Toxic China
As breakneck economic growth transforms the country into an environmental disaster zone, a few devoted activists are struggling to turn things around--before it's too late
By TERRY McCARTHY Beijing and JAIME A. FLORCRUZ Dalian
The Chinese Communist Party is not given to admitting it is wrong. But when President Jiang Zemin stood up last September at a rally celebrating the "victory" over the Yangtze River floods, he did just that. The flooding, which killed 3,600 people and left millions homeless, showed that for too long China, in its drive for economic development, had ignored nature. From now on, Jiang said, there should be "coordinated development of the economy and ecological environment."
Now comes the hard part: translating Jiang's formula into action. The Chinese President's words may have been insightful, but will they be heeded when memories of the flood recede and economic imperatives again loom large? Confronting China's environmental problems is like counting fish in a river--it's hard to know where to start and impossible to end. Except that in China, 70% of all waterways are drying up or so polluted there are no fish.
Zhaba Duojie thought he had found a good place to start, on the vast Tibetan plateau in northwestern Qinghai province. A Communist Party functionary, Zhaba began patrolling the plains as a self-styled game warden. In that corner of China, armed men in four-wheel-drive pickup trucks routinely hunt the endangered chiru antelope for the soft fur under its chin that is used to make shahtoosh shawls. Trade in shahtoosh is outlawed across the world, but the shawls end up on the black market, where they sell for as much as $10,000. Life on the snowy wastes of Qinghai is unforgiving: last October Zhaba, 46, showed Time pictures of two antelope poachers he had shot dead after they attacked him and his men with automatic rifles. But Zhaba was happy to be out on patrol. His men seemed to worship his fearless good nature, and he felt he was finally doing something worthwhile with his life. To further guard against poaching, he was drawing up a plan to protect the newly established nature preserve Kekexili in western Qinghai.
But on Nov. 8 Zhaba committed suicide by shooting himself in the head--three times. Or so the local authorities improbably claimed when news of Zhaba's death reached Beijing. Environmentalists in the capital were incredulous, suspecting the involvement of poaching interests. "The specific cause of his death needs further investigation as there are many questionable points in this case," editorialized the Beijing Youth Daily. The paper said Zhaba's wife had left their house at about 10 p.m. to look for their youngest son at a neighbor's home when she heard three shots. She rushed back and found her husband slumped in a pool of blood. He was taken to a hospital and declared dead-on-arrival.
Cynics pass the same judgment on the state of environmentalism in China: DOA. For every concerned individual, they say, there are tens of millions who are little inclined to ponder the ecological consequences of their actions as they eke out a meager living. And if that is the case in many developing countries, in China the problem is infinitely more acute because of the sheer size of its population--at 1.2 billion, China is home to nearly one-quarter of the world's people--trying to exist on barely 7% of the earth's cultivable land. And with its reliance on coal to produce 75% of its energy, China also exports a lot of its pollution--acid rain to Korea, smog to Hong Kong.
The problems are daunting. Nine of the 10 most air-polluted cities in the world are in China, according to a recent report by the World Resources Institute in Washington, and respiratory disease is the leading cause of death. Even China's topography works against it: mountains cover 58% of the country--compared with only 15% of the United States, for example--exacerbating China's shortage of farmland while heightening susceptibility to soil erosion.
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