Fifty years of industrialization and economic
development have had severe consequences on China's environment.
China's rush into industrialisation after 1950 was undertaken with
hardly any regard for the atmosphere, water supplies, forests or the
countryside in general. Belching smokestacks were seen as proof of the
success of socialist construction. Severe environmental pollution,
including acid rain, thick smog, toxic waste, water pollution, and
rapidly growing emissions of carbon dioxide, has been the result.
Athough the negative environmental effects of
industrialization were not addressed, the poster below shows that
already in the 1970s, some attempts were made to create an awareness
about the necessity of making China green.
Likewise, a poster from the early 1970s that called
for the collection of scrap metal and other waste materials for
recycling purposes must be considered a rarity.
In the 1980s, the authorities became more aware of
the impact of the environmental problems on the country's economic
performance. They started a series of propaganda campaigns that were to
educate the people in keeping their immediate surroundings clean. This
was phrased in terms of maintaining a high level of personal hygiene as well as of social morality.
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On a more general level, the aim was to make the
people, both in the countryside and in the cities, more aware of the
need to contribute to the "greening" of China, and to "beautify" the
environment.
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This contribution could take the form of protecting
and maintaining plant- and wildlife. Over the years, the stress on
protecting the environment has become an integral part of the various
campaigns aimed at building Socialist Spiritual Civilization.
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China is currently the world's second largest
emitter of carbon dioxide. It already accounts for 10% of all
greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, pollution produced by coal burning
has a direct impact on the level of acid rain, which, according to
official estimates, affects 30% of the country. China generates
three-quarters of its energy from coal. The pollution this causes is
particularly severe in China's industrial cities. According to the WHO,
Beijing, Shenyang, Xi'an, Shanghai and Guangzhou are on the top-10 of
the world's most polluted cities. The air in Beijing is 16 times
dirtier than it is in New York. The most polluted place in the country
may be the Northeastern city of Benxi, which in winter cannot be seen
by satellite reconnaissance for months at a time.
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Another important environmental issue has been the
loss of farmland due to the fast expansion of industries and cities:
between 1980 and 1990, the arable land area declined by 0.37% per
annum. When great floods
occur, as they have done almost every year over the past decade,
causing great devastation, the loss of topsoil is greater because of
deforestation. The vehemence of these floods
proves that China is suffering from grave economic and social problems
as a consequence of environmental degradation. Moreover, inadequate
rural fuel supplies continue to contribute to the massive
deforestation. The government tries to counter this by embarking on
large-scale afforestation projects. Regular tree-planting
manifestations are employed to raise the awareness of the population.
Roughly half of all urban ground water resources,
lakes and the seven major riverine systems are polluted because of a
lack of sewers and waste treatment facilities; 85% of all Chinese
cities are now short of clean water, and in the countryside only one
Chinese in seven has safe drinking water. Thousands of kilometres of
rivers are contaminated by industrial toxins, and one-third of the
coastal fishing grounds are ruined by pollution. Only some 15% of waste
water is treated.
China acceded to a number of international
agreements to counter environmental pollution. In 1992, the government
signed the Climate Change Framework Convention at the UN Conference on
Environment and Development, which was ratified in 1993. China is also
a signatory to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the
Ozone Layer.
s.r.landsberger@let.leidenuniv.nl
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