Linfen: how China’s Chernobyl turned the corner

October 24th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

^{(Tom Phillips)}

Challenges abound for the incoming leaders of the world’s second largest
economy, but high on their list of priorities will be trying to clear the
country’s notoriously polluted skies.

Environmentalists warn that public awareness and frustration about air
pollution is growing, as are the risks to Chinese health.

“Even if we can manage to keep the country’s smoking rate flat, the lung
cancer rate is expected to keep rising for 20 or 30 years and worsening air
pollution could be the major culprit,” Shi Yuankai, the vice-president
of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Cancer Hospital, admitted in an
interview with the China Daily last year.

Mr Yang, Linfen’s environment chief, said that as China battled to rectify its
toxic environment, his city could offer some clues. “As long as leaders
attach great importance [to it], the environment can improve.” Linfen’s
dramatic turnaround began in 2004 after it was named and shamed by Beijing
as the most polluted of 113 Chinese cities.

Domestic and international humiliation followed as the BlacksmithInstitute, a
US environmental group, compared Linfen to some of the filthiest places on
earth including Chernobyl and Kyrgyzstan’s Mailuu-Suu, a place notorious for
its radioactive waste dumps.

“Shanxi felt the pain, indeed,” Mr Yang recalled, quoting the
Chinese sage Confucius to explain how his government was spurred into action
by an avalanche of bad press. “Knowing shame is akin to courage.”
Desperate to change Linfen’s fortunes, authorities launched an ongoing drive
to clear its skies and its name. They called it the “Take off the Black
Hat” campaign and the changes came immediately, Mr Yang claimed.

^{(Pete Parks/AFP)}

Factories that had once belched fumes into Linfen’s skies, fouled its rivers
and contaminated its soil were forced to shut down or relocate.

Twelve power stations were closed. A crackdown on illegal and polluting
coalmines saw the number of mines slashed from around 390 to 128. Villagers
were weaned off burning coal at homes and solar water heaters were installed
on their roofs.

Crucially, too, the promotion prospects of government officials were for the
first time tied to their ability to meet environmental goals.

Jia Peiliang, the official in charge of pollution monitoring, said technology
also played a leading role in Linfen’s dramatic cleanup.

Authorities could now monitor sulphur dioxide emissions and water discharge in
real time with a network of monitoring stations and surveillance cameras, Mr
Jia said. “We have set up 6 monitoring stations which show us what is
happening across the whole city.” This year Linfen was included in
national pilot project monitoring for PM2.5, minuscule airborne particles
that have been linked to heart and**lung disease and diabetes.

Nearly a decade on from its humiliation, Linfen is even trying to reinvent
itself as a green city. Mr Yang claimed solar energy had been introduced in
hotels, guesthouses and “many households”– including his own.
Small wind farms are planned for Linfen’s Puxian and Guxian counties. Some
former factory owners have even branched out into “green landscaping.”
Last year a seven-mile-long park opened on the banks of the River Fen, which
flows through Linfen.

In Linfen’s Beilu village – home to around 1,700 people and once known as one
of the region’s “cancer villages” – locals agreed things were
looking up.

“The factories in our neighbourhood have all gone, the coal plant, the
iron foundry, about a dozen of them,” said Zhang Fanzhi, 58. “Ten
years ago, we didn’t have blue skies. Now it has improved a lot. Yet a white
shirt can still last seven days in Henan [province] but only three days here.”
At the health clinic, GP Wang Ping said many locals had blamed nearby
factories for the high incidence of cancer. “If ten people died each
year, then half of them died of cancer,” she said, adding that several
years had now passed without new cases being reported.

^{(Tom Phillips)}

Independent experts say Linfen’s transformation is more than government spin.
Ma Jun, a leading Chinese environmentalist, confirmed genuine changes
appeared to be taking place.

“I think we need to recognise a lot of effort has been made there to deal
with those extreme cases of pollution. It used to be that a lot of those
factories simply would not treat their discharge or emissions at all. Now, I
believe the government is making an effort to deal with them and some of the
worst cases and factories have been shut down,” said Mr Ma, whose
group, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, monitors
government data on air and water pollution.

Still, Mr Ma said, “some questions” remained over the reliability of
air quality data. “[If] the monitoring stations have been moved from
more polluted regions to some less polluted regions that will affect the
data quality.” Mr Ma also said it was not clear if the situation in
Shanxi’s most polluted cities had dramatically improved or if other regions,
with faster growth of power and heavy and chemical industries, were getting
worse. Data suggested worsening air pollution levels in Inner Mongolia and
Shandong, he said.

Nor are all of Linfen’s long-suffering residents convinced. In Xiakangvillage
locals attributed the day’s blue sky to a recent rainstorm and laughed at
the idea that their city had become a model of green living.

“Nothing has changed,” shouted 60-year-old Duan Xiaobiao, whose
village – sandwiched between a water treatment plant and an illegal dump –
hints at China’s balancing act between the clean and the filthy. “It’s
exactly the same as before.” “The tap water is not clean – when we
boil the water, we can see a layer on the surface. You should take a bottle
of our tap water back to test,” he suggested.

Mr Yang admitted Linfen was a work in progress but said his city was proof
that a balance between coal-fuelled economic development and environmental
protection could be struck. “Black and green can coexist,” he
said. “We just hope the skies will [keep getting] bluer.”

Source Article from http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568301/s/24d749c1/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cworldnews0Casia0Cchina0C96312160CLinfen0Ehow0EChinas0EChernobyl0Eturned0Ethe0Ecorner0Bhtml/story01.htm