The Financial Times reveals China’s push for environmental transparency only goes so far:
Beijing engineered the removal of nearly a third of a World Bank report on pollution in China because of concerns that findings on premature deaths could provoke “social unrest”.
The report, produced in co-operation with Chinese government ministries over several years, found about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year, mainly from air pollution in large cities. [Full Text]
The newspaper quotes a retired State Environment Protection Agency official connected to the removal as saying Chinese representatives “did not want to make this report too thick.”
