Is China choking to death?

THE ancient Silk Road city of Lanzhou sprawls along the banks of the Yellow River in central China - at least that's what the guidebooks say. On a cold winter's morning, the impenetrable smog cuts visibility down to about 100 metres and it is impossible to see the spectacular cliffs which apparently tower over the city let alone the sweep of the river. Petrochemical industries, a huge oil refinery, a power station and engineering factories belch fumes into the still, cold air. It is difficult to see the industrial areas under the dense grey shroud. You cannot see the smoke stacks for the smoke. Lanzhou is widely reputed to be the air pollution capital of China, the dirtiest place in a nation of grimy, polluted industrial cities. It will soon have many rivals as the Chinese economic miracle gathers momentum and the demands of 1.2 billion people anxious to enjoy a Western-style living standard begin to foul the remaining clean air and water. ''China is a looming environmental catastrophe,'' said a Western diplomat in Beijing. ''It will make Eastern Europe look like a nature park.'' Marine biologist Ms Catherine Cheung is preparing a bio-diversity report for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Chinese Ministry of Forestry. The softly spoken Ms Cheung became gloomy when she talked about the enormous range of life that was supported across China's widely varying climatic regions. ''A lot of it is destroyed already,'' she said. ''You have to go to very remote areas to find places that are pristine. These areas are under a lot of threat from development. It's very depressing.'' Horrendous air pollution is already killing thousands of Chinese. A confidential World Bank environmental strategy paper shows the authorities already have evidence respiratory disease linked to pollution is the country's deadliest killer. ''Data from the Ministry of Public Health indicates the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which has been linked to exposure to fine suspended particulates and sulphur dioxide, was the leading cause of death in China in 1988 with a death rate of 162.6 per 100,000 which is 26 per cent of all deaths,'' the paper reports. ''When standardised and compared with figures for the United States, the rate in China is more than five times greater. Fine and ultra-fine particulates are considered most dangerous to health and should be the highest priority in regard to air pollutionabatement.'' The paper says air quality across vast regions is poor. China's National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) and World Health Organisation monitoring show frequent violations of Chinese and WHO air quality standards by wide margins. The annual average of total suspended particulates is 526 micrograms per cubic metre in north China and 318 micrograms per cubic metre in the south. WHO guidelines recommend a safe ceiling of 60-90 micrograms per cubic metre. China is heavily dependent on coal for energy and inefficient industrial and domestic burning pumps clouds of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates into the atmosphere. The strategy paper reports annual average sulphur dioxide concentration in the north is 93 micrograms per cubic metre and in the south 119 per cubic metre, well above the WHO guideline level of 40-60 micrograms per cubic metre. The scale and pace of environmental damage is frightening. The WWF last year sent a team to survey potential nesting sites for the rare Saunders' Gull among the coastal marshes of Liaoning, Hebei and Shandong provinces. Working off 10-year-old satellite pictures the team allocated six weeks for the survey. ''They finished in a bit under four weeks,'' said the WWF's Mr David Melville. ''Quite a few of the sites didn't exist any longer. There will effectively be no coastal salt marshes north of the Yangtze River in about 10 years.'' THERE are more than 70 species of animals and birds that are highly endangered in China including the giant panda, the golden monkey, the crested ibis, the takin, the Indian elephant and the Yangtze River dolphin. When paramount leader Mr Deng Xiaoping released his country from its socialist straitjacket in 1978, the bottled up desire to get rich exploded in a burst of industrial and agricultural expansion that has delivered an average GDP growth of about nine percent a year. China boasts the world's fastest growing economy and the benefits of prosperity are flowing far beyond the southern provinces where the market reforms first took hold. For the first time in centuries, if ever, hundreds of millions of Chinese enjoy a measure of material wealth. But the environment is taking a hammering. Soil, air, water and wildlife suffer as more people and bigger industries demand extra coal-fired power while cities designed for bicycles and buses are choked by an expanding fleet of cars. Some of China's urban centres, including Beijing, disappear from satellite pictures for days, even in fine weather. Shanghai, once known as the Pearl of the Orient, is a mess. Years of heavy industry, neglect and now burgeoning economic growth have poisoned its air and waterways. The broad Huangpu River flowing past the colonial buildings along the famous Bund carries silt, rubbish, plastic bags and sewage in an oily scum. Drinking water is drawn from this river where almost 500,000 tonnes of untreated human sewage is discharged each year. Developers have taken little heed of the environment in the race for prosperity in booming Shenzhen. Here farmland and paddy fields have been buried under a forest of new skyscrapers and factory buildings spreading out into Guangdong province. Construction has also spelt disaster for sections of the spectacular coral reef offshore from Sanya on the tropical, southern tip of Hainan Island where the beauty of nature was often the only comfort for disgraced exiles who were traditionally banished to this remote outpost. Builders have satisfied the demand for lime and building materials by dynamiting the reef and carting the coral away. Some of China's new environmental destruction is compounding ancient damage. Driving out of Lanzhou's industrial smog into the Loess Plateau of north-central China reveals a landscape tortured by thousands of years of erosion and over-farming. The vice-director of the Gansu Grassland Ecological Research Institute in Lanzhou, Professor Zhang Zihe, said an estimated 1.6 billion tonnes of topsoil was washed from the 580,000 square kilometre Loess Plateau each year. Much of this finds its way into the Yellow River, which has been called ''China's sorrow'' because of the load of topsoil it carries away. Huge erosion gullies tear at precarious terraces on the Loess Plateau while farmers battle to extract a living from the remaining impoverished soil. Total soil loss to erosion across the country is estimated to exceed five billion tonnes each year. It is water pollution that is perhaps the most serious menace to public health. The World Bank strategy paper warns 13 out of 15 sections of the seven major rivers that flow past cities are seriously polluted. ''There have been sharp drops in prawns, jellyfish and scallops in coastal waters and an increase in the frequency of red tides, all of which are attributed to sewage in the water,'' it says. Industrial waste water is the biggest offender in most urban areas. The World Bank found only 32 per cent of the estimated 25 billion tonnes of industrial waste water discharged in 1990 was treated. After treatment, only half met effluent discharge standards. Less than half of NEPA's monitoring stations for urban water quality are able to show test results that satisfy minimum standards for dissolved oxygen or for biochemical oxygen demand. Urban groundwater reservoirs are becoming increasingly contaminated as polluted surface water carrying hazardous and toxic wastes is leached down. ''While several ministries have differing views on how severe the problem is, the quality of drinking water in cities appears to be at risk,'' the paper says. ''In rural areas, the problem is acute. ''The Ministry of Public Health estimates imply that only about one in seven rural Chinese have safe drinking water,'' it says. Authorities in China are aware of the problem and efforts have been launched to curb waste emissions and penalise dirty industries, but environmental police are overwhelmed by the speed of development. The official China Daily newspaper reported last month the government had set more than 230 new environmental standards in addition to the 50 regional standards already in force. About $2.6 billion in fines was collected from plants discharging pollution in 1991 and the government has said this money would be used to fund environmental protection. There is considerable doubt if these laws are a serious deterrent. ''In theory, China's anti-pollution legislation is stricter than Hongkong's,'' said a Western environmental specialist. ''It's just not enforced.'' In its eighth five-year plan from 1991 to 1995, the Beijing government will spend about $105 billion on the fight against pollution. NEPA director Mr Qu Geping has been quoted in the official media as saying a big slice of these funds would be used to seek cleaner energy sources to replace coal. However, the director of the Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management at Hongkong University, Dr Peter Hills, said China had little choice but to continue burning coal if economic policy settings remained tuned to rapid growth. ALTERNATIVES such as more nuclear power or hydro-electric power from the controversial plan to dam the Yangtze at the historic Three Gorges area would be expensive and take years to come on stream. ''China has the problem of many developing countries that the supply of energy is constantly chasing demand,'' he said. ''You never quite make it there.'' Dr Hills said China was also similar to most developing countries in that the leadership was committed to rapid economic growth. ''For internal political reasons they are stuck with this transition to a market economy,'' he said. ''It has to be successful for them.'' ''No-one is going to slam the brakes on to satisfy environmental constraints.'' There is no doubt China will burn more coal, exerting a major influence on global warming. In a paper presented to the Regional Conference on Environmental Challenges for Asian Pacific Energy Systems in the 1990s in Kuala Lumpur last year, Mr Shen Longhai and Mr Liu Lujun from China's State Planning Commission explained energy consumption had increased by six per cent each year over the last decade. In 1989 this meant 1.05 billion tonnes of raw coal was burned to produce about 70 per cent of the country's energy. This was expected to increase to 1.4 billion tonnes by the year 2000. China is the world's third biggest energy consumer behind the US and the Confederation of Independent States, but it should be pointed out its per capita energy use was less than half the global average in 1987 and only eight per cent of the US figure. Dr Hills said some observers believed China would pursue its economic goals before making a serious effort on the environment. ''Some people believe China will follow the Japanese model and that is you get dirty, you get rich and then you clean it up,'' he said. ''Japan got dirty and rich between 1950 and 1970 and cleaned up between 1970 and 1980. ''If you accept the Japanese model and that kind of reasoning, it becomes a race against time. ''The question is can China really get rich enough quickly enough before the costs of cleaning up become so horrendous that it is impractical.''