Incident at Jilin
Incident at Jilin
Incident at Jilin
Incident at Jilin
Wake-Up Call or Business as Usual?
On November 13, 2005, an explosion at a state-owned chemical plant in northeastern China's Jilin province released 100 tons of benzene and other pollutants into the region's Songhua River, killing five people and injuring 60 others. Within two weeks, the 80-kilometer-long toxic slick had flowed 370 kilometers north to Harbin, China's eighth largest city (population 3.8 million). As the tainted waters passed, residents endured four days without public water, and shortages caused widespread panic. Other downstream locales, including Khabarovsk, the largest city in Russia's Far East, witnessed similar scares, though most retained their water supplies.
Apart from the economic, ecological, and social consequences of the disaster, and unlike most industrial incidents in China, the Jilin disaster yielded major political fallout. Initially, factory and local government officials denied that the blast released any pollution and continued to repeat such statements for more than a week. As the slick approached Harbin, city officials informed residents they were shutting down the water supply to "carry out repair and inspections on the pipe network." It was only 10 days after the explosion that China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) finally confirmed that a "major water pollution incident" had occurred. The following day, journalists published a series of reports detailing efforts by officials to cover up the incident.
Fearing further damage to the credibility of the Communist Party, the Chinese government launched a full response. SEPA officials invited United Nations officials to test water along the river and provide expertise in chemical contamination and public health. After issuing a formal apology to Russia, China announced that it would set up a hotline to keep Moscow informed as the pollution approached Russian territory. In the town of Dalianhe, near the border, Party members went door to door distributing bottled water. Convoys of water trucks decorated with red banners proclaiming "Love the people-deliver water" drove through some cities, and residents were warned not to use the river water. Zeng Yukang, deputy general manager of China National Petroleum Corp., proprietor of the Jilin plant, went so far as to express "sympathy and deep apologies" to the people of Harbin. And in January, SEPA earmarked US$3.3 billion to clean up the river by 2010.
Perhaps most remarkable was the unprecedented shake-up in the government of embarrassed President Hu Jintao. On December 2, Xie Zhenhua, minister of SEPA and China's top environmental official, "resigned" from his post. The Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council, China's cabinet, publicly accused SEPA of underestimating the impact of the spill and blamed the agency for losses caused by the incident. Xie became the highest-ranking Chinese official to be removed from office for an environmental incident since China activated its new "accountability" system during the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) crisis in 2003.
But he was only the first. Two days later, Yu Li, general manager of Jilin Petrochemical Company, lost his position as well. Shen Dongming, manager of the plant's benzene facility, and Wang Fang, head of a safety workshop, were also fired. "People who are found to have provided false information to investigators will...be punished severely," warned Li Yizhong, director of China's State Administration of Work Safety. By mid-week, the pressure had proved too great for Wang Wei, the deputy mayor of Jilin who oversaw the blast response and had been quoted as saying the accident did not cause widespread pollution. On December 7, Wang was found dead after apparently hanging himself.
Growing Accountability?
The Chinese government's about-face has triggered much speculation about the future of Chinese environmental protection efforts. Hu Kanping, a journalist for China Green Times in Beijing, believes Xie Zhenhua's resignation was a positive indication that the government is now taking major pollution events seriously. Hu believes the Jilin events will expedite the government's resolution of environmental conflicts and anticipates growing corporate accountability, including safer production. The need is urgent, highlighted by other year-end industrial accidents, among them a coal mine blast that killed 171 miners, a freak mishap in which a tanker truck carrying aqueous alkali fell off a ferry and plunged into a Yangtze tributary, and a waste spill from China's third-largest zinc smelter that contaminated another major waterway with cadmium levels 10 times above normal.
China's central government has made greater efforts to prevent such incidents in recent years, and after Jilin the government ordered local authorities to draw up emergency plans for closing plants with excessive effluent and factories that fail to improve environmental safety conditions. It also announced that it would check environmental standards at all factories lining the nation's rivers. Yet the practice of corporate social responsibility remains unfamiliar to most Chinese businesses, and ignorance of work safety, pollution, and educational needs-the underlying cause of thousands of tragedies-is widespread.
Industrial pollution is a sensitive issue in China, which now witnesses frequent protests over perceived corporate abuses, from the contamination of crops and local water supplies to uncompensated property loss. The Jilin accident added renewed vigor to citizen demands. In mid-December, 17 restaurant and public bathhouse owners and 3 Harbin residents filed a class-action lawsuit against the Jilin chemical plant. "I simply want to do justice to my fellow citizens in Harbin whose health has been under serious threat over the years by the contaminated river," Wang Baoqing, a restaurant owner seeking a symbolic compensation of 10,000 yuan (US$1,238), told South China Morning Post.
The More Things Change...?
Will the Jilin disaster have a lasting effect on government openness, environmental protection, and industrial oversight in China? Many activists in China agree that without the international attention it attracted, the incident probably wouldn't have provoked the government response it did. A month after the explosion, Wen Bo, Beijing representative for Pacific Environment, remained skeptical: "The Songhua accident is an emotional one.... It is a killing strip 100 kilometers long, affecting everything in its path. It has made a good story." Wen notes that the Jilin incident was simply one particularly visible sign of China's worsening environmental devastation, much of which goes unnoticed. "The sad fact is that there are other stories and other rivers with pollution...much more significant than this one. This kind of disaster is not rare in China. People suffer from severe pollution in every region every day." An estimated 70 percent of China's waterways are contaminated, for example.
Rather than seeing a silver lining in the leadership change at SEPA, Wen laments the loss of a strong environmental proponent. He called Xie's resignation "a pity," noting that "he is a rare person at SEPA and also in the Chinese government to have a firm grasp of environmental issues, with a scientific background. Not many people have his expertise."
Hu Kanping of China Green Times, who has worked personally with Xie's replacement, Zhou Shengxian, is more hopeful that the shift in leadership will bring new direction to SEPA-and new energy for environmental protection. Zhou "is a very honest worker," Hu explains. "He looks at the big picture while targeting specific problems and taking decisive action. I think with his leadership in SEPA, environmental protection will become a true field, with increased importance in the government and at the national level."
Both Wen and Hu agree that a change in overall development policy may be the only way to address China's deep-seated environmental and social problems. "A lot of China's celebrated economic growth is made at the cost of human health," Wen explains, citing the government's traditional reluctance to embrace any environmental goals that may hinder growth. "If people started organizing and claiming their environmental rights, then we wouldn't have such a high rate of GDP growth. Everyone at SEPA talks green-that is their business-but unless the economic sector takes initiative to make growth ecologically viable, then this talk is meaningless."
Over the past year, the Chinese government has shifted its rhetoric from a focus on economic growth at all costs to stressing a "harmonious society" where considerations of development and environment coexist. The events in Jilin serve as a key test of whether officials will put these words into action. But even if the disaster doesn't change government priorities in the long run, it has given activists like Wen Bo and Hu Kanping a high-profile event around which to organize their larger efforts to change the system. In the end, only the combined efforts of government, industry, and civil society will lead to effective protection of China's environment and human health.