Leaders should sack those with real responsibility for toxic leak
Beijing's decision to remove Xie Zhenhua as the country's top environmental official was uncharacteristically abrupt.
Official media applauded the leadership for its decisive attempt to boost official accountability, while the overseas media noted the decision reflected the government's anxiousness to repair China's image at home and abroad.
However, the move has dismayed many officials and academics, who suspect Mr Xie has been made a scapegoat for the initial cover-up of the contamination of the Songhua River, which threatened the livelihood of millions of people.
It will be interesting to see if Mr Xie's departure will lead to the resignations of more senior officials in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, and top executives at the China National Petroleum Corp and its subsidiary Jilin Petrochemical, which own the plant where the toxic leak occurred on November13.
For many, Mr Xie should have been the last on a long list of officials to be punished first, and some cynics have noted that his quick dismissal was aimed mainly at placating Russia, which is growing increasingly angry over China's slow and secretive manner in handling the disaster.
Mao Shoulong , one of the mainland's most outspoken academics, has compared the treatment of Mr Xie to that of a traffic policeman who is called to the scene of an accident and fired even before the responsibilities of the parties involved are fully established and accounted for.
This is not to say Mr Xie's dismissal is wrong. It remains unclear when he was notified of the pollution problem, but Wang Yuqing , one of his deputies, reportedly criticised officials at the Jilin branch of the State Environmental Protection Administration (Sepa) for failing to report the spill until November 18. Under the Chinese government's parallel-control system, although environmental officials in Jilin must report to Sepa in Beijing about environmental matters, they should also report to local authorities which pay their salaries. It is a no-brainer to see where their loyalties lie.
But that should not be an excuse for Mr Xie, and other senior Sepa officials in Beijing, because they are officials with extensive environmental experience. They should have acted and demanded information as soon as the massive explosion occurred. After all, the likelihood that the river would have been contaminated should have been too big to miss.
But bigger blame should be directed elsewhere. It has already been established the explosion was caused by human error, with workers clearly breaching safety rules. Blame should foremost rest with the leaders of the Jilin Petroleum and Chemical Company, which is listed in Hong Kong and the United States, and its parent company the China National Petroleum Corp, one of China's biggest oil firms.
Yu Li, chairman of Jilin Petroleum, and CNPC president Chen Geng , should take leadership responsibility and resign just as former CNPC head Ma Fucai quit in April last year over the Chongqing gas blast which killed 243 and poisoned more than 10,000.
Leading officials in Jilin, particularly those responsible for environmental protection, should also be severely punished as they, along with officials from Jilin Petroleum, deliberately withheld information and denied there was any pollution until November 18, when they formally notified the central government and neighbouring Heilongjiang province.
Equally deserving of a severe reprimand are leading officials in Heilongjiang and the provincial capital, Harbin . They also chose to withhold information until November 23, when they initially misled the public about why water supplies were shut off and sparked a city-wide panic, forcing them to admit to the pollution more than 12 hours later.
President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao should overcome political resistance and sack those officials responsible for the blast and the initial cover-up of the pollution. Only this can salvage the government's battered image at home and abroad.
