[Marxism] China confronts environmental crisis

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, September 25, 2004
Bad Air and Water, and a Bully Pulpit in China
By JIM YARDLEY

FOR the untold thousands of bureaucrats in the Chinese Communist Party,
a cardinal rule of political self-preservation might be this: best not
stand out too much, certainly not in public. A government official
marching too far ahead of the parade of acceptable opinion runs the risk
of finding himself dangerously alone.

So it is always a surprise to see what comes out when Pan Yue opens his
mouth, as he did one afternoon this summer at his office at the State
Environmental Protection Administration. The afternoon sky was clotted
with the usual soup of haze and pollution as Mr. Pan ticked off one
doomsday statistic after another.

Acid rain, he says, now falls over two-thirds of China's land mass. Of
340 major Chinese cities surveyed last year, 60 percent had serious air
pollution problems. In China's seven major waterways, pollution is so
severe that vast stretches are not suitable for fish.

"Problems that were supposed to be future problems are now problems in
the present," warned Mr. Pan, 44, as he smoked a cigarette.

If he is blunt in identifying the problems, he sounds almost radical in
offering a solution: China must change the way it is developing to
prevent an environmental crisis and a depletion of natural resources.
Environmental protection must become a national priority. And, for good
measure, public participation must be encouraged - the sort of language
that in China usually means more democracy.

"The pressures China is now facing simply can't be sustained, the
population and resource pressures," Mr. Pan said. "They cannot be ignored."

Well known for years in intellectual circles, the outspoken Mr. Pan has
become a national figure in a country where environmental awareness is
rising, even as environmental degradation is widespread and severe. His
job as a deputy director of China's top environmental agency, if low on
the totem pole of power in China, has given him a bully pulpit to help
put environmentalism on the agenda - apparently with the silent blessing
of higher leaders.

"He's considered much more outspoken, much more specific," said Edward
Norton, head of the Nature Conservancy in China. "He's definitely out
front, much more than anybody in that agency or the other resource
management agencies."

Mr. Pan, who has dark, spiky hair and looks a bit like a Chinese version
of the Canadian actor Mike Myers, is quoted so often in the Chinese
press that he has become the de facto spokesman of the environmental
agency. If he were an American bureaucrat, he might be considered a
media hound. In China, he is a rarity.

"I've always been known as a very frank speaker," Mr. Pan said, smiling.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS in China have long worried, and warned, that a day of
reckoning is coming. Historically, China has never put much emphasis on
environmental protection. Yet a quarter century of unbridled economic
growth has brought not only new wealth but a legacy of blackened rivers,
grossly polluted skies and dwindling natural resources.

But top officials like President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao
have started talking about the need for environmental protection as part
of a "sustainable development" model for the country. In speaking out,
Mr. Pan seems to have sensed that the political climate is shifting. His
agency lacks the political clout of other government ministries but his
message is increasingly in vogue, particularly among college students
and the urban elite.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/25/international/asia/25fprofile.html

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