If the central government’s decrees are opaque, local authorities’ can be downright ridiculous. In 2001, hospital officials in the southern city of Shenzhen specified that nurses should show precisely eight teeth when smiling. In 2003, Hunan Province, in central China, stipulated that the breasts of female candidates for civil-service positions should be symmetrical. The next year, public safety officials in the northern city of Harbin ruled that policemen whose waistlines exceeded 36 inches had to go. In 2006, transportation officials in Zhejiang Province, just south of Shanghai, banned employees from sporting facial hair. The following year, in an effort to reduce the school-dropout rate, Pinghe County in Fujian Province, on the southeast coast, decreed that a junior high school diploma was required to marry.

Several of these rules have since been revoked, but their wacky and arbitrary nature demonstrates the arrogance of power in China. One can imagine all too easily their creators — sitting in comfortable armchairs, drinking high-grade tea and smoking fine cigarettes — discussing the issues at hand as if they were purely intellectual abstractions, never considering how ordinary people might react. That people will be unhappy is no cause for concern because, for so long, the power of the state has trampled on individual rights. Only when rules are so onerous that they stir actual protest do higher-ups take notice: “You guys are just making a mess of things,” they’ll tell their bureaucrat underlings. “This is not good for social stability.” The rules are then quietly rescinded — sometimes.

[Source]

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Post tags: abuse of power, government, regulations, transparency, yu hua
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At 2:15pm protesters rolled out another long banner, this time white with black letters. The police, who earlier voiced that the red banner [reading "Anning oil refinery, don’t put our home into environmental hell!"] was too provocative, sent a small troop to inspect the white banner which read “Give me back beautiful Kunming! We want to survive! We want to be healthy! PX project, get out of Kunming!” Protesters rushed to engage with the police, asking whether or not the banner passed muster. With a supportive and encouraging nod from a police captain, the crowd burst into applause and paraded the banner around the square. […]

[…] Some media outlets reported cell phone service disruption at the protest zone. I personally did not experience this. No organization or local NGO announced themselves as the protest organizer and no names of organizations have been named by media outlets. At the same time, media reports have given very little credit to the protesters for maintaining civility (not a guarantee for Chinese demonstrations) and to the police force for patiently allowing (and thus softly promoting the demonstration). After all, Kunming’s security forces have to breathe the city’s air just the same as anyone.

Protesters are awaiting public announcement from the city or provincial government on the status of the PX plant. They are calling for greater transparency in the approval process and disclosure of the project’s environmental assessment. Until these results are delivered, this issue is likely to gain momentum among Kunming’s citizens making the 5/4 protest the first of many. […]

In contrast with the Kunming demonstration, planned protests in Chengdu on the same day were met with a obstructive tactics such as a “weekend-long earthquake drill” and—as NPR’s Louisa Lim reported—a rescheduled weekend:

The tentacles of the stability-maintenance machine go deep, and all of them swung into action in Chengdu. A woman who’d forwarded a message about the protest on social media was forced to apologize on television earlier in the week. At least 10 dissidents were put under house arrest or forced to “go on holiday,” according to a local human rights website. Meanwhile, employees at state-run work units were warned that they’d be sacked if they protested.

Then there was an enormous leafleting campaign. Households received letters from the government calling for “everyone to stand firm and not believe rumors, and not participate [in protests] in order to prevent people with other motives from seizing this opportunity to create turmoil.” The letters had the unintended effect of bringing the Pengzhou plant to the attention of those who hadn’t already heard about it, creating an even greater groundswell of suppressed discontent.

[…] Since any attempt to protest would clearly have been unwise, some citizens protested in silence by wearing facemasks. Given the levels of pollution, however, this was ineffective. Others commented wryly that the police show of force represented a new “Chengdu model” of dissent, where the actual marching had been outsourced to the security forces.

An editorial in the state-owned Global Times argued that heavy industry projects are economically necessary, but that trying to brush public concerns aside is the wrong approach:

China’s economic development is inseparable from the development of heavy chemical projects. However, the reality is that residents do not want to pay for China’s overall situation at the price of their living environment.

Questions over the development of heavy chemical projects are mainly discussed by local governments and enterprises. Governments have good intentions, with the goals of developing the economy and creating employment, while the public focuses on environmental situation. It has become a stalemate.

To break through this deadlock, local governments should make ordinary people’s environmental anxieties their first concern. They should represent ordinary people’s ecological and comprehensive interests and strive for these interests. Problems will be solved in a much more orderly and rational manner if governments are trusted by public in this regard.

[…] Hanging on to outdated social governance approaches will only make things worse. There is always a way out for heavy chemical projects. Current problems come from the methods of dealing with them.

Also at Global Times, a report on the protests by Chang Meng and Duan Wuning stressed the importance of timely transparency surrounding industrial projects:

“PX is a basic petrochemical raw material and is safe if proper protocols are followed. People are scared because there is a lack of access to information or participation in the projects,” Jin Yong, a leading petrochemical expert at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times.

[…] Information disclosure for both projects was opaque and came out late under public pressure.

“We met with the project committee in April, which was the first public communication event after the construction for two years,” a staffer of Green Kunming, a local environmental NGO, told the Global Times.

“Public rights to information access, participation in environmental policies and judicial remedies are key to solving these situations and preventing the EIA from being manipulated by developers and officials,” Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, told the Global Times.

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Post tags: Chengdu, Chengdu PX, economic development, environmental protests, Kunming, Kunming PX, Ma Jun, protests, PX, Sichuan, stability maintenance, transparency, Yunnan
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When the research team approached China’s Ministry of Commerce, which oversees main components of the country’s aid program, the answer they got was, “Everyone who needs to know about our generosity already knows,” Parks said.

The database, compiled from English- and Chinese-language media reports on African projects, includes an interactive map that breaks down information to country and project levels. It will continually incorporate contributions from those involved in African aid, Parks and Fuchs told Reuters in an interview.

The creators of the database offered no judgments on the contentious questions surrounding Chinese aid to Africa, saying their aim was to inform the debate with data that has been missing from existing aid statistics.

But Parks said one stereotype about China in Africa – that Beijing focuses on resource extraction and big infrastructure projects like roads, dams and stadiums – partly unravels in the face of the newly compiled data.

The beta web site for the new database includes data on Chinese projects as well as links to several recent academic publications on topic. In his first overseas trip last month, new Chinese president Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s commitment to maintaining “friendly relationships with all African countries.”

Update: As Fons Tuinstra points out in the comments, Johns Hopkins University’s Deborah Brautigam has expressed strong reservations with the database on her blog:

Today, a new paper and media-based dataset on Chinese aid/finance was released by the AidData project, in an event at the Center for Global Development. AidData collected these numbers over the past year, from media reports. According to AidData, the Chinese have committed $75 billion in official development finance to Africa, 2000 to 2011.

[…] I’ve already provided my comments to the authors in an earlier draft, and warned them about the pitfalls of this approach. Here’s my conclusion: this number is way off. Yes, it’s a start, and yes, the goal is a good one, but the approach, and the publication of this data at this early stage, is a problem, for several reasons.

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Post tags: Africa, Africa investment, economic development, transparency, Xi Jinping
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In a report on the outbreak that began in China in February, doctors and researchers from from several public health agencies said they suspected that most of the 82 people with confirmed cases of bird flu contracted the H7N9 virus from healthy-looking animals.

“To date, the mortality rate is 21%, but since many of [sic] patients with confirmed H7N9 virus infection remain critically ill, we suspect that the mortality may increase,” they wrote in their study, published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. “Since this H7N9 virus appears to have emerged recently to infect humans, population immunity is expected to be low, and persons of any age may be susceptible to infection.”

The report paints a fuller picture of the outbreak, which hascaused Chinese people to become so panicked that one motorist felt the need to flag down police after a bird dropping landed on her car.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Laurie Garrett, who covered the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong and mainland China ten years ago, traces the origin and uncertain path of the H7N9 virus and asks whether the Chinese government has changed its approach to its latest health scare:

People’s Liberation Army Col. Dai Xu insisted via Weibo and on China’s CCTV that the fearfulness felt by the Chinese in the face of H7N9 flu is part of an elaborate American conspiracy — one first executed in the creation of SARS: “The national leadership should not pay too much attention to it,” he wrote. “Or else, it’ll be like in 2003 with SARS! At that time, America was fighting in Iraq and feared that China would take advantage of the opportunity to take other actions. This is why they used bio-psychological weapons against China. All of China fell into turmoil and that was exactly what the US wanted. Now, the US is using the same old trick. China should have learned its lesson and should calmly deal with the problem. Only a few will die, but that’s not even a one-thousandth of those who die in car crashes in China.”

Famous for his nationalistic comments, Xu reportedly gained 30,000 Weibo followers in the 24 hours following this comment. He also drew criticism, to which Xu responded that his detractors were working with “American devils,” adding, “It is common knowledge that a group of people in China have been injected with mental toxin by the U.S. I will not retreat even half a step.”

Just as the virus stands at the fork of a bifurcated road, so does the Chinese Communist Party. Though hardliners within the party may share Xu’s extremist views, the leadership this week took a remarkable step down a different, enlightened path, sending H7N9 test kits and viral samples to Taiwan. If China hopes to avoid the shame it experienced after covering up the SARS epidemic a decade ago, the government and the party will take the high road — that’s the one that shares samples with Taiwan and timely information transparently with the entire world.

Chinese government has acted with more transparency than it did ten years ago, claims The Washington Post’s Max Fisher, but the disease is spreading. He details “three very bad signs” about the new avian flu:

1. It’s very deadly, with 18 percent mortality so far. For comparison, tuberculosis has a mortality rate of about 4 or 5 percent in China. Still, the avian flu virus that had its first outbreaks in China in 2006, known as H5N1, has a mortality rate of 60 percent and has killed hundreds of people on multiple continents. It’s way too early to tell H7N9′s mortality rate, given that many infected patients have not yet fully recovered, but it’s so far killed about 18 percent of patients.

2. “This is definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses that we have seen so far.” That’s according to Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s assistant director general for health, security and the environment, who added, “This is an unusually dangerous virus for humans.” Fukuda said the WHO is still struggling to understand the disease, but he certainly seems to be sounding the alarm.

3. More easily transmitted than the 2006 avian flu outbreak. That’s also according to the WHO’s Fukuda, who says this new strain is more easily contracted than the H5N1 virus.

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Post tags: bird flu, H7N9, public health, SARS, transparency, world health organization
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The Rotten Tree, by Crazy Crab of Hexie Farm for CDT:

Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series.

[CDT owns the copyright for all cartoons in the Hexie Farm CDT series. Please do not reproduce without receiving prior permission from CDT.]

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Post tags: anti-corruption, hexie farm, political cartoons, transparency, Xi Jinping
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The child is being treated at the Beijing Ditan Hospital, and is in stable condition, Zhong Dongbo, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau, said in a press briefing.

The girl developed flu symptoms, including fever, cough, sore throat and headache, Thursday morning. She was brought to the Beijing Ditan Hospital to seek medical treatment around noon and was then hospitalized for lung infection.

[…] Two people who have had close contact with the child have not shown any flu symptoms, a spokesman said. He added that the girl’s parents were engaged in live poultry trading in a township of Shunyi District in Beijing’s northeastern suburbs.

11 have now died from the disease, which causes “severe pneumonia, septic shock and other complications that damaged the brain, kidney and other organs”, but a four year old boy in Shanghai made the first recognized recovery on Wednesday. Tests suggest possible resistance to drugs such as Tamiflu and Relenza, at least in some cases, but much remains unclear. “Few in the flu world would place strong bets on what the history books will say about this outbreak,” according to Helen Branswell at The Canadian Press:

To date it doesn’t appear as if the virus is spreading person to person, which is perhaps the best feature of this virus. But two weeks after China announced it had found people infected with a new flu, concern among those in the influenza research world remains high.

“I think we are genuinely in new territory here in which the situation of having something that is low path in birds (yet) appears to be so pathogenic in people,” Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health security and environment, said in an interview.

“And then to have those genetic changes … I simply don’t know what that combination is going to lead to.”

[…] “Almost everything you can imagine is possible. And then what’s likely to happen are the things which you can’t imagine,” Fukuda, who spent years as an influenza epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control before joining the WHO, said of the virus he has studied for so long.

Chinese authorities’ openness compared with the SARS outbreak ten years ago has continued to attract praise, as Gillian Wong reported at The Associated Press:

The new openness is thanks in part to people like Li Tiantian, founder of Dingxiangyuan, an online medical network popular with Chinese health care workers. His microblog is among a number of sites that have been tracking the government’s response to the new bird flu. “It’s evident that the strength of social media can pressure the government to be more open, more transparent,” he said from his base in the eastern city of Hangzhou.

[…] Health experts have given kudos to Beijing for being forthcoming with information, sharing the H7N9 virus’ gene sequencing and samples with the World Health Organization’s global research centers and providing timely updates of new infections and deaths. During the SARS outbreak in 2003, some patients were taken out of hospitals in Beijing and driven around the city to keep them out of sight as a visiting team of WHO investigators toured health facilities.

“I think all of us have been very impressed with the Chinese response,” said Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota infectious-disease expert. “You gotta give credit where credit’s due.”

While the flow of official news has greatly improved, however, authorities have taken steps to control competing information. A Central Propaganda Department directive dated April 10th instructed domestic media:

Regarding the epidemic situation in Shanghai, give first place to Xinhua wire copy and information issued by authoritative departments. Avoid confusion of information. Report discreetly on related issues, and do not sensationalize them.

Xinhua reported on Thursday that 11 people had been detained in Guizhou, Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Gansu and Liaoning provinces “for fabricating online posts about H7N9 infections that caused panic among some netizens and local residents.” According to Caijing, the detainees numbered at least 13 but possibly “dozens”. One is said to have “confessed that the posts were all made up in order to boost his popularity on the Internet.” Southern Metropolis Daily reported that a tight lid had been kept on early cases in Shanghai until the presence of the new strain was eventually acknowledged some three weeks later. Relatives of the second victim have previously complained about being kept in the dark, saying that they did not learn his true cause of death until seeing it on TV news. From The Economist:

So far the government’s response has appeared far swifter and more open than it was in 2003. Mr O’Leary said the WHO was “very satisfied and pleased with the level of information shared” by China. After the first two deaths were reported on March 31st (both of them in Shanghai), the authorities looked for the virus among live poultry sold in the city’s markets. When they found it, they were quick to close the markets and cull thousands of birds. […]

The public’s response, however, suggests the government still has some way to go before ordinary people trust it to respond effectively. Even though no cases of the virus’s transmission between humans have been reported, many people in Shanghai and the affected regions nearby are jittery. Pharmacies have been emptied of their stocks of a traditional flu medicine called ban lan gen, despite its dubious worth in dealing with H7N9. Sales of chicken in all forms have plummeted. McDonald’s in Shanghai has responded by cutting the price of its Chicken McNuggets.

[…] Even in the official media, questions have been asked about why 27 days elapsed between the first death from H7N9 and its public announcement. The authorities say it took that long to confirm the cause, because the virus had never before been identified in humans. They have not explained, however, why on March 7th, three days after the first death, health officials in Shanghai denied rumours in social media that people had died of bird flu in a local hospital. One man was later proved to have died there of bird flu, along with one of his sons who was not found to have the virus. Despite official denials, suspicions remain that this could have been human-to-human transmission.

Global Times quoted a Shanghai health official’s own account of the delay, while at The New York Times, Keith Bradsher explained possible technical reasons for it. Meanwhile the World Health Organization has also come under fire over the timeliness of its Chinese-language reports. From Xie Wenting at Global Times:

Beijing resident Wang Weikang said that it is irresponsible that the WHO does not publish its flu report in Chinese in a more timely way.

“It [H7N9] is related to people’s lives. For instance, the flu influences our decisions about whether we can travel to Shanghai. How come they don’t update on time?” said Wang.

Beijing resident Su Ya said that WHO’s slow update is because they do not pay enough attention to Chinese readers.

“Chinese is one of the official languages of the UN. It should be given equal importance as English,” Su said.

[…] “We, the WHO, can only post cases and deaths based on the official notification from the Chinese International Health Regulations Focal Point. Therefore, inevitably, the counts in the media will be ahead of the official counts we post,” the WHO said via e-mail.

With many already put off their pork by the 12,000-plus dead pigs in the Huangpu river last month, Nicola Davison reported at The Guardian that poultry is now also regarded with unsurprising suspicion:

The price of vegetables at Yanqing market have spiked accordingly. Chen says she will pay these premium prices rather than buy meat. “We’re also avoiding pork,” she said, adding: “Actually my family and I don’t dare to eat anything these days.”

In a teahouse in Ninghai, a county in Zhejiang province 180 miles from Shanghai, Tu Youjin counts himself as a victim of H7N9. Tu’s company, Ningbo Zhenning Poultry Breeding Limited, is a co-operative working with 150 farms in the region. It supplies Shanghai and other cities with 4m chickens a year. (Shanghai consumes 130m birds annually, mostly imported from Jiangsu, Anhui and Zhejiang, provinces where H7N9 has been found in people.)

Local officials have found no trace of flu among his fowl, but sales have dropped off a cliff. Normally, the farm sells 10,000 chickens a day, but now they are selling fewer than a dozen, he said.

“We can’t even sell our eggs,” said Tu. “I’m under great pressure as my company makes up the farmers’ losses, most of them are elderly peasants. The government has shown concern but we haven’t had any compensation so far.”

Some airlines, international schools and hotels have taken poultry off menus, and KFC’s parent company Yum has been hit hard, just months after CCTV exposed it for selling tainted chicken. Authorities in Shanghai are reportedly considering a permanent ban on the sale of live poultry, while Nanjing has ordered a cull of domestically kept poultry, bans on live poultry trading and feeding birds in public, and a suspension of “all kinds of bird performances”. Hong Kong has begun testing of live poultry imports from the mainland, which have dropped by almost half in the past week, promising to stop the trade and possibly cull if the virus is identified. The effectiveness of such measures has been called into question, however. From Hu Qingyun at Global Times:

Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times that it was still not certain that shutting down poultry businesses would be effective.

“There is still no solid research data showing that the ban of the live poultry trade has slowed the spread of the virus, though it might to some extent help contain cross-infection between poultry in some infected areas,” Zeng said.

[…] “Banning the trade and culling birds is only an expedient. Research into vaccines and effective medication are critical,” Zeng said.

But the likely effectiveness of vaccines—which in any case are months away—is also in doubt. From Helen Branswell at The Canadian Press:

There hasn’t been enough time to produce even the seed strain to make H7N9 vaccine, let alone small batches of a prototype vaccine for testing. So researchers haven’t had a chance to see how a vaccine against this new flu strain might work in people.

But clinical trials of vaccines made to protect against other viruses in the H7 family have shown the vaccines don’t induce much of an immune response, even when people are given what would be considered very large doses.

“In all cases where these vaccines were trialed, it was found that the vaccines were poorly immunogenic,” said Nancy Cox, the virologist who heads the influenza branch at the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control in Atlanta.

[…] “If you add all those [questions] together, it doesn’t paint a really very optimistic picture about influenza vaccine being a really significant weapon against this, should a pandemic emerge quickly,” [Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota] said.

Beyond food and farming, businesses have met varying fortunes. Indonesian importers of badminton equipment may suffer, but speculation that the outbreak has depressed house sales in Shanghai is said to be ill-founded. Face masks and hand sanitizer are naturally selling well, and there have been promising signs for Malaysian rubber glove manufacturers, while shares in car manufacturers climbed based on an anticipated exodus from public transport. Despite skepticism about proclaimed benefits, vendors of traditional Chinese remedies have also enjoyed a windfall.

As with other public health hazards, many have greeted the outbreak with dark humor. Dexter Roberts compiled a handful of jokes at Businessweek, including one referring to Shanghai’s recently pork-infused water and Beijing’s famously bad air:

The two best ways to safeguard against bird flu: 1) drink a lot of water; 2) keep the air flowing. People living in Shanghai, please ignore No. 1. People living in Beijing, please ignore No. 2.

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Post tags: Beijing, bird flu, food safety, H7N9, Huangpu pigs 2013, meat, Ministry of Agriculture, Nanjing, public health, rumors, SARS, Shanghai, transparency, vaccines, world health organization
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China now has confirmed 16 cases of H7N9 nationwide, with patients ranging in age from 4 to 87, who became ill between Feb. 19 and March 31. The number of cases, while small, is large for the early stages of an outbreak, and some flu experts said the fact that they are spread over a relatively wide geographic area is reason for concern.

Among the people found to be infected, several are believed to have been in close contact with birds, including a 48-year-old who transported poultry, a 45-year-old poultry butcher and a 38-year-old chef.

Authorities stressed they have yet to find a case of human-to-human transmission, which would make the disease more dangerous; the cases they have seen appear to come from human contact with birds.

[…] Shanghai authorities moved Friday to destroy thousands of birds, ordering the closure of wholesale poultry markets and instructing vendors in smaller markets to immediately cull their chicken populations. Authorities had banned sales of live pigeon and ducks starting the morning after discovering H7N9 in samples taken from pigeons at three wholesale markets.

Hangzhou has also suspended live poultry trading and begun culling at one market after the city’s second case was traced to quails that had been bought there. Officials in Shanghai promised that vendors would receive compensation of at least half the market price for any birds destroyed, which Bloomberg World View contributor Adam Minter pointed out was likely to send some looking for better prices elsewhere, potentially encouraging the virus’ spread.

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Laurie Garrett, who has been tweeting frequent updates on the outbreak, told PRI’s The World that “this has all the hallmarks of potentially turning into a new and quite striking pandemic …. That doesn’t mean it will, it doesn’t mean it won’t, it just says that all the pieces are falling into the kind of worrisome places that we keep an eye on at this stage of an outbreak.” She expressed caution about official assurances that there has been no human-to-human transmission, and that no link exists with the thousands of floating pig carcasses that descended on Shanghai last month.

Vietnam, where food safety has already become a focal point for anti-Chinese sentiment, and Hong Kong, where a seven-year-old girl who visited Shanghai late last month has tested negative for the disease, have both temporarily banned imports of Chinese poultry. In Hong Kong, random temperature checks are being conducted at immigration points, while warning notices have appeared at Japanese airports. Taiwan has stepped up sanitization of poultry farms and monitoring of air travelers. Cross-strait passenger numbers are higher than usual because of the Qingming festival, but airline stocks have slumped amid worries that the outbreak will start to discourage people from flying.

China has won widespread praise, tinged with relief, for its apparent transparency over the outbreak, though questions still hang over the initial delay in reporting it. A World Health Organization spokesman described the government’s response as “excellent”, and the swift posting online of the new strain’s genetic sequence has assisted worldwide research into its characteristics and a possible vaccine (see below). But while there is a stark contrast with the shroud of official secrecy over the SARS outbreak ten years ago, participants in a ChinaFile conversation on the government’s handling of the situation pointed out that celebration may be premature. George Washington University law professor Donald Clarke, for instance, argued that “the problem is not just whether the government is sincerely interested in transparency. It’s whether it has the credibility that’s needed to make certain policies effective.”

The outbreak’s absence from Friday’s flagship Xinwen Lianbo broadcast on CCTV has not helped the credibility situation. Neither have accusations of a cover-up from the family of the second victim, or the fact that news of Nanjing’s first case came not through official channels but from Sina Weibo. Another dent came from some provincial authorities’ recommendations for avoiding the disease. From Stephen Chen and Lo Wei at South China Morning Post:

Gansu’s health commission, for instance, encouraged residents to go outdoors, preferably into wooded areas, for fresh air and sunshine. Listening to music was also deemed an effective way to keep the H7N9 virus at bay.

Massaging the side of one’s nose was also said to help, as was exposing parts of one’s legs and stomach to incense once a day.

Health authorities in the eastern province of Jiangsu suggested a long list of herbal drinks, including the popular ban lan gen, a type of root that is often taken to fight the flu and was prescribed during the Sars outbreak a decade ago.

Dr Fang Shimin, biologist and a popular science writer […] reminded people that Gansu health authorities have promoted the eating of pig’s feet as an effective treatment for various diseases, including Aids and cancer.

“The traditional Chinese medicine industry is trying to cash in,” he wrote.

The ban lan gen recommendation in particular has sparked ridicule, as well as nostalgia and some apparent panic-buying. From Offbeat China:

Not all are buying the official promotion of TCM and ban lan gen. Many Chinese netizens joked: “After 10 years, we have a new president. Yet when it comes to flu, we still have the same old ban lan gen, the miracle medicine.”

[…] Even Peopl’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese government, also stood out to calm down the ban lan gen frenzy. In an inforgraphic that laid out what ban lan gen can and cannot do in detail, the newspaper said: “Ban lan gen has nothing more than a placebo effect.”

Jokes and criticism, however, don’t mean people won’t buy ban lan gan. There are already news about ban lan gen being sold out in some pharmacies in Shanghai and Beijing. In a Weibo poll (China’s Twitter), netizens were asked whether they will consider buying ban lan gen in the face of H7N9 flu. The result was half and half. Among the 5000-something netizens who weighed in, about 49% said yes, they would buy just in case. About 44% said no, because they don’t buy the hype.

Photographs of dead birds apparently fallen from the sky have done little to soothe the online mood:

A lot of dead birds found in Nanjing and Chengdu. “@wenyunchao: 南京 @猫xiao囧：建邺区茶南小区拓园东小区，成都 @cdtv刘燕: 府南河twitter.com/wenyunchao/sta…”

— Yaxue Cao (@YaxueCao) April 5, 2013

The birds have reportedly tested negative for the flu virus, however.

Meanwhile, investigation of the new viral strain has continued around the world. From Simeon Bennett at Bloomberg:

The H7N9 strain, which is a new virus formed as a result of two others merging their genetic material, has features of viruses that are known to jump easily from birds to mammals, and a mutation that may help it attach to cells in the respiratory tract, said Ron Fouchier, a professor of molecular virology at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, in a telephone interview yesterday.

“That’s certainly not good news,” said Fouchier, who reviewed a gene sequencing of H7N9 published by Chinese health authorities. “This virus really doesn’t look like a bird virus anymore; it looks like a mammalian virus.”

[…] Fouchier authored a study last year that showed five genetic tweaks to the deadly H5N1 virus, which has killed more than 600 people since 2003, made it airborne in ferrets, the mammals whose response to flu most closely resembles that of humans.

[…] “This virus is certainly of more concern than the vast majority of bird flu viruses,” Fouchier said. “Most bird flu viruses that we know do not have these mutations.”

The outbreak poses the difficult question of whether to divert attention and resources towards the development of a vaccine, which would not reach mass availability for several months. From Ben Hirschler and Kate Kelland at Reuters:

“It is an incredibly difficult decision because once you make it you have to change from making seasonal flu vaccines and go to making a vaccine for this virus,” said Jeremy Farrar, a leading expert on infectious diseases and director of Oxford University’s research unit in Vietnam.

That could mean shortages of vaccine against the normal seasonal flu which, while not serious for most people, still costs thousands of lives.

[…] There is no evidence yet of person-to-person transmission of H7N9 flu, and scientists do not yet know how what the strain’s potential is to develop into a human pandemic. Wendy Barclay, a flu virologist at Imperial College London, said one major argument against moving too soon would be financial.

“There is a possibility now that flu researchers will all rush to work on H7N9 and grants will be awarded for intensive research to develop vaccines … and that could be pouring money down a drain because it could be that the barriers for this virus are high enough that we don’t need to worry about it.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. Center for Disease Control has begun preliminary work as a precaution. From Donald G. McNeil Jr. and Andrew Jacobs at The New York Times:

It will take at least a month to create the seed vaccine, even though the agency is speeding the process by building it from synthetic DNA rather than waiting for a virus sample to arrive from China, said Michael Shaw, associate laboratory director for the C.D.C.’s influenza division.

Because China has posted the genetic sequences of the virus on public databanks, it is possible to build the genes for the virus’s outer spikes in a laboratory and attach them to a viral “backbone” that has already been proven to grow well in labs and in the sterile chicken eggs in which flu vaccines are made.

Then the seed vaccine must be tested in ferrets. They will be vaccinated and given some time to grow antibodies, then a solution of the H7N9 flu will be squirted into their noses. Doctors will then have to wait a few days to see if they get sick.

“If everything works smoothly the first time, we could theoretically have it ready to send to manufacturers within four weeks,” Dr. Shaw said. “But some things, like ferrets, you can’t speed up.”

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Post tags: agriculture, bird flu, diseases, H7N9, Hangzhou, Nanjing, public health, SARS, Shanghai, traditional medicine, transparency, vaccines
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With the two new cases in Hangzhou, the total number of identified H7N9 infections now stands at nine in China [now ten; see above]. The other two deaths occurred in Shanghai in early March. Authorities have yet to find any connection between the cases and say there is so far no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

[…] The H7N9 virus, previously known only to infect birds, appears to have mutated so that it can more easily jump to animals like pigs, meaning the range of potential hosts has expanded, the Associated Press reported Wednesday, citing a World Health Organization scientist studying the virus’s genetic makeup.

In marked contrast with their opaque handling of the SARS crisis 10 years ago, China authorities have produced a steady stream of information and updates on the virus since the first human cases were revealed on Sunday. That publicity effort, combined with a relatively rapid mobilization of disease-prevention resources, suggests the country has learned its lesson about handling such outbreaks, experts say.

Global Times agreed:

The public health crisis of a decade ago became a turning point in many aspects, such as China’s disease control and government information disclosure mechanism. China has learned a lesson from the great losses it suffered from that crisis.

It would have been unbelievable 10 years ago for the government to take the initiative to publish the facts about the epidemic. The government tried to hide the true extent of the SARS outbreak until the situation could not have been worse.

[…] But reforms on governmental information disclosure are far from complete. In the past decade, China suffered from various losses due to a lack of transparency of information and witnessed many crises.

[…] The past model in which reforms are undertaken from top to bottom has come to an end. China’s future reforms need efforts from all walks of life. Looking back, we can see the government came under public scrutiny for being opaque. The public’s criticism of the government has pushed a transparent system forward.

But grounds for caution remain. A case in Nanjing, for example, came to light not through official channels but through a Sina Weibo post by a hospital worker, while the family of 27-year-old Shanghai pork butcher Wu Liangliang did not learn the true cause of his death until they saw the news on TV three weeks later. The Council on Foreign Relations’ Yanzhong Huang expressed dissatisfaction with official explanations for the delayed news:

Compared to its response in the initial stage of SARS outbreak, China appears to have done a better job so far of handling the new H7N9 virus. The newly formed National Health and Family Planning Commission—the successor of China’s Ministry of Health—shared information about the disease with the WHO, Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as “related countries.” The health authorities in China have also tracked and are monitoring 88 people who came into close contact with the three cases.

But questions have also been raised about the government’s effectiveness in handling the novel virus. The two fatal cases both occurred when China’s parliament convened to elect the fifth-generation leadership. The two victims died on March 4 and March 10, respectively, but the government did not publicize the disease until March 31. Some have questioned whether the government deliberately covered up or delayed reporting the disease. However, the government explained that H7N9 was not a reportable disease under the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases, and it needed time to confirm the virus. But even accepting the government explanation, one still wonders why it took the government more than three weeks to confirm the virus. This is troubling because maybe ten years after SARS, China still has not built adequate laboratory and epidemiological capacities, which is crucial to detect, assess, notify, and respond to public health emergencies of international concern.

While there is no reported evidence of human-to-human transmission, and while state media report no sign of it in poultry, scientists examining the virus have warned that it could potentially build up stealthily among farm bird populations. From Declan Butler at Nature:

Emerging preliminary analyses of the genome of the virus point to the possible spectre of a pathogen that might spread silently in poultry without causing serious disease. That would make the virus difficult to monitor, with animal reservoirs of the virus likely going undetected. Should the virus become established in birds or other animals, regular human infections might then occur — providing opportunities for the virus to adapt better to humans, and ultimately to spread between them, potentially sparking a pandemic.

Scientists stress that it is much too early to do a full risk assessment of the potential pandemic threat. But the initial analysis of viral sequences is “worrisome” because they show several features that are suggestive of adaptation to humans, says Masato Tashiro, a virologist at the Influenza Virus Research Center in Tokyo, the World Health Organization (WHO) influenza reference and research centre in Japan.

The epidemiological picture is troubling too, says Malik Peiris, a flu virologist at the University of Hong Kong. “Any time an animal influenza virus crosses to humans it is a cause for concern, and with three severe cases [of disease] over a short period of time, we certainly have to take it seriously,” he says. “There’s no obvious indication of human-to-human spread, so we should not overreact, but neither should we be complacent.”

South China Morning Post offers a table comparing the new H7N9 with various other viruses, while Foreign Policy has posted a timeline of its emergence.

While the number of cases remains low, many suggested precautions are circulating for those fearing exposure. In a widely-weibo‘ed letter to his employees, an e-commerce executive prescribed a diet of vegetables and fish, among other measures. As part of a general Q&A on the virus, the World Health Organization recommended some basic hand, respiratory and food hygiene precautions, while at Businessweek, Christina Larson cited advice from the Council on Foreign Relations’ senior fellow for global health, Laurie Garrett:

“Stop shaking hands, and wear gloves in crowded public places like subways or stairs. Wash hands before touching your face, and try to avoid unconsciously touching your nose, mouth or eyes unless your hands are clean …. There is no drug to take that keeps you from getting infected—anybody trying to sell you one is a thief.”

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Post tags: bird flu, diseases, public health, qingming, SARS, transparency, world health organization
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Pointing a Finger by Crazy Crab of Hexie Farm for CDT:

Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series.

[CDT owns the copyright for all cartoons in the Hexie Farm CDT series. Please do not reproduce without receiving prior permission from CDT.]

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Post tags: hexie farm, political cartoons, transparency, Xi Jinping
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“Wash your hands, and cover your nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing,” was the advice published in the Oriental Morning Post, Shanghai’s most popular newspaper (and repeated in others). “And avoid eating or contact with dead and diseased livestock.”

That last directive might be a little tricky to fulfill. Since early March, Shanghai’s waterways have been clogged by dead pigs — officially at least 11,000 of them but likely a lot more. Many of those pigs have found their way into tributaries that feed directly into the municipal water supply. […]

For Shanghai, a town whose cuisine is largely built on pork, this news would be unsettling under any circumstance. But in light of a bird flu that even Communist Party newspapers are implying could be caused by contact with dead and diseased livestock, it’s reason for panic. And, sure enough, Chinese social media were quickly filled with speculation on whether the month-long dead pork tide had played any role in this emerging strain of flu. Adding to the sense of unease was the late- arriving information that the younger of Shanghai’s two bird flu victims was a 27-year-old pork trader.

Xinhua reports, however, that no bird flu was found in 34 samples from the river pigs (via a Foreign Policy photo gallery on ‘China’s Love Affair With Pork‘). The timing of the flu deaths also points away from a direct link. While the plague of pigs began to appear about a week into March, the two men are both reported to have contracted the disease in late February. One died on February 27th; the other, on March 4th. As Human Rights Watch’s Phelim Kine pointed out on Twitter, the delayed news of the fatalities raises its own questions about what lessons the authorities learned from the SARS outbreak whose tenth anniversary has just passed.

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The details of how Beijing plans to allocate its 2013 defense outlays are unknown, but China’s neighbors are hungry for answers.

If the increased expenditures are dedicated to acquiring power projection capabilities such as research on new weapons systems, improved cyber warfare abilities, procurement of more land-attack missiles and anti-satellite weapons, acquisition of stealthy armed drones, submarine-building, or procurement of air- and sea-lift capabilities that could be used to invade Taiwan, China’s neighbors would likely be anxious. In contrast, if such funds are spent primarily on ground force modernization and air defenses – systems more defensive in nature – they would likely be less concerned. If such funds go primarily towards the construction of improved barracks housing, food, clothing, energy costs and salaries for enlisted soldiers, sailors, and aviators, the region would be less worried still.

But the reality is that foreign observers are unlikely to know how these funds are spent for some time to come, if ever. China’s political system gives little oversight of the military budget to legislators, civil society, or the media, leaving it to the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army alone to decide how defense funds are spent and to release only such information on funding allocation as they see fit. This lack of transparency and accountability also means some military funds are almost certainly siphoned off in corruption.

While they agree that China’s limited transparency about the specifics of its defense budget is concerning, scholars Andrew Erickson and Adam Liff point out that chatter about the issue in the domestic and foreign media can distract from the real picture and hinder the possibility of a proper policy debate. In the Diplomat, they lay out some of their key findings from several years of research based on Chinese-language commentary:

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) increasingly has the resources, capabilities, and confidence to attempt to assert China’s interests on its contested periphery, particularly in the Near Seas (Yellow, East, and South China Seas). This development has the potential to seriously challenge the interests of the U.S., its allies, and other partners in the region, as well as access to and security of a vital portion of the global commons—waters and airspace that all nations rely on for prosperity, yet which none own. That’s why the PLA’s development matters so much to a Washington located halfway around the world.

Yet beyond China’s immediate periphery the actual impact of PLA spending growth overall may be far less impressive than the headline numbers suggest. The PLA would need far greater resources and capabilities to pursue high-intensity combat capabilities much further away from China’s borders and the territory it claims. At least at present, Beijing is not prioritizing such capabilities. There’s no need to wait for China to achieve full transparency to see this; manifest trends, properly interpreted, speak for themselves. Meanwhile, the development of lower-end capabilities useful for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, as well as protection of sea lanes against non-state actors, bode well for the PLA’s growing role in cooperative security. Hence, even as the Near Seas become more contested, there is significant potential to build on nascent developments in more distant waters—where Beijing has no claims—and further cooperation among China, the U.S., and other nations.

These are the key characteristics of China’s military development. Properly understood, they can inform constructive responses in a challenging time. Misunderstood and conflated, they can confuse and inflame.

Erickson and Liff’s full article on the subject, called “Demystifying China’s Defense Spending: Less Mysterious in the Aggregate,” will appear in a forthcoming issue of peer-reviewed The China Quarterly and can be downloaded in its accepted manuscript form via Liff’s web site at Princeton University.

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Post tags: CCP, China's rise, defines budget, People's Liberation Army, transparency
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Myth #1: Strong political commitment and a centrally coordinated response was the most important factor in the control of SARS in China.

Not really. Once the initial dilly-dallying gave way to decisive and swift state action, resources were effectively mobilized against the epidemic and policy coordination was significantly improved. Yet many of the measures widely credited for stopping the spread of the virus, such as isolation and quarantine, were only implemented after the virus reproduction number or Rt—a critical value below which sustained transmission of the virus is impossible—dropped below one, or when the epidemic was already dying down. According to a study published in Tropical Medicine & International Health, those decisive government measures might have played a role in speeding up the disappearance of SARS or preventing the outbreak in yet unaffected regions, but they “contributed little to the factual containment of the SARS epidemic.”

[...] Myth #3: Government cover-up is no longer a major concern in the post-SARS era.

Not true. The SARS crisis has forced the Chinese leaders to take steps to be more open and transparent in disease reporting and information sharing. Yet as shown in the 2008 hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) outbreak, local government officials found it difficult to adjust their existing behavioral patterns for crisis management, which still value secrecy and inaction. Similar communication problems also bedeviled the government’s response to the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. China’s SARS crusader Zhong Nanshan publicly expressed his distrust in government data on H1N1 fatalities. Political expediency continues to be put before epidemiological reality in sharing disease-related information with the public. The health authorities stopped updating the spread of H1N1 cases between September 30 and October 9, apparently fearing that reporting H1N1 deaths would ruin the celebrations planned for October 1, the National Day that marked the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. That said, government cover-up and inaction are not unique to China; India’s response to the 2012 dengue fever epidemic was riddled with similar problems.

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A statement issued by the meeting, reported by CCTV, said some party organs were not strict when enlisting members and the quality of new recruits needed to be looked at. Meanwhile, some party members were corrupt and not disciplined.

[...] ”The overall number of party members should be controlled, and the membership structure and quality should be optimised in order to let them play their role,” the statement said.

[...] ”Unqualified party members will be handled in a timely manner and the management of floating party members, those who do not work or live in places where their membership is registered and cannot regularly attend party activities, should be strengthened,” the statement said.

Following the statement, some Chinese political watchers  are calling for stricter Party recruitment standards for new members and harsher punishment for corrupt officials. From Yang Jinghao at Global Times:

Cai Xia, a professor of Party building with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, told the Global Times that the meeting showed that the Party leadership has fully realized the problems existing among Party members and its determination to administer the Party strictly.

[...] Cai Zhiqiang, a professor of Party building with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said the CPC’s large size had inevitably brought many management challenges for the Party, considering the increasingly complicated domestic and international situations and diversified values and interests in the new era.

[...] ”The punishment of unqualified members should also be strictly in line with the Party regulations,” said Cai Zhiqiang. In May 2012, 102 Party members were expelled for poor work performances or violations of family planning policy. The cleanout was regarded as a landmark example of Party membership adjustment.

Just this week, yet another corruption investigation of a high-ranking official, Li Jianguo, once again demonstrates resolution on this issue from the top and a thirst for justice from the general public. From Celia Hatton at BBC:

Mr Li, who serves as vice chairman of China’s parliament, reportedly engineered the promotion of his nephew to a plum government position.

[...] Just last week, Mr Xi promised he would battle both “tigers” and “flies”, indicating that officials at all ranks were under scrutiny.

Li Xinde, an influential citizen journalist, was the first person to interview the whistleblower exposing Li Jianguo’s high-flying nephew. The fact that this case has been picked up by the authorities, he says, shows that things are changing in China.

[...] All evidence, he says, that individual citizens are no longer working alone to expose corruption on a case-by-case basis. Instead, there is new hope that the system as a whole is becoming more transparent.

See more on Xi Jinping and anti-corruption work via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-corruption, high-level corruption, investigative journalism, journalists, online public opinion, transparency, Xi Jinping
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A widening discontent was evident this month in the anticensorship street protests in the southern city of Guangzhou and in the online outrage that exploded over an extraordinary surge in air pollution in the north. Anger has also reached a boil over fears concerning hazardous tap water and over a factory spill of 39 tons of a toxic chemical in Shanxi Province that has led to panic in nearby cities.

For years, many China observers have asserted that the party’s authoritarian system endures because ordinary Chinese buy into a grand bargain: the party guarantees economic growth, and in exchange the people do not question the way the party rules. Now, many whose lives improved under the boom are reneging on their end of the deal, and in ways more vocal than ever before. Their ranks include billionaires and students, movie stars and homemakers.

Few are advocating an overthrow of the party. Many just want the system to provide a more secure life. But in doing so, they are demanding something that challenges the very nature of the party-controlled state: transparency.

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Post tags: air pollution, CCP, censorship, economic growth, freedom of speech, Guangzhou, middle class, new york times, Shanxi, Southern Weekly, southern weekly protest 2013, transparency, water pollution
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First, the inauguration of pro-market president Xi Jinping marks a shift away from the conservation-oriented, government-planned approach of his predecessor toward a model marked by increased privatization, including tax cuts for private enterprises, relaxed political controls, programs to boost domestic consumption and intensified resource exploitation. Xi insists that low-carbon growth will remain a priority and that the ambitious energy-saving targets of the twelfth Five Year Plan, issued in March 2011, will be met. But the targets were written in such a way that many of the details for implementation are open to interpretation. While the government had previously signaled that it would rely on growth in wind and solar to meet its goal (11.4 percent of total energy from renewable sources by 2015), it now looks like the bulk of that will come from nuclear and hydroelectric. Wind and solar are growing, but as a proportion of China’s total energy expenditure, coal is growing much faster.

…

Second, shifts in US energy consumption patterns, as well as changes in estimates of global oil reserves, will affect China’s long-term energy strategy. The International Energy Agency reports that discoveries of shale gas combined with new drilling technologies will make the United States the world’s largest oil producer by 2020. This is expected to make oil reserves in the Middle East and Central Asia newly available to China—which could reverse the shortage-driven incentive structure that promoted growth in China’s renewable energy sector. At the same time, China discovered that it may have the largest shale gas reserves in the world. A Chinese shale gas boom, coupled with increased output from coal and imported oil, could marginalize wind and solar energy. Moreover, with Washington now looking to shale gas rather than wind and solar for new energy resources, prospects for increased US consumption of China’s green exports are diminished.

…

Third, consumption patterns have eroded one of China’s most promising areas for low-carbon development: electric vehicles. A recent McKinsey & Co. report ranked China’s EV market a dismal fifth behind Japan, the United States, France and Germany. Even with generous subsidies for consumers and manufacturers, EV sales are sluggish, accounting for less than 0.02 percent of total vehicles sold (in the United States, it’s 0.09 percent). Demand is growing for gas-guzzling SUVs as well as luxury and medium-weight vehicles, especially foreign models, with imports of foreign-manufactured cars nearly doubling in 2010. The top-selling car in 2011 was the Buick Excelle, followed by the Volkswagen Lavida and the Chevrolet Cruze. China’s domestic vehicle manufacturers are drastically scaling back their small, fuel-efficient models and EV fleets and attempting to regroup around the new high-carbon model. In fact, China’s EV manufacturers are turning away from personal cars altogether and focusing on hybrid and electric city buses and taxi cabs. The major buyers of EVs are local governments and large state-owned corporations, not individuals.

The most glaring sign of resilience in China’s high carbon growth model, air pollution, hit record levels in Beijing last week. But the Economist reports that other cities in China are wrapped in smog too:

China’s crisis in air quality is indeed a national one. This month dozens of other cities, from Shandong province in the east to Guizhou in the south-west, recorded pollution spikes. Experts attribute this to an exceptionally cold winter that has caused more burning of coal and other fuels than usual, to temperature inversions over some places, and to unfortunate wind patterns in others.

…

Now officials must contend with the political impact of bad air. China’s government has long staked its legitimacy on being able to generate improved standards of living, and people have grown used to complaining about things they do not like. Adding chronically poisoned air to the mix could prove volatile, some think.

Dai Qing, a veteran environmental activist, says that the angry reaction to this month’s extreme pollution shows that the issue now overshadows other pressing problems such as corruption and infringements on people’s liberties. “For years, we environmentalists have been telling the authorities that GDP growth at any cost is a mistake,” she says.

The pollution has even reached other countries, according to researchers in the United States and Japan. Writing from Los Angeles, where he’s seen his share of bad smog in the past, UC Irvine’s Jeffrey Wasserstrom agrees that the Chinese Communist Party may be choking:

But public-health scares and heavy smog in Beijing and others places—believe it or not, at times other cities have even darker skies than the capital—are leaving some people skeptical about whether things are really getting better simply because they can now buy things at a mall. Is life really improving, they ask each other in private conversations, in online forums, and at protest rallies, if doing ordinary things like drinking milk and playing outside can cause your child to get sick? How can we trust a government, they wonder, that tries to hide the truth about obvious dangers, by censoring reports of doctored food and drink and until very recently used the word fog to describe the noxious substance that made it hard to see even nearby skyscrapers?

In most places, a smog crisis is an environmental danger and, on some days, a public health emergency. In China, the grey skies overhead strike at the very legitimacy of the country’s ruling party. At its worst, Los Angeles never had anything that could compare to that.

Still, writes NPR’s Louisa Lim, transparency has brought more scrutiny to the China’s “airpocalypse” ever since the government started releasing hourly PM2.5 readings this year. And The Atlantic’s James Fallows points out that the smog has seen a lot of recent coverage in the Chinese press, which used to downplay the issue.

Disputing other explanations, such as China’s experience with SARS and the perception of Xi Jinping as a reformer, The Atlantic’s Matt Shiavenza explores what may have really caused the unexpected silver lining:

Why, then, would the Chinese government allow such candor on the pollution question? Social media plays a role. Prominent Beijing real estate developer Pan Shiyi regularly tweets information about pollution to his several million followers on Sina’s Weibo, and the flurry of similar comments by more ordinary users has brought the pollution issue into the open. At a basic level, the government understands that once an issue hits critical mass, there’s little point in perpetuating the myth any further.

Also, unlike other issues which threaten the Chinese government’s hold on power, environmental concerns do not discriminate by class or income level. While many of Beijing’s citizens may not pay attention to esoteric political issues, the Communist Party surely believes that pollution has the potential to unite a large number of people against its governance. That, more than anything else, may explain why the government has approached this issue with unusual openness.

Still, the pitfalls of China’s rapid economic growth are felt beyond the skies. Writing for The Council on Foreign Relations, Elizabeth Economy reminds China watchers that “the country’s water pollution is easily as alarming:”

[...] According to one 2011 report, in 2010, “up to 40 percent of China’s rivers were seriously polluted” and “20 percent were so polluted their water quality was rated too toxic even to come into contact with.” Part of the explanation may rest in the “estimated 10,000 petrochemical plants along the Yangtze and 4000 along the Yellow rivers.” (And the Yellow and Yangtze are not even the most polluted of China’s seven major rivers.) On top of whatever polluted wastewater might be leaching or simply dumped into China’s rivers from these factories, the Ministry of Supervision reports that there are almost 1,700 water pollution accidents annually. The total cost in terms of human life: 60,000 premature deaths annually.

While the macro picture is concerning, even more worrying is that individual Chinese don’t know whether their water is safe to drink or not. A Chinese newspaper, the Southern Weekly, recently featured an interview with a married couple, both of whom are water experts in Beijing (available in English here). They stated that they hadn’t drunk from the tap in twenty years, and have watched the water quality deteriorate significantly over just the past few years, even while state officials claim that more than 80 percent of water leaving treatment facilities met government standards in 2011.

…

In the 1950s, China, like other countries, neither understood well nor had the capacity to deal effectively with the environmental and health challenges its rapid development was creating. Today, however, China has both the knowledge and the capability. In the midst of the recent air pollution crisis, Premier-elect Li Keqiang said it would take time to address the air pollution problem: “There has been a long-term buildup to this problem, and the resolution will require a long-term process. But we must act.” In the meantime, the Chinese people can only wear their masks, buy their bottled water, and hope they are not in this year’s batch of pollution-related casualties.

Listen also as Tom Gjelten of NPR discusses the cost of growth in China, and read more about pollution in China at CDT.

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Post tags: air pollution, CCP, CCP legitimacy, economic growth, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, river pollution, social media, transparency, water pollution
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