The Adventures of CSE Students!

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

US: Olympic Host China Lacks Freedoms
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=4429558
US Lists Rights Abuses in China, Russia, Iraq, Others in Annual Report
By ANNE GEARAN AP Diplomatic WriterWASHINGTON Mar 11, 2008 (AP)

The United States branded China an authoritarian human rights abuser Tuesday, citing alleged torture, state control of basic aspects of daily life, tight controls on religion and harassment of foreign charities.
China, host of the summer Olympics, has rampant and chronic human rights problems despite rapid economic growth that has transformed large parts of Chinese society, the State Department said in its annual accounting of human rights practices around the world.
The world's most populous nation, China is an increasingly important U.S. trade partner and a chief competitor with the United States for energy and shrinking natural resources. It is the object of broad U.S. economic and diplomatic outreach, with mixed results.
The United States, other nations and outside advocacy groups have tried to use the world media attention and prestige associated with the Olympics to leverage internal change and diplomatic cooperation from China, but the games are barely mentioned in the human rights report.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
"The government tightened restrictions on freedom of speech and the press, particularly in anticipation of and during sensitive events, including increased efforts to control and censor the Internet," the report said.
Forced relocations went up last year, the report said. It noted claims that people were forced from their homes to make way for Olympic projects in Beijing.
President Bush plans to attend the Olympics this year. Visiting U.S. lawmakers would get help from the U.S. Embassy for a "safe, memorable and enjoyable experience," the U.S. ambassador in Beijing wrote in a letter last year.
The report detailed the lengths some Chinese officials have taken to enforce their country's well-known "one child" policy, and gave a chilling account of alleged torture in China, including the use of electric shocks, beatings, shackles, and other forms of abuse. It includes an account of a prisoner strapped to a "tiger bench," a device that forces the legs to bend sometimes until they break.

Lydia's commentary:
Ever since winning the bid to host the Olympics 2008, China has been receiving much scrutiny under worldwide press regarding its efforts to spruce up the city for this event. Yes, I do agree that it has made China more well-known and recognised on the international platform on its every move, yet, this has proven to be a double-edged sword. The state has been criticized by the West on its dirty history of human rights abuse during the draconian One-Child Policy and political experiments Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Much of the stories have been laid out right in fron of the world to comment and I believe it has been hard on the government to justify for its past leaders actions. While I do believe that China has earned itseld as a country worthy of mention with its significant economical changes, it is hard for them to stay away from its haunted and tainted past.

Labels: 07S501, Administrative, air pollution, Biotech industry, blogs, China's Environmental Issues, chinese society

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Monday, March 31, 2008

Source: Time Magazine, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1713335,00.html
Provided by: Sng Sze Ying

Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008
Smoke and Mirrors
By Bill Powell/Shanghai

No country except the U.S. is crawling with more venture capitalists looking to fund green-energy deals these days than China. The rush has not yet reached dotcom-boom proportions, but VCs and entrepreneurs see big opportunities in helping the country cope with its horrendous pollution problems through alternative-energy development. Deals are getting done. China is applying green principles to the construction of entirely new cities such as Dongtan, an area outside of Shanghai the size of Manhattan, which will use recycled water only and generate electricity using biomass. Last year, 3.4 gigawatts (GW) of wind energy were added to China's electrical grid, making the country the fastest-growing market for wind power in the world. And by 2020, China will quadruple its nuclear capacity from 10 GW to 40, again the fastest rate of growth globally.
But to anyone laboring under the impression that China is well on its way to a carbon-neutral future, reality can be sobering. Despite progress on the alternative-energy front, demand for power is expanding at such an extraordinary rate that it can only be satisfied by the combustion of vast additional quantities of coal, oil and natural gas. For example, between 2008 and 2030, the incremental increase in China's consumption of oil alone is expected to equal India's total annual oil consumption today, according to the International Energy Agency. "The government is being very aggressive in its pursuit of hydro, nuclear and renewables," says Jone-Lin Wang, a senior director at Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a U.S. energy consultancy. "But overall you're not really moving the dial that much over the next 10 to 20 years. These things take time."
Time is not on China's side. The government has announced plans to add an astonishing 1,300 GW to its electrical generation capacity by 2020. (The U.S. is currently capable of generating 1,000 GW.) The goal is for 25-30% of this to come from clean and renewable technologies. But even if these ambitious targets are achieved, some 70% of China's electricity will still come from coal-fired plants in 2020. That's down from about 78% today.
One reason China is so power-hungry: beginning in 2002, the country began dramatically expanding its heavy industries such as steel and aluminum production and auto manufacturing — capital-intensive businesses that are huge energy hogs. Five years ago, the ratio of heavy industry output to gdp in China was 55%; that rose to a staggering 120% last year. Today, light and heavy industry accounts for nearly three-quarters of the country's energy use. As a result, China is not a particularly efficient consumer of power, lagging well behind Japan, the U.S. and other developed countries in the amount of economic output it generates for every gigawatt consumed. Hoping to become 20% more energy-efficient over the next 12 years, Beijing in 2006 ordered heavy industries and local officials to develop more judicious consumption strategies. The government also increased pressure on provincial governments to enact strict building codes to make new office buildings and shopping centers less wasteful.
Laudable moves, but there's another reason why China is becoming as addicted to hydrocarbons as the U.S.: the middle-class dream is coming true for tens of millions of mainlanders, who are buying their first cars, computers, clothes dryers and other electrical appliances. Some estimate that China last year surpassed the U.S. as the largest producer of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, yet the impact of the country's growing consumerism has barely started to spread across the world's energy and environmental landscape. To put matters into perspective, consider China's massive Three Gorges Dam, a $29 billion project that displaced millions of peasants in return for a big jolt of clean, affordable hydropower. According to a forecast by policymakers at Beijing's Sustainable Energy Program, electricity demand from air-conditioners purchased by Chinese in 2008 alone will exceed the total capacity of Three Gorges Dam.
Air-conditioners? What if 300 million Chinese decide to buy suvs? "The Chinese are sort of like the Americans," says CERA's Wang. "They like big cars and houses." That's an observation likely to darken the outlook of even the sunniest of solar-power advocates, and knock the wind right out of the sails of wind-power fans. No matter how much China invests in green technologies, it looks like it won't be enough.

My Comments:

I think China's efforts to cut pollution is reasonably commendable and successful for a country that is living beyond its own means. Yet due to several reasons, China has and will become the victim of its own success, as these environmental policies can have several impacts on the chinese society. Socially, the lives of the common people are in one way or another affected by China's plans to improve environmental conditions. Large-scale projects like The Three Gorges Dam is one good example to show that while it is a generally successful one for generating "cheap and affordable hydropower", it was done at the expense of the welfare and interests of the local people who lived near the dam. In a society where it is susceptible to social unrests, the forced displacement can easily incur the people's wrath and spark social upheavals that is detrimental to not only the social stability, but also to both the economic and political stability of the country as well. While efforts are aimed at solving environmental issues plagueing China, social problems like this will inevitably result and have a snowballing effect. Also, the effectiveness of China's plan to tighten regulations and enforce stricter rules on building codes to make office buildings and shopping centres more environmental friendly, remains to be seen and observed. Although on the surface level, "the government increased pressures on provincial governments" to enact these stringent rules, there is still uncertainty in whether this would work. After all, there is often a lack of political will amongst the provincial governments to prioritize environmental protection efforts over economic prosperity. Presently the provincial government are already running into deficit in funds for economic and social development of their respective provinces, hence there is less likely a chance that more funds will be given to them to invest in expensive green technology. Even if they do recieve funds from the government or earn enough from investments to fund these projects, corrupted provincial governments would not put this money into good use. Therefore, I agree with the author's stance that, "no matter how much China invests in green technogies, it looks like it won't be enough.".

Labels: air pollution, China's Environmental Issues, posted by Sze Ying

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Chinese Air Pollution Deadliest in World, Report Says
July 9, 2007
Kevin Holden Platt in Beijing, China for National Geographic News

Taken from: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/80743027.html

China, the world's fastest growing economy, has earned another startling superlative: the highest annual incidence of premature deaths triggered by air pollution in the world, according to a new study.
A World Health Organization (WHO) report estimates that diseases triggered by indoor and outdoor air pollution kill 656,000 Chinese citizens each year, and polluted drinking water kills another 95,600. (Related: "China's Pollution Leaving Mountains High and Dry, Study Finds" [March 8, 2007].)"
Air pollution is estimated to cause approximately two million premature deaths worldwide per year," said Michal Krzyzanowski, an air quality adviser at the WHO Regional Office for Europe. Krzyzanowski worked with WHO to look at costs and casualties of pollution across the globe. He helped the group develop new air quality guidelines that set out global goals to reduce deaths from pollution.
Deadly Air
Damaging air pollutants include sulfur dioxide, particulate matter—a mixture of extremely small particles and water droplets—ozone, and nitrogen dioxide. China accounts for roughly one-third of the global total for these pollutants, according to Krzyzanowski. (See a map of China.)
In neighboring India, air pollution is believed to cause 527,700 fatalities a year. In the United States, premature deaths from toxic air pollutants are estimated at 41,200 annually.
The combustion of fossil fuels—whether to power China's many automobiles, its burgeoning factories, or its expanding megacities—is a primary source of outdoor air pollutants.
The burning of coal or charcoal to heat homes, common throughout China, also produces a range of indoor air pollutants. (Related: "China's Boom Is Bust for Global Environment, Study Warns" [May 16, 2005].)
Air pollution can trigger or worsen a wide spectrum of respiratory and cardiovascular ailments. WHO's air guidelines warn that pregnant women, the elderly, the sick, and young children are especially susceptible to suffering severe effects from high pollution levels.
Suppressed Information?
The total number of Chinese whose lives are cut short by pollution-triggered diseases aligns closely with the figures that were reportedly left out of a recent World Bank study.
China's State Environmental Protection Agency engineered the removal of the statistics, the Financial Times reported, because the government feared the figures could trigger social unrest. The World Bank is perceived as a staunch ally to China. The organization has committed roughly 40 billion U.S. dollars, along with expert advice, to projects ranging from rural poverty alleviation to promoting sustainable development.
Yet Internet access to certain World Bank reports on China is now being blocked in Beijing.
An official at the World Bank's headquarters in Washington, D.C.—speaking anonymously for fear of worsening the controversy—said the World Bank is still holding talks with the Chinese government on the final version of the pollution risk report, which is set to be published soon. "After the [state environmental protection] agency raised questions about our methodology in calculating them, figures on the likely number of deaths per year related to air and water pollution were not included in the draft report—but remain under discussion for the final report," the bank official said.
Reducing Deaths
WHO leaders, meanwhile, say that meeting new targets on clean air, developed in consultation with 80 environmental health experts across the globe, would drastically curtail the number of Chinese pollution deaths.
"The air quality guidelines for the first time address all regions of the world and provide uniform targets for air quality," said WHO's Krzyzanowski.
"These targets are far tougher than the national standards currently applied in many parts of the world—and in some cities would mean reducing current pollution levels by more than three-fold," he added.
Chen Bingheng, a member of the WHO six-country steering committee that developed the new guidelines, said she was recently invited to explain them to leaders of China's environmental protection agency.
Yet Chen, a professor at Fudan University's School of Public Health in Shanghai, added that the guidelines are not legally binding. WHO member states, including China, are free to set their own national standards.
Still, the Chinese capital has a massive incentive to improve air quality for the smog-smothered masses: Beijing pledged to present pristine skies, waterways, and cityscapes during its bid to host the 2008 Olympics.

Labels: air pollution, articles, posted by elaine

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