China’s Coastal Pollution Necessitates Rethinking Government Role

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The waters off China’s eastern and northeastern coasts, home to the country’s major seafood production and fish farms, have become a giant dumping ground for chemical wastes, according to Nanfang Daily. The wild fish catch has been shrinking, farmed fish are being poisoned, and fishers and local residents are abandoning once-prosperous coastal villages for locations further inland. But while industrial polluters currently bear much of the blame, the country’s negligent governmental bodies must also shoulder a large share of the responsibility.

The Bohai Sea, a partly enclosed sea off north China that laps the shores of Shandong, Hebei, Liaoning provinces and Tianjin Municipality, is known traditionally as the “Fish Barn of the Emperor’s Lands.” But today its waters are dying from the poisonous inflows from China’s rivers, which carry chemicals and toxic waste from inland areas to the coast. An estimated 43 of the 53 major waterways that run into Bohai are heavily polluted, with the worst conditions occurring near the mouths of the Yellow, Xiaoqing, and Zhangwei rivers.

Giant effluent pipes from coastal chemical factories lurk beneath the Bohai Sea, sending torrents of reddish or brownish effluent deep into its waters. Each year, an estimated 5.7 billion tons of toxic waste and 2 billion tons of solid waste are dumped into the sea; its heavy metal content now exceeds the acceptable standard by 2,000 times. Large patches of the water body are completely devoid of any living aquatic creatures.

Yangjiao Port, located in Shouguang City of Shandong province, was once the area’s leading wholesale seafood market. Nowadays, business has nearly dried up. “There are no fish,” complained local fisherman Wang Dayou. “What is the use of this fish market?”

In Shuigou Village, at the estuary of the Zhangwei River, more than 2,000 villagers depend on the sea for a living. Before 1995, the water from the river was drinkable, but now it poisons ducks and geese. Most of the fish caught from the sea are dead, with loose scales that are easily shaken off. Fishers’ nets are weighed down not by golden harvests, but by the residues of dark oil and other debris that clings to the once-white threads.

In Wudi County, the two best-preserved shorelines for shells, which extend roughly 70 kilometers along the coast, were once a popular nesting spot for migratory birds. But they have long since lost their vitality. Area residents (historically, China’s first rural residents to become “better-off” due to the ocean’s rich offerings) have seen their per-capita incomes plummet from more than US$1,200 a year to a meager $200.

Seas to the south are faring no better. According to a recent National Bureau of Oceanography report, all four of the large seas lining China’s northern and southern borders are suffering from declining environmental quality. An estimated 83 percent of the industrial and other sources that discharge waste into the Yellow Sea release substandard effluent, and the estimate is similarly high for the East Sea (80 percent), South Sea (73 percent,) and Bohai Sea (72 percent). In total, an average of 9,230 tons of pollutants were released into these seas daily in early 2007, a 6.7 percent increase over the same period last year.

Shoreline residents are starting to abandon coastal homelands they have depended on for generations. The urge to flee China’s dead and poisonous ocean has spread from the north to the south, leaving entire villages and towns absent of their former hustle and bustle. A 700-student school in Jiangsu’s Yanwei Port has immediate plans to move inland after growing numbers of students were hospitalized for inhaling harmful ocean air. At this rate, the nation’s inland retreat will create hundreds of kilometers of “no-mans lands” along Chinese shores, from Shandong in the north to Jiangsu in the south—leaving behind only reeds, dirty beaches, and seagulls fluttering over debris.

Currently, the Chinese public and activist groups are laying the blame on numerous polluting chemical plants, which are clustered in industrial parks along the nation’s rivers and coastlines. Jiangsu province alone has at least three such parks—in Xiangshui County, Guannan County, and Lianyungang City—totaling more than 100 chemical plants that spew out tons of pollutants daily. Over the next year or so, authorities in Lianyungang City aim to merge the three parks into one giant industrial park harboring more than 200 large and medium sized chemical plants.

Unfortunately, North Jiangsu is not a special case. Industrial parks dot Chinese watersheds from middle Jiangsu province to coastal areas in Zhejiang province to the south. They also sprawl northward, with Huangdao Industrial Park in Qingdao City of Shandong province, chemical parks in Huangye Hebei province, and large petrochemical parks in Tianjin Municipality being prominent examples. The chain of industrial parks ultimately engulfs the Bohai Sea, the farthest north of China’s large coastal water bodies.

Yet blaming the polluters alone is off the mark. Business has its own rules to follow, and it naturally runs after profits. In a country where controlling pollution costs more than paying fines for discharging it freely, and where industrial images remain untarnished because of a muffled press, it is understandable that polluters will act in ways that is most beneficial to their interests. Any attempt to hold businesses in check on moral grounds is nothing more than naiveté.

Rather, it is China’s government, which has neglected its basic function as guardian of the public good, that is responsible for much of the country’s environmental harm. Local governments are the ones that woo investments, offering lax regulations as an incentive to business. They are the ones that actually run the industrial parks and derive revenues from them, and that cover up any misdeeds by blocking the flow of information. And it is they that have provided a haven for unrestricted pollution. The coalition of local government and profit-driven business has formed an unstoppable juggernaut, running roughshod over the interests of underrepresented groups and any other small players that dare stand in the way.

The Nanfang Daily article recounted two cases of such abuse. Villagers from Duigou Village, in Jiangsu province’s Guannan County, decided to have their river water tested because of noticeable pollution. The results showed that the water was undrinkable for both people and animals. Residents demanded compensation of 40,000 RMB (US$5,000) from the chemical plants in the local industrial park. In response, the administrative committee, a government branch, sued them on charges of blackmail. Several villagers were imprisoned for six months as a consequence of their daring deeds. With this precedent, the residents become quiet, harboring only growing internal anger against both local businesses and the government.

Even citizens of conscience who have greater influence than China’s chronically overlooked rural residents have no means to escape. He Hongshi, party secretary of Touzen Village of Jiangsu province, is currently serving two years in prison for leading villagers in their complaints against chemical parks.

It has taken decades to achieve just a few faint signs of progress in the effort to divest businesses from the government in China. The government still has the liberty to allocate many resources, including land, bank loans, business registration, and various other tools to meddle in the private sector. This power enables some local governments to engage in rampant rent seeking, forcing partnerships with businesses that are not always happily compliant. Meanwhile, as the government is busy making money, it neglects or totally forgoes its responsibility to uphold clear and just rules to safeguard social justice against the self-interested drive for profit.

With China at the brink of environmental collapse at the hands of a booming private sector, the government should be the greatest hope for preserving the public good and admonishing businesses that exceed their limits. Local governments need to stop being accomplices to environmental abuses and the suppression of underrepresented groups. Instead, they must begin to see themselves as accountable rule-setters and negotiators of the public interest in the face of ruthless, profit-driven businesses. The sooner this shift happens, the sooner China’s environmental woes can be effectively addressed.

Yingling Liu is manager of the China Program at the Worldwatch Institute.

China Watch is a joint initiative of the Worldwatch Institute and Beijing-based Global Environmental Institute (GEI) and is supported by the blue moon fund.