The data on which the analysis is based was first presented in the ambitious 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study, which was published in December in The Lancet, a British medical journal. The authors decided to break out numbers for specific countries and present the findings at international conferences. The China statistics were offered at a forum in Beijing on Sunday.

“We have been rolling out the India- and China-specific numbers, as they speak more directly to national leaders than regional numbers,” said Robert O’Keefe, the vice president of the Health Effects Institute, a research organization that is helping to present the study. The organization is partly financed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the global motor vehicle industry.

What the researchers called “ambient particulate matter pollution” was the fourth-leading risk factor for deaths in China in 2010, behind dietary risks, high blood pressure and smoking. Air pollution ranked seventh on the worldwide list of risk factors, contributing to 3.2 million deaths in 2010.

Wong adds that premature death calculations are “politically threatening in the eyes of Chinese officials,” who have redacted related sections from previous reports. However the reports continue to add up. Several recent studies have also firmed up the link between pollution and birth defects in China.

Indeed, pollution has loomed larger as a threat to Communist Party legitimacy this year – air pollution in Beijing reached record levels in January and thousands of dead pigs were found floating in rivers near Shanghai in March, prompting concerns over water pollution. An aniline spill in Shanxi province in January also caused the contamination of the water supply in a handful of cities, underscoring the growing dangers of China’s polluted rivers.

While bureaucratic infighting may complicate the government’s push to address the problem, Beijing’s government announced last week that it would spend $16 billion over three years to improve sewage disposal, garbage treatment and air quality in the capital city. Still, structural roadblocks exist that may hamper the chances for serious reform. With state-owned enterprises among China’s biggest polluters, and local governments hesitant to do anything that would threaten growth, environmental protection continues to take a backseat to profits. Citing the case of Fujian-based state-owned mining giant Zijin Mining, Reuters details China’s “losing battle” against powerful state-owned polluters:

China has the laws, but its ability to enforce them is weak, especially in the face of giant firms that pour millions into otherwise bereft local government coffers. Critics say Beijing also lacks the will to tackle the problem.

…

Like many state-owned firms, Zijin is more than just an enterprise, and has benefited from a vast state support system giving it access to cheap credit and a blind eye when it comes to pollution. Its dominance of the local economy also means that many officials think that what’s good for Zijin is generally good for the community at large.

The situation is made worse by the fact that state firms like Zijin were carved out of mining bureaus and never quite lost their role as arms of the government, maintaining old relationships and channels of communication as well as running hospitals, schools or retirement homes. For many residents seeking to complain about pollution, it is often difficult to see where the company ends and the state begins.

“The problem tends to involve the capture of the government by various interests – these problems are exacerbated when the company actually is the government,” said Alex Wang, professor at Berkeley and an expert in China’s environmental legislation.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, CCP legitimacy, death, environmental degradation, pollution, reform, state-owned enterprises, water pollution
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At least 100,000 graves were rebuilt during the Spring Festival holiday, accounting for 7.7 percent of those leveled, official statistics from the Zhoukou Civil Affairs Bureau revealed.

The rebuilding of the graves comes as a counterattack after the controversial grave destruction campaign launched by the local government in February last year. In total, the campaign leveled over 2 million graves and reclaimed over 3 million hectares of farmland.

[…] The seesaw battle between the local government and the villagers continues today, highlighting the sensitivity of modern political actions when clashing with long-standing traditions.

[…] Tomb-Sweeping Day, a traditional holiday for honoring ancestors, will take place on April 4. Gong said he and other government officials are facing a lot of pressure as a new wave of grave rebuilding is expected around the day.

To prevent people from rebuilding graves, the local government plans to give out trees to villagers to commemorate Tomb-Sweeping Day. The idea is that villagers will plant the trees at the original spot of their ancestral graves as a marker and commemorate the dead ancestors under the tree

Global Times also recently profiled local official Zhao Keluo, who believes that he was removed from the Henan CPPCC as punishment for his vocal opposition to the tomb removals.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: agriculture, death, farmland, Henan, land disputes, land grabs, tombs
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Crowds of survivors protested outside the local disaster relief headquarters on Sunday night, after it emerged that victims had been cremated without their families’ approval. Local authorities apologized, but explained that they were not equipped to deal with so many dead bodies at once. From Xinhua:

“Why can’t I see my child for the last time?” Luo Yuanju, a migrant worker who hurried home after she got the tragic news that she had lost 29 relatives in the landslide, told the Beijing News. “This cremation was done without our approval. Why couldn’t the authorities wait for one or two days?”

[…] Government authorities had cremated all the bodies by Sunday, triggering anger from the victims’ families. According to the tradition of the village, where dwellers are mostly members of the Yi ethnic minority, the bodies of the dead are usually buried instead of cremated.

Lei Chuying, deputy head of Zhenxiong county, said cremation orders were given due to consideration of epidemic prevention and people’s feelings.

“Many parts of the bodies were missing while the buried were dug out,” Lei said, “The painful scene might cause trauma among relatives.”

An official investigation quickly concluded that the landslide was an entirely natural disaster, but local authorities have still faced criticism over their lack of preparedness. From Global Times:

Jiang Xingwu, a geological expert in Yunnan, told a press conference on Saturday afternoon that the area’s steep incline of 35 to 50 degrees and the composition of the soil made it prone to landslides.

Jiang said that the earthquakes with magnitudes of 5.7 and 5.6 which hit neighboring Yiliang county in September 2012 were also a cause, and the continued rainy and snowy weather over the past month led to the saturation of the slope, with gravity eventually causing the landslide.

The People’s Daily, a flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Sunday questioned why there wasn’t any early warning given the prolonged rainy and snowy weather over the past month.

[…] Also of concern was the fact that a 2010 geological disaster prevention plan by the Zhenxiong government showed that the local government had compiled files for 184 hazardous sites including 29 major ones areas, but Gaopo village was not on the list.

In addition, some locals continued to voice suspicions that nearby mining activity was really to blame. From Xinhua:

Some villagers believe the landslide may have been triggered by a gas explosion, and they doubt the experts’ conclusion that the coal mine boundary was 500 meters away from the landslide.

“The mining area is right beneath the landslide,” a coal miner in Gaopo said, as quoted by media on Monday.

Witnesses told Xinhua they saw “earth and rocks sprayed up into the air” when the landslide occurred. At the same time, some other villagers said they had not been to the scene and only heard about the “explosion” from others.

[…] Wang Shijun, another person who lost family in the landslide, said a big crack appeared before the landslide. “Big enough to swallow a bull.”

However, some villagers said the crack was 1 meter wide and some said a half meter wide, while others said there was no crack.

Update: Global Times reports that 72 of the villagers have written to the State Council requesting a second investigation into the cause of the landslide.

Luo Yuanshou, the brother of a victim, initiated the joint letter and sent to the State Council on Wednesday. The villagers believe the Gaopo coal mine, which is 500 meters from the landslide scene, could have played a role in the landslide. Villagers wondered why the hillside remained stable following a 50-day snowstorm in 2008.

Luo told the Global Times that the villagers are demanding the State Council order the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, the Ministry of Land and Resources and the China University of Geosciences to investigate the landslide. The original investigation “hastily concluded the landslide had nothing to do with the mine without even an on-site investigation of the mine. The hill was not that steep and is covered with vegetation,” said Luo.

Jiang Xingwu, who headed the original investigation, told the Global Times Wednesday that he stands by the results of his investigation, adding he understands that the villagers may want another opinion.

The preference for burial over cremation is not limited to the Yi: see ‘Henan Officials Commit a Grave Error‘ on CDT. Neither is Friday’s landslide the only apparently natural disaster for which human activity has been blamed: see ‘2008 Sichuan Earthquake Likely Man-Made‘.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: coal mining, death, disaster relief, earthquakes, funerals, landslides, mining, natural disasters, State Council, Yunnan
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Even many critics of the grave-razing program […] acknowledge that China needs to reform funeral practices (and, inevitably, encourage cremation) to meet growing land demands. What primarily offends these commentators is the brusque method used to clear away the graves in Zhoukou. On Nov. 19, Zhong Yongheng, a native of Zhoukou and a journalist with People’s Daily, the official, self-declared Communist Party mouthpiece, used his account on the Twitter-like Ten Cent microblog, to post his family’s experience with Zhoukou’s program. His family, he notes, no longer lives in Zhoukou but has relocated north to Beijing:

“You should give us notice at least before you damage our ancestral tombs, don’t you think? My family members are all in Beijing and didn’t get any advance notice from anyone. Then we suddenly received news that our ancestral tombs were leveled by an excavator. My parents turned toward the south, wailing.”

[…] So far, there’s no evidence that Zhoukou’s officials — or its government — will benefit financially from the grave- clearing program. On the contrary, the Beijing News has reported that some low-level government officials, under pressure to provide good examples for the farmers, have personally dug up their ancestors’ bones.

In one tragic case of a low-level official making an example of his ancestors, however, the digging dislodged a large tombstone that crashed onto two of his living family members, killing both. Sympathy was a rare sight in the several hundred comments left beneath the Beijing News story, many of which suggested that supernatural forces were at play. Meanwhile, other comments took a more vindictive approach, with one of the most repeated comments qualifying as the most direct: “Deserved it.”

At Global Times, Yu Jincui wrote that the “aggressive and showy tomb excavation campaign stinks to high heaven“, explained the depth of the taboo surrounding burial sites, and condemned the authorities’ heavy-handed attempt to overrule locals’ concerns.

In Chinese tradition, the removal of ancestral graves is the biggest insult one can endure, and those who excavate tombs are said to be subject to the most vicious curse.

[…] Considering the cultural and historical background of tombs and the importance they have for people, villagers’ resistance to their removal is not only understandable, but also predictable. In order for this plan to work, the government needs to both cooperate with and respect local residents.

[…] Those who excavate others’ tombs are traditionally considered to be cursed. The reputation of some historical figures is forever tainted by their merciless excavation of others’ tombs, such as Sun Dianying, a warlord in the 1920s who desecrated and looted the Eastern Royal Tombs of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In light of strong public opposition, tomb removal in many cities has been halted, including in Zhoukou.

I am afraid the efforts of these local officials are doomed to go down in history as a bad example in the tale of China’s funeral reform. China’s local governments should understand that using force to promote reform is no longer effective today. Leaders in Henan and other provinces should take time to reflect on this.

Caixin’s Wang Yong acknowledged the economic and political pressures on local officials and the need for reform of burial practices. But, he argued, the “tomb-flattening campaign” epitomised the “typical” Chinese approach of using a huge and inflexible bureaucracy to shunt economic development forward at all costs.

First, there are usually serious legal complications. In the case of forced tomb removal, article 20 of the Mortuary Service Administration Act says that improperly buried remains can be forcibly removed. But according to the Administration Enforcement Law that came to effect last January, the act has no authority to enforce the provision. If enforcement is to be implemented, an administrative decision must be made by the civil affairs officials and executed by a court.

Had the Henan authorities followed this procedure, even if they had enforced their “tomb-flattening policy” for 10 years, they wouldn’t have achieved much. Sadly, the political movement is often in total contradiction with the rule of law in China.

Second, value and cost calculations follow the internal logic of bureaucracy. Career promotion is the incentive and “political achievements” are the yardstick. Officials follow this without thinking of the interests of the community as a whole.

This is why even when scholars such as Yao Zhongqiu, a research fellow at Cathay Institute for Public Affairs, call for the protection of traditional Chinese culture and people’s freedom to worship, tradition still bears no weight in the face of the pressure placed on officials.

It is difficult to calculate the hidden social cost of people’s mental suffering. It does not affect officials’ “political achievements,” therefore it does not enter into their consideration.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: death, economic development, forced evictions, funerals, Henan, land reclamation, local corruption, local officials, tombs
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In China these days, just about every form of commerce is thriving, including decidedly illegal ones like prostitution and counterfeiting. But not coffin making.

For centuries, this city’s Longevity Lane was the best-known place in China to buy top-quality cedar coffins. Legend has it that the city’s reputation was established when Liu Zhongyuan, a great poet of ninth-century China, died here in domestic exile and his body was placed in a cedar coffin for shipment to his home province in northern China. After a journey of six months, the poet’s body is said to have been as fresh as the day he died.

Ask for a coffin here these days, though, and a visitor is sent to a department store, where miniature mahogany coffins sell for $2 apiece as unlikely good-luck charms. Instead – Western executives worried about illegal copying, please take note – a strictly enforced ban prevents the sale of coffins in the city.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2005. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: death, funerals
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