In China, Tide May Be Turning Against Polluters

Ted Plafker
International Herald Tribune

September 11, 2002

In the three years since he set up an environmental hotline, Wang Canfa
has heard thousands of heartbreaking stories from people who say their
health or livelihood has been imperiled by industrial pollution.

The complaints come from victims all across China, but when Wang decides he can help, his response seems more typically American. "The first thing we do is send lawyers and reporters," said Wang, director of the Beijing-based Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims.

The center is one of hundreds of environmental nongovernmental organizations that have sprung up in China in recent years. The development reflects not only a greater awareness about environmental issues on the part of the Chinese public, but also a greater willingness to challenge authorities and force improvements.

And despite China's well-earned image as a single-party dictatorship that frowns on civic activism and shuns public accountability, the victims sometimes succeed.

Hanging on the walls of Wang's cramped office in western Beijing are scrolls and banners bearing flowery inscriptions of thanks from the appreciative recipients of his help.

One is from the residents of a neighborhood in the northern port city of Tianjin who were plagued by the noxious, untreated exhaust of a coal-burning public heating plant operated by a government-affiliated real-estate developer.

Their complaints were ignored, and when the company began building a second plant, the residents took matters into their own hands, blockading the road to the new plant and shutting down the construction work.

The company finally responded by suing the activists for 600,000 yuan ($73,000) in damages. Then Wang alerted the press and sent in his lawyers. They determined that the company had violated regulations by allowing more than five years to lapse between getting approval for the new plant and building it.

"That was the legal technicality we got them on, and in the face of so much media attention, the company had to back down," Wang said.

The company dropped its demand for damages, paid 1,000 yuan in compensation to each of 100 of the residents, and, as a further goodwill gesture, built a new bicycle shelter for them. Most importantly, it adopted a cleaner design for the new heating plant.

Successful Legal Challenges

Cases such as this one show that China's growing body of environmental law and its fast-developing legal system now give ordinary people recourse that was previously unimaginable.

"Twenty years ago, anyone who raised a fuss like that would have been locked up as a counterrevolutionary," Wang said.

Today, China's state-run media carry frequent accounts of lawsuits and public protests against plastics factories, paper mills, and smelters across the country, launched by angry citizens suffering from the pollution these industries generate.

In some of these reported cases, polluters have been forced to pay compensation or make costly improvements to clean up their operations.

For each successful case, however, Wang can point to a failed one that just as clearly illustrates the flaws of the Chinese system in which courts and administrative agencies still lack any independence.

Local governments in China often run industrial enterprises themselves. Even when they don't, they rely on such enterprises to provide jobs, economic growth, and tax revenues.

Local governments also control and fund the local courts, and when faced with a dispute between a polluting enterprise and complaining residents, local officials can easily pressure the courts or regulators to rule in favor of the polluters.

"In all of the suits that we have lost, the courts have not followed the law. Instead, they ignored the legal or technical merits of our case in order to support the local enterprises," Wang said.

Growing Citizen Protest

Pressure from China's increasingly aware public is likely to continue growing.

According to a recent report from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, environmentalism is one of the few fields in which social activism is tolerated in China, and college students are often at the forefront.

The report said that as of last year, more than 180 student environmental groups were active in Sichuan Province alone, working on issues such as public education, wetland conservation, and promotion of ecotourism.

There is no end of environmental issues to tackle in China.

Officials acknowledge that water pollution is worsening. Severe pollution in both marine and inland fishing areas last year caused more than $400 million in losses. Desertification and grassland degradation are both spreading, according to the government.

For years, China's urban air quality has ranked among the worst in the world, and according to the State Environmental Protection Agency, suspended particulate levels continued to rise last year.

More Responsive Government

Although the main priority of China's central planners is to sustain annual economic growth rates above 7 percent, they also intend to invest $85 billion over the next five years in the uphill battle to reduce industrial pollution.

Most Chinese environmental activists remain confident that the situation will improve.

A major factor is the steady rise in Chinese living standards, according to Liang Congjie, president of the Beijing-based NGO Friends of Nature. "As people get wealthier, they are more concerned with their quality of life, and environmental protection is a big part of that," said Liang.

"The government is beginning to listen," he added, "and they are now much more responsive than before."

His group focuses less on activism and more on public education aimed at popularizing "green culture."

One measure of progress on that front is China's burgeoning "green" foods industry. Last year, more than 1,200 Chinese enterprises produced $6 billion worth of products that met the Ministry of Agriculture's standards for such food.

Although standards and regulation are lax compared with those of many Western countries, the designation is supposed to require that foods be free from harmful chemicals. Well-to-do Chinese urbanites are now paying premium prices for such products.

Green products accounted for only 3 percent of China's food market last year, but officials predict that share will increase rapidly in years to come.