China, new superpower, tries to master environment

BEIJING — This year, China will leapfrog Japan to become the second-biggest economy on Earth, behind only the USA, many economists predict. Next month, China starts broadcasts on CNN and other networks of an image-boosting commercial featuring stars such as basketballer Yao Ming and China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei.

Back at ground level, though, in what remains a developing country, China's people and government are struggling to deal with a series of natural disasters that some environmentalists believe are the deadly, man-made consequences of favoring economic growth over environmental protection.

The latest tragedy occurred early Sunday when heavy rain triggered landslides that blocked a river in Zhouqu County, an ethnically Tibetan area in northwestern Gansu province, forcing floodwater to sweep through the county seat. By 2 p.m. Monday, 337 people had died and 1,148 were missing, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

Premier Wen Jiabao flew to the region Sunday. "Don't move! We're getting you out," Wen shouted to people buried under homes Monday in images shown on state broadcaster CCTV.

Last week, Wen tried to comfort flood victims in northeastern Jilin province as China suffers its worst flooding in a decade.

Prior to the Zhouqu casualties, floods had killed at least 1,072 people this year in China, Shu Qingpeng, a flood control official, told the central government website www.gov.cn.

The floods have affected 140 million people nationwide, destroyed more than 1 million homes and caused direct economic losses of almost $31 billion, said Shu, deputy director of the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

Root causes of disasters

The Zhouqu landslide "appears to be a natural disaster, but it's actually a man-made disaster that would occur sooner or later," said Wen Bo, co-director of the China program of San Francisco-based Pacific Environment, a conservation group. "China's leaders are more experienced in handling natural disasters, but they have not woken up to dealing with the root causes of these disasters."

For decades, excessive logging in the Zhouqu area has reduced the vegetation that can prevent landslides, said Wen, and poor planning in the county seat, set deep in the Bailong River valley, allowed multistory buildings to be erected too close to the river, he said.

China's minister of land and resources, Xu Shaoshi, blamed geological factors Monday. Zhouqu is a landslide-prone area, suffering from the aftereffects of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, drought earlier this year and recent heavy rain, Xu said, according to Xinhua.

Challenging the official view, Fan Xiao, a Sichuan geological survey engineer, told the provincial government's news website that forest destruction, farmland expansion and overdevelopment of hydroelectric power stations should share the blame.

Vegetation damage, land reclamation and hydropower stations have all worsened flooding on the Yangtze River this year, botanist Jiang Gaoming told the Global Times newspaper last week.

Profits before environment

Profits and gross domestic product goals drive local governments and businesses, and "protecting the ecological environment cannot bring them visible profits in the short term," Jiang said. "Some local governments will consider environmental problems seriously only if the central government intervenes."

The Chinese public seem to share such sentiment. Before the latest incident, 82.4% of people polled by the China Youth Daily newspaper believed the recent floods were caused by human neglect. More than 50% said China lacked a long-term plan for flood prevention.

On top of flooding, China recently has suffered water pollution incidents, including a major oil spill. Water is "perhaps the most serious environmental challenge to China's development," said analyst Ma Jun, who runs a database recording water pollution in China. "Our economic development is still dependent on the expansion of resource- and pollution-intensive industries."

Especially at county levels, China's environmental ministry is understaffed, underpaid and underequipped, Ma said. "They are hamstrung by local officials who are keen to see GDP growth and put it ahead of environmental protection," he said. "It will take time to strengthen enforcement, but we can't wait, our environment can't wait."

As part of efforts to improve the environment and meet energy-efficiency targets, China on Sunday ordered the closing of 2,087 steel and cement mills and other factories with low energy efficiency, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

In recent years, China has discussed concepts such as "Green GDP" and the idea of evaluating officials not solely on GDP growth but also using ecological indicators, "but it hasn't happened yet," Wen Bo said. "Those who promote unsustainable development and short-term economic growth get promoted and push aside the ecological agenda," he said. "We need a serious review of what happened this summer. Conserving the natural environment is an investment in your own national assets."

source-http://www.usatoday.com