It’s been a big year for Chinese environmentalists. They’ve seen the hitherto somnambulant government environmental watchdog, under the stewardship of a feisty vice-director, score some rare victories and begin to wake up. The triumphs include taking on the powerful Big Dam industry over shoddy environmental auditing standards, and winning. There’s been the back down from a legal claim made by multinational paper company APP over a local boycott of its products following a damning Greenpeace report on its logging practices in Yunnan. And then, the launch of a major government-sponsored environment group. All in all, it looks like Red China is turning shades of green, and some environmental advocates are not surprisingly looking a little perkier over China.
But in China, laws on paper are one thing, and laws in reality are something else again, especially when local businesses are under pressure from all angles to make a quick buck. So observers of the environmental practices of Chinese businesses are seeing a less than verdant landscape.
