Originally published August 6 2005
China suffers from poor air and water quality
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
China still suffers from horrible air and water quality, despite new measures adopted by the government, which can lead to health detriments.
They've seen the hitherto somnambulant government environmental watchdog, under the stewardship of a feisty vice-director, score some rare victories and begin to wake up.
There's been the back down from a legal claim made by multinational paper company APP over a local boycott of its products following a damning Greenpeace report on its logging practices in Yunnan.
And then, the launch of a major government-sponsored environment group.
All in all, it looks like Red China is turning shades of green, and some environmental advocates are not surprisingly looking a little perkier over China.
But in China, laws on paper are one thing, and laws in reality are something else again, especially when local businesses are under pressure from all angles to make a quick buck.
So observers of the environmental practices of Chinese businesses are seeing a less than verdant landscape.
The Chinese government is a past master at deflecting pressing issues outward, protecting its own interests while obliging others to pick up the slack; acknowledging the concern, but ducking the responsibility - and the pattern has repeated itself with regard to environmental regulation of business.
In her book on China's environmental emergency The River Runs Black, US researcher Elizabeth Economy says water in five of China's biggest river systems cannot even be touched, let alone drunk, because of toxic chemical waste and other industrial pollutants.
By allowing local party kingpins to lord it over private businesses in their bailiwick, Beijing has effectively devolved much of its ability to control the activities of smaller private operators.
Following a series of complaints from locals, the local government in Jiangxi province warned 358 heavily polluting companies in September.
Private companies struggle to gain credit from the mainstream banking system because China's commercial banks, mainly state-owned, are genetically predisposed to support the country's state-owned enterprises, many of which are struggling to stay solvent.
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