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As China Goes Private the Pollution Soars

by Catherine Sampson
IN winter. Beijing's air Is filled with billions of soot particles as families light stoves fuelled by poor quality coal. The smog plays havoc with the environment and before long, visitors find they have a hoarse, rasping cough.
The cities of China are some of the most polluted In the world. In Eastern Europe, the extent of environmental disaster did not become clear until after the collapse of communism and the secrecy It bred. In China, officials waver between defensiveness and honesty.
Pollution has not grown as fast as the economy, they say. At the same time they admit that the situation Is "grim" and have asked developed countries for money to help In the fight against environmental
Beijing says it spent more than 11 billion yuan between 1986 and 1989 on environmental protection, and will Invest a further 220 billion yuan over the next decade.
Heavy industry is only partly to blame. Ten years of economic reform have spawned myriad township enterprises which now employ nearly 100 million people and produce about 25 per cent of the country's GNP.
These enterprises also spew toxic emissions Into the air and the water. They have neither the expertise not the funding to reduce the pollution they cause and lie outside the more easily controlled state system.
Coal constitutes more than 70 per cent of China's total energy source and causes 70 per cent of pollution. Every year, burning coal In homes and enterprises releases 20 million tonnes of smog dust, 80 per cent of all solid wastes and 15 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide.
The Guangdong-Guangxl-Sichuan-Gulzhou basin has become one of the three largest acid rain zones in the world.
In addition, it Is estimated that about 36 billion tonnes of waste water are discharged each year
Solid industrial waste In 1988 amounted to 560 millton
tonnes. And the 12 million refrigerators China produces each year all use the dreaded chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that are creating holes in the earth's ozone layer.
Beijing has passed volumes of regulations on pollution control demanding that enterprises limit their waste emission and Impose fines for vio-
lating the rules. But In China rules arc made to be bent.
Enterprises are usually willing to risk fines. In one case, a handkerchief factory in Qingdao was closed for pumping out hazardous levels of poisonous gases — but only after 10,000 local residents had petitioned for the closure.
“Sometimes we give them
the assistance and do 1m-provcmenls and they can t manage the problem.' says Professor Niu Shiru. director of the National Institute of Environmental Health and Engineering. "A year passes and we’re back at square one."
Government officials try to avoid discussing the effects of pollution on health, perhaps
embarrassed that in a socialist society growth should harm the health of the proletariat
In China's heavy industrial hearland of Liaoning Province, death from chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases is four or five times higher than in developed countries.
— Gemini News
Catherine Sampson Is Bey Ing correspondent of the Times of London.