Three days after the National People's Congress completed its annual plenum on March 14, bad news reached Beijing from neighbouring Hebei province. Baiyangdian, the biggest lake and wetland area in northern China, was suffering severe ecological decline due to water pollution. The cause was not an industrial catastrophe but a slower, chronic wasting, due to dried and diverted rivers, over-fishing, illegal construction - and, most of all - massive dumping of untreated industrial waste water and sewage.
There was a dark irony, given that a key policy item at the NPC was the goal of building an 'economical, environmentally friendly society'. After examining the environmental and ecological decline of Baiyangdian over past decades, I believe that achieving the government's goal will require not only tremendous effort, but a highly complex and delicate balance of divergent interests. The task at Baiyangdian, in fact, is a distillation of that required to reach the much loftier targets of China's economic transition: 'balanced development', 'regional co-ordination' and a 'harmonious society'.
The bottom line is that the government urgently needs to expand and improve public services. Such services are often thought of as a token slogan in China today. But it should be the overall focus of reforms. China's per-capita gross domestic product has risen to more than US$1,600, and the demand for public services is also rising rapidly. The public's concerns over environmental protection, medical care and education are placing unprecedented demands on the government to invest greater resources in these areas.
Just as the ecological disaster of Baiyangdian didn't happen overnight, however, the remedy for past inadequacies is not a one-off act. Once the target is set, two things must follow immediately to ensure success: lots of money, and an optimal mechanism to spend it. In the case of Baiyangdian, two tasks are crucial. The first is to create a centralised body to manage the lake basin and take charge of co-ordinating all the responsibilities scattered among different agencies: water-resource development, pollution treatment and ecological protection. The second is to invest large sums into future ecological-preservation projects. Figures from the Hebei government show that at least 8 billion yuan will be needed for all this in the next 10 years.
Both tasks present daunting challenges. Under the current budgetary systems, the funding earmarked for environmental protection is limited. One thing is clear: China will not waver from its path of reform, although vested interests will resist. Comparatively speaking, it would be easier for Beijing to take bolder moves on worthy causes like education, public health, social security and environmental protection.
Some critics hold that the current inadequacy of public services in China is merely the symptom of an underdeveloped economy, and that future economic growth will naturally take care of the deficiencies. I cannot agree. After years of rapid economic progress, government coffers are flusher than ever; it should be prime time for increased public spending.