlands conservation. 8A year later a national wetland nature reserve was established in Fuyuan under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Forestry, followed by other state-backed development restrictions. 9China joined hands with Russia and international NGOs to formulate a management plan for Sanjiang that was expected to establish a model for nature reserves throughout the nation. 10In 2000, the Asian Development Bank and the Global Environment Fund, which is affiliated with the World Bank, pledged $20 million for biodiversity conservation in the region.

Even the military jumped on the conservation bandwagon. Environmental protection was declared the patriotic duty of the People’s Liberation Army as part of its commitment to defend the homeland. Reforestation was declared a militarily strategic goal. 11Ma’s achievements were recognized with a promotion to dean of the Environment Department at the People’s University, one of the nation’s most prestigious academic institutions. After years in the wilderness, the conservation movement suddenly had a champion, a budget, a pilot project, international financing, and the backing of the state. For once, money, power, and the law were lined up on the side of nature. But even that was not enough.

Anarchy ruled on Harbin’s roads. The taxi drivers had taken over. I had never witnessed anything like it anywhere else in China. The drivers asked where you wanted to go and, if the answer was not to their liking or you failed to agree on an off-meter bonus, they drove off contemptuously without a word of explanation. Even if you were fortunate enough to secure a cab, the driver would stop constantly along the way in search of additional fares, cramming as many people inside the car as possible. At first I found the practice immensely irritating, not to mention dangerous and almost certainly illegal, but there was a reason. Metered fares were distance-based, with no allowance made for time spent in the ever-worsening traffic jams that plagued the area. Local people sympathized. Many passengers even wound their windows down and touted on the driver’s behalf. Few haggled long over the price. Nobody wants to walk when it’s minus 20°C outside.

I was dropped off at the Environmental Protection Department, scene of a similar balancing act between regulatory ideals and people struggling to make a living. Historically, its officials have never been in such a strong position. International concerns about global warming and domestic fears about pollution have enabled the ministry to push through ambitious laws on environmental impact assessment and set meaningful targets for reductions in energy use and toxic discharge. They have named and shamed many polluters, using the media and NGOs to make up for their lack of clout inside the political establishment. 12As elsewhere, the deputy environment minister Pan Yue proved a genuine force for change. 13With other like-minded people around him, the environmental protection bureaucracy appeared to be in the ascendant. At a national level, environmental protection work was given ministerial status in 2008. With it came a full vote in the State Council. 14

But the ministry lacks a strong national network. At a regional level, environment departments continue to answer to local governments. Even more than NGOs, they are obliged to work within the system rather than to expose and oppose its faults.

The EPD’s offices were much like those of any other bureau of government throughout China. I was led along uniformly fluorescent-lit corridors past uniformly brown office doors in a uniformly orthogonal building, to the standard interview room, which was square and spacious with calligraphy and landscape paintings on one wall, large low chairs along the sides, and a well-polished table in the middle set with white-lidded cups for the green tea that arrived soon after. Bureaucratic hospitality was pleasingly not so standard, and could sometimes be rather convivial.

Li Ping, the head of Heilongjiang’s Environment Protection Department, was in good spirits—a very different mood from his most famous public appearance in November 2005 as the unfortunate official who had to admit to one of the worst pollution cover-ups in the country’s history. 15That had been, he claimed, a turning point for government accountability. An explosion at a China National Petroleum Company plant hundreds of miles upstream in Jilin Province released more than 100 times the safe level of benzene into the Songhua, one of the three rivers that flows into the Sanjiang watershed. Five people died in the blast at the factory, but it was not until more than three days later that people living along the river were told that toxins were coursing in their direction. In Harbin, officials initially announced water supplies would have to be cut off for a few days for “pipe maintenance.” The truth emerged just before the 50-kilometer poison slick hit the city, prompting a rush to the airport and railway station by those who could escape and fear and fury among those left behind. The disaster was seen as a watershed for environmentalists. Coinciding with the central government’s shift toward a new model of sustainable “Scientific Development,” the Songhua spill was cited as an example of everything that was wrong with the old way of doing things. 16

It had taken similar crises in other countries to strengthen the powers of their environmental agencies. For Japan, it was the deadly mercury poisoning incident at Minamata. In the United States, it was the publication of Silent Spring in 1962, when the author, Rachel Carson, revealed previously unknown consequences of pesticide on wildlife. For China in 2005, it looked for a while as if Songhua might become a similar rallying point.

For a short period, journalists enjoyed an open season. Television broadcasts and newspapers were suddenly free to criticize lax environmental regulations and the hardship of ordinary people. The media was filled with images of Harbin residents lining up with buckets and kettles in icy winter streets as they waited for water tankers usually used for road cleaning. 17

For Li, brought up in a political environment where control and secrecy were the norm, the frenzy of media scrutiny was a shock. “It was a strange experience for me to have to respond to a barrage of questions. I had only seen that on TV before,” he recalled. But it was worthwhile. Li told me the media attention brought immediate budgetary rewards. Heilongjiang had been lobbying the central government for ten years for funds to clean up the Songhua. But other rivers, such as the Huai, the Liao, and the Yellow, were considered more urgent. After the benzene leak, however, the Songhua became an instant priority. Within months, Heilongjiang got everything it wanted—13 billion yuan for 116 water treatment plants and other projects to improve the river. 18

The environment protection minister, Xie Zhenhua, resigned. Nine officials at the CNPC factory were fired and others at the Jilin environmental protection bureau were punished. 19Li insisted Heilongjiang’s government was getting tougher in implementing regulations, but its record was mixed. 20As one of China’s poorest provinces, polluting firms that would be rejected in wealthier areas were more likely to be accepted here. 21To overcome local government resistance to tighter environmental rules, Li tried to galvanize the media, another change that was supposedly helped by the Songhua spill. 22“This is a very big change. We want to raise public attention on these issues and to disillusion local governments who think we will protect them.”