(Video) Dead Pigs Floating in River Ignored in South China

NTDTV, Via Youtube, May 1, 2009-

While the whole world is in a panic over the threat of swine flu, hundreds of dead pigs are floating in a town river in Fujian Province, China. The stench, along with the possibility of a swine flu epidemic, is unnerving nearby residents. But local authorities are taking no action.

Many large and small sacks containing dead pigs are floating among the lotus plants and have blocked a river at the junction of Shouqi, Huangdun and Xingqiao Villages in Fuqing City, Fujian Province. Residents say some of the stinking sacks have sunk to the river bottom. According to residents, local authorities are ignoring the pigs. “Who cares, there are more over on that side. Over on that side of the bridge if you go and see, there are around 100 more sacks than what you see here.” The female resident has seen a car carrying sacks of both small and large pigs. The sacks were thrown directly from the bridge into the river. Residents of Shouqi Village say the dead pigs have been piling up for half a month. Residents say that even a local TV news report on the pigs did not alert local authorities.

- NTDTV via Youtube

Disabilities in China’s polluted Shanxi Province

By James Reynolds, BBC News, Shanxi, central China, Apr. 23, 2009-

For the Li family, the best part of the day comes at noon.

Every day, after school, Li San San picks up his children from school, jams them all onto the back of his motorbike and drives them through the hills back home.

The kids cling onto each other and laugh as they try not to fall off.

On the main roads nearby, lines of coal trucks head off to the rest of China. The valleys are full of steelworks and heavy industry.

The Li family get back to their home, which is carved into the side of a hill.

Six-year-old Hong Wei eats his noodles and sits quietly in front of his school notebook.

He has a shy smile and hides in his sister’s lap when we try to talk to him.

Hong Wei was born with an extra thumb on his right hand. His elder sister Lixia, who’s 14, was born with a twisted left foot and walks with a heavy limp.

Like many people in Shanxi, this family is too poor to go to the doctors. The parents don’t know why their children were born with defects. They’re simply left to guess.

“The air isn’t good around here,” says Li San San. “When it’s bad, it’s difficult to breathe, it looks gloomy and smoggy out there.”

The province of Shanxi is one of the most polluted places in the world.

The rate of birth defects in this region is six times higher than the national average.

In January, the director of family planning in Shanxi, An Huanxiao, told the China Daily newspaper that the province’s high rate of birth defects was related to environmental pollution. …… (more details from BBC News)

China struggles with drought

AFP, China, Feb. 06, 2009 -

BEIJING (AFP) — China was struggling Friday to get water to millions of people and save swathes of its wheat harvest, after raising its drought emergency to the highest level for the first time.

The decision to go to emergency level one was taken Thursday at a meeting of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, Xinhua news agency reported.

The increased alert level was made official at the same time as the central government sent out specialists to all eight major drought-hit regions to help residents with relief supplies and technical aid, the China Daily said.

About 4.3 million people and 2.1 million head of livestock are short of water, the relief headquarters said in a statement, as parts of the nation experience their worst drought since the early 1950s.

Eight provinces and municipalities are affected, stretching in a broad belt from Gansu province on the Mongolian border in the northwest to Shandong province on the Yellow Sea in the east.

About 43 percent of the country’s winter wheat supplies are at risk, as some areas have seen no rain for 100 days or more, according to state media…… (more from AFP)

China approves controversial chemical plant in nearby city

Reuters, Tue Jan 13, 2009 -

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s environment ministry has approved a petrochemical plant that drew fierce opposition over feared pollution in one eastern city, approving its construction several miles to the west.

Plans to build the paraxylene plant in Xiamen, Fujian province, faltered in 2007 after residents there mobilized a rare mass campaign over fears of toxins from the petrochemicals, used to make polyester and fabrics.

But now the Ministry of Environmental Protection had passed an environmental impact study to build the petrochemical complex in Zhangzhou, about 50 km (30 miles) west of Xiamen, the official China News Service reported on Tuesday.

The approval means the project, costing about 14 billion yuan ($2 billion), “may move to Zhangzhou,” the report said.

Officials in Zhangzhou would not comment about the report when contacted by Reuters. Calls to the Tenglong Aromatic Hydrocarbon Company, which the report said would build the plant, were not answered.

There were no reports of organized opposition in Zhangzhou.

Chinese citizens have grown increasingly vocal over the pollution and environmental blight that has accompanied the country’s frantic industrialization.

But officials and citizens are also eager to create jobs, especially with growth slowing sharply in recent months.

In June 2007, protests against the project spread in Xiamen by mobile phone text message, prompting environmental officials in Beijing to chide the local government for disregarding environmental impact assessment steps.

Residents said they feared the plant on the city edge would release toxins that would do lasting damage to health. Officials said the project was entirely safe.

- Reuters

Review: China in 2008– the CCP started to lose its stranglehold (2)

The Diplomat, Australia, 24-Dec-2008 -

Government insider turned dissident writer Jennifer Zeng asks whether 2008 will be remembered as the year the CCP started to lose its stranglehold over China

(Cont’d)

Pollution, corruption, food adulteration

The Paralympics had barely drawn to a close when news of the poisoned milk powder broke. If the Sanlu Group had not been partly owned by New Zealand’s Fonterra and launched an investigation, thousands more babies might be dying from the results of melamine poisoning. The authorities had known there was a problem since December 2007, but it was all hushed up because of the Olympics.

Food and water contamination is a massive problem in China. Zhou Qing, award-winning author of What Kind of God – A Survey of the Current Safety of China’s Food, warned years ago that food security could ultimately spark the collapse of the CCP, and there are increasing signs that the people are less accepting of the situation. Certainly the statistics make sobering reading.

Over 40 per cent of drinking water in rural China falls short of government standards, animal feed is almost universally tainted with melamine, excessive pesticides and chemical fertilisers are used to boost yields, and harmful antibiotics are widely administered to control disease in seafood and livestock. Talcum powder is routinely added to flour and rice is chemically whitened. And yet, miraculously, the CCP is still able to ensure access to the best-quality organically grown produce for party officials.

Throughout 2008, the CCP has used the global financial crisis to reinforce the superiority of the country’s social system. In reality, though, China is far from immune. Its stock market has plunged by nearly two-thirds in the 11 months to September and the economy remains sluggish, with large numbers of factories going bankrupt as international demand for Chinese-made consumer goods slides. According to the State Planning and Development Commission, nearly 70,000 small- to medium-sized companies went out of business in the first half of 2008.

It is these factors and their associated social repercussions that most threaten the CCP’s monopoly on political power. As well as the poor and hungry, beneficiaries of Party patronage, who had grown extremely rich in previous years, are known to be unhappy that their worth has been cut by 50 per cent of late.

Meanwhile corruption, rampant throughout the financial markets, has reached epidemic levels among government officials, and people have finally had enough. In August, 28-year-old Yang Jia allegedly broke into the Zhabei Branch of Shanghai’s Bureau of Public Security, where 2700 police officers were working, and stabbed six policemen to death and wounded four more.

In any normal society, this would be horrific news. Yet 90 per cent of bloggers and Internet users in China showed sympathy and support for Yang after rumours spread that he had been badly treated by police in the past. At his second trial in October, in a display of public dissatisfaction with the regime, more than 1000 supporters gathered outside the court to support Yang. One man held a huge banner that read, The knight-errant will endure forever. Many others shouted, ‘Overthrow the fascist government! Overthrow the Chinese Communist Party! Yang Jia is a hero!’ A small group was even bold enough to wear T-shirts displaying Yang Jia’s photo. The protests were to no avail, however, as Yang was executed in November.

It is a measure of the level of anger at social injustice and the bias of the judicial system that so many people, including ‘Bird’s Nest’ Olympic Stadium designer Ai Weiwei, should publicly support a suspected cop-killer. And the prevailing mood of dissatisfaction is growing. Riots are now a daily occurrence, including in June when an attempted police cover-up over the assault and death of a teenage girl triggered large-scale violence in Guizhou Province. Up to 100,000 are reported to have participated in the riot, with 160 office buildings and 40 cars torched. (to be cont’d)

< previous |      Next >

- The Diplomat

China’s “cancer village”– Liu-kuai

by Michael Anderson, SOH Radio Network, on Friday, December 12th, 2008 -

Industrial development and poor environmental protection has led to one village in Tianjin having a cancer rating 25 times higher than the national average. Liu-kuai is now dubbed China’s “cancer village”.

Liu-kuai village used to be a prosperous fishery and rice patty area about a decade ago, according to Chinese media. The village is now heavily concentrated with chemical industries, and there is now severe water and air pollution, barren lands and fishery decimation. The village is now plagued by cases of respiratory diseases and cancer.

In 2003, Liu-kuai villagers participated in a survey, and found that out of the 190 locals surveyed, 148 suffered from chronic headaches and nausea, and 39 suffered constant asthma, Tracheitis and other respiratory diseases. Since 1998, over 200 people have died from cancer there, the majority of them from lung cancer. The proportion of cancer sufferers in the village in the last10 years is 25 times higher than the Chinese national average, and there is almost one cancer patient to every family.

According to one local resident, they used to be able to drink straight from the river, and now they don’t even dare to drink well water. Water pumped up from hundreds of metres below ground level now comes up yellow with a strange smell. Many of the middle-aged women in the area have developed brain tumours from the severity of the pollution.

Over a hundred industrial chemical businesses are only a stones throw away from villager’s homes, and the waste water spouts they use are hidden below the water line. These businesses release waste water into the river day and night, severely affecting the health of local residents. The irony is that the government has cancelled medical benefits for rural people and these kinds of cases are becoming more and more common.

The above new is hosted by … for Inside China Today on the SOH Radio Network

China: Landslide sends 50,000 cubic metres of mountain mass into Yangtze River

by Chris Thomas, SOH Radio Network, on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 -

A massive landslide at the north shore of the Yangtze River in Chongqing city on Sunday has sent 50,000 cubic square metres of gravel into the river causing massive waves.

According to Chongqing Daily News reports, at around 4.40pm on Sunday, a mountain body situated in the city’s Wushan Prefecture, at the mouth of the Wu Gorge on the northshore of the Yangtze River collapsed, with massive amounts of gravel hurling into the river, sending up large amounts of dust which covered nearby regions also creating huge waves. The waves caused boats docked 2kms away from Wushan to shake strongly, and the Jian-San Hao ship next to a barge was pushed far away by the waves.

According to estimations by Wushan perfection Bureau of Land Management officials, the landslide mass was around 50,000 cubic metres. Boats were immediately banned on the segment of the river, and relevant teams have begun emergency traffic control for the water channels in the region, diverting boats to nearby safe areas. The ban was lifted a few hours later after officials found that the depth of the river was safe, and all traffic on the river has resumed.

Investigations are now underway by Wushan prefecture officials into the cause of the landslide.

The above news is brought to you by Yu Ming and hosted by Chris Thomas for Inside China Today on the SOH Radio Network.

China: Wild animals threatened by booming demand of food and medicine

By Emma Graham-Harrison, Reuters, Tue Nov 11, 2008-

BEIJING (Reuters) – Wild animals are climbing back onto Chinese plates after the deadly SARS virus made some diners wary, and booming demand for traditional medicine is also threatening some plants, environmentalists said on Wednesday.

Nearly half of urbanites had consumed wildlife in the past 12 months, either as food or medicine, with rich and well educated Chinese most likely to tuck into a wild snake or turtle, a survey of urbanites in six cities found.

They enjoyed eating wildlife because they saw it as “unpolluted,” “special” and with extra nourishing and health powers, according to a study commissioned by Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

“This consumer demand is increasingly placing the natural environment — both in China and abroad — at risk through unsustainable and illegal wildlife trade,” the report said.

Around half of the southern Chinese markets checked by Traffic were also selling wildlife for the pot, mostly reptiles but some birds and mammals as well. Two species for sale are on an international list of 800 critically threatened animals……. (more details from Reuters)

(videos) Toxic Villages in China

From lauraling’s pod:

Take a trip to an electronic wasteland in Southern China. Here, much the world’s electronic waste ends up. The crude process of recycling this e-waste can have serious health and environmental consequences.

http://current.com/items/76355482/toxic_villages.htm?xid=55

And also, from CBS TV program:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4586903n

Speech (2/2): China amidst deep economic crisis before the global financial crisis: Chinese economist

(Excerpt) By Qinlian He, economist, via Epoch Times Staff, Nov 1, 2008 -

Chinese economist Ms. He Qinglian speaks about the “Global Financial Crisis and China’s Economic and Political Development.” (Zhong Tao/The Epoch Times)

( First part )

NEW YORK—A Chinese economist based in New York says that China is already amidst a deep economic crisis ahead of the global financial crisis.

Qinglian He was spoke at Saturday’s Flushing Forum, launched by local Chinese in Flushing, New York City to deal with issues of significance to the Chinese community.

This was the forum’s eighth seminar, “The global financial crisis and China’s political and economic development.”

Following is her second part of speech:

Develop Real Estate By Plundering Common Civilians

From the late 1990s, China’s wealth was mostly from four major industries, real estate, stock market, financial and resource-based enterprises.

To get land for real estate development, the Chinese Communist regime has forced a lot of urban residents to move out of their homes and farmers to give up their farmland.

Since the mid-1990s, 3.7 million families in urban areas have lost their homes and 80 million farmers have lost their farmland. With little or no compensated from provincial governments, these people have become victims of the real estate development and are the main body to rebel against the system. In turn, the government made a huge profit by selling the land to the real estate companies at a very high price. On average, around 60 percent of the local government revenue comes from the trade of the land.

Support the Central Government By Sacrificing the Environment

Another major revenue source comes from the resource-based enterprises.

More than half of China’s top 100 companies are involved in the oil and petrochemical industries which are well known for its contribution to environmental degradation. Chinese companies often choose to be located near rivers, to easily discharge pollutants in the surrounding lakes and seas.

China’s waterways are now at a breaking point.

The local residents are the most affected by the pollution, but because these companies are the major taxpayers and the financial pillars of the Chinese Communist regime, little is done to rectify the pollution. About 50 percent of the CCP’s revenue comes from 60 of these large companies, at the expense of the environment and the people.

Stock Market Bubble

The third source is the stock market. Qinglian He said the whole world should be aware that China’s stock market bubble is huge.

According to a joint survey by CCTV (the largest state-run TV station) and several newspapers, 97 percent of investors who entered the market after January 1 last year have lost more than half of their investment. Less than 1 percent of investors have managed to make a profit. The stock market is proving to be a big black hole that sucks money out of investors.

Can a Despotic Regime Save the Day?

The last part is about financial situation. This part is rather complicated, and I would only talk about it briefly. The bad debts incurred by Chinese banks are enormous, amounting to $900 billion according to Ernst & Young.

Beijing would not admit it, but they have failed to list these bad-debt loaded banks with Wall Street after years’ of efforts because they would not pass the rigid regulations of the U.S. stock market.

The banks were finally listed in the A-stock market in Hong Kong and mainland China. The total stock value of the eight major Chinese banks accounts for over 50 percent of China’s total stock market value. Before the listing, the rate of non-performing loans was 19 percent according to China’s official data. Within one year after the listing, the rate dropped to around 8 percent. The banks did not improve its management, but the rate was significantly lowered simply by entering the stock market.

During the recent financial crisis, critics against government bailout published a sarcastic article, saying that given the CCP’s rich experience in turning bad-debts to prize assets, and regarding the U.S. government’s decision to bailout, it’d be easier to sell the U.S. banks to China and let them manage the banks.

Distorted Economic Model

If a country’s growth relies solely on real estate, stock market, financial and resource-based enterprises, its economy is a distorted one. Sixty percent of China’s wealthiest people are real-estate developers and this composition is drastically deviated from world’s norm.

These four industries are where China’s money is concentrated, they are also where a lot of social conflicts occur, Qinglian He said. China’s industrial and social policies decided its economic growth model, which in turn directed China’s social conflict and resistance model.

Social Instability Is Inevitable

Every year in China there are tens of thousands of large-scale social conflicts. These events, which display public resistance, arise from four main causes; first, farmers who have had their land confiscated; second, urban residents forced out of their homes; third, rural residents protesting local pollution; and forth, other events that became a vent of public indignation due to loss of land, official corruption or unfair treatment.

The recent Weng An event is one example, where the death of a girl caused a massive anti-government protest where government buildings and vehicles were burnt by angry residents. Such incidents occur suddenly, and involve more participants than the government can handle. These types of protests have become more and more frequent in the past two years.

The CCP shifts the causes of its own economic crisis to the U.S., I believe the changes in CCP’s internal economic structure and social structure caused its crises.

So although the CCP managed to dump its responsibilities, if it doesn’t act and solve the root cause of the problems, China will be in much bigger trouble than the crisis in the U.S. Because in the U.S., the financial crisis did not cause social conflicts, while in China a trivial economic issue may cause social riots, and can be solved only by political means. This is typical of a despotic regime like China. (End)

Part 1 2

- The Epochtimes: In Depth Analysis of the Economic Crisis in China (Part 2)

China east city residents mobilize against chemical project

By Chris Buckley, Reuters, Mon Oct 13, 2008-

BEIJING (Reuters) – Residents of a pollution-plagued Chinese city are mobilizing against a proposed chemical plant they fear will menace their health, with some urging marches against the scheme they say puts growth before the environment.

The plant proposed for Taizhou on the coast of east China’s Zhejiang province would make paraxylene (PX), a petrochemical used in polyester. Last year, protests against a PX plant planned for another coastal city, Xiamen, led to officials shelving it.

Now Taizhou residents, dismayed at the prospect of another chemical plant in an area already crowded with them, are threatening to re-enact those protests — and again bring into focus China’s struggle to balance growth with growing public anger over pollution and environmental threats.

“Resolutely oppose the PX project. As Taizhou residents, everyone must take some action,” said one message on a local website (http://bbs.taizhou.com) that has served as a platform for the opposition. “We want clear water and green hills, not toxic cash.”

China’s leaders have vowed to create a more “harmonious society” with cleaner air and water, even at the cost of slower economic growth. But this dispute threatens to become another battle pitting citizens against local officials whose priority often remains attracting fresh investment and revenue.

A website devoted to opposing the project (http://blog.sina.com.cn/baoweitaizhou) urges residents to “surround Taizhou.”

“Let the people speak out. Give them full rights to know and express themselves,” said the latest posting, dated Sunday. “Environmental problems are the world’s problems, and every individual’s.”

Internet messages also urge residents to send around text messages organizing mass “strolls” against the project.

EAGER OFFICIALS

Coastal Taizhou is a hub of chemical production and the big plant would be a feather in the cap for local officials.

“This is a rare historic opportunity, and a big project to enrich the people of Taizhou,” stated an official news report in April (http://tz.zj.gov.cn) that announced the plan.

“We must seize the initiative and go all out to win it.”

But residents and workers in Taizhou have long complained about water, air and fields putrid with pollution……. (more details from Reuters)

China’s Environmental Crisis : Special report

by the Council on Foreign Relations, USA, Aug. 4, 2008-

Introduction

China’s heady economic growth continued to blossom in 2007, with the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) hitting 11.4 percent. This booming economy, however, has come alongside an environmental crisis. Sixteen of the world’s twenty most polluted cities are in China. To many, Beijing’s pledge to host a “Green Olympics” in the summer of 2008 signaled the country’s willingness to address its environmental problems. Experts say the Chinese government has made serious efforts to clean up and achieved many of the bid commitments. However, an environmentally sustainable growth rate remains a serious challenge for the country.

What has China’s economic boom done to the environment?

China’s economy has grown tenfold since 1978, and its focus on economic development at breakneck speed has led to widespread environmental degradation. “China has gone through an industrialization in the past twenty years that many developing countries needed one hundred years to complete,” said Pan Yue, vice minister of China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) in a 2007 report in Germany’s Spiegel. Yue was then the deputy director of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), which became the MEP in March 2008. But Elizabeth C. Economy, a CFR senior fellow and expert on China’s environment, says the argument that China is experiencing the same growing pains as any other industrialized nation “fundamentally mischaracterizes” the issue. The “scale and scope of pollution far outpaces what occurred in the United States and Europe” during their industrial revolutions, she says. Moreover, China’s environmental woes have hurt its economy. The damage to the ecosystem costs China about 9 percent of its GDP, according to the United Nations Development Program.

What are some of China’s major environmental challenges?

• Water. China suffers from the twin problems of water shortage and water pollution. About one-third of China’s population lacks access to clean drinking water. Its per-capita water supply falls at around a quarter of the global average. Some 70 percent of the country’s rivers and lakes are polluted, with roughly two hundred million tons of sewage and industrial waste pouring into Chinese waterways in 2004. As part of its effort to harness the nation’s water supply, China has a large dam-building program with over twenty-five thousand dams nationwide–more than any other nation. The dam projects are not only a high cost in terms of money, but also in farmland loss, ecological damage, and forced migration of millions of people, says the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Jennifer L. Turner, director of its China Environment Forum, in a report for the Jamestown Foundation.
• Land. Desertification in China leads to the loss of about 5,800 square miles of grasslands every year, an area roughly the size of Connecticut. The Worldwatch Institute, an environmental watchdog and research organization, reports that excessive farm cultivation, particularly overgrazing, is one of the leading causes of desertification. The cultivation stems from a policy followed from the 1950s to the early 1980s that encouraged farmers to settle in grasslands. As the deforestation grows, so do the number of sandstorms; a hundred were expected between 2000 and 2009, more than a fourfold increase over the previous decade. Desertification also contributes to China’s air pollution problems, with increasing dust causing a third of China’s air pollution.
• Greenhouse gases. In 2008, China surpassed the United States as the largest global emitter of greenhouse gases by volume. (On a per capita basis, however, Americans emit five times as much greenhouse gas as Chinese.) The increase in China’s emissions is primarily due to the country’s reliance on coal, which accounts for over two-thirds of its energy consumption. It contributes to sulfur dioxide emissions causing acid rain, which falls on over 30 percent of the country.
• Population and development. China’s inhabitants number more than 1.3 billion. The country’s growing economic prosperity and rapid development mean increasing urbanization, consumerism, and pollution. One example of this can be seen in car production: As Kelly Sims Gallagher notes in her book, China Shifts Gears, China produced 42,000 passenger cars in 1990. By 2004, the number hit one million, with sixteen million cars on China’s roads. By 2000, motor vehicles were the leading cause of China’s urban air pollution, though China adheres to stricter mileage standards than the United States.

How has the Chinese public responded to the environmental threat?

The government received six hundred thousand environment-related complaints in 2006, a figure that has risen roughly 30 percent each year since 2002. Aside from economic concerns over the cost of environmental degradation, the government recognizes that environment-related social unrest threatens central authority.

In May 2006, China Daily reported that roughly fifty thousand environmental disputes took place during the prior year. This mirrors an overall trend of a rise in the number of protests over the past decade, fueled by a sense of individual rights related to increasing openness and prosperity.

In June 2007, the citizens of Xiamen, a city on the southeastern coast known for its ecotourism industry, demonstrated (SFGate) against the construction of a chemical factory slated to be built nearby.

In May 2008, citizens in Chengdu demonstrated against the construction of a petrochemical factory and oil refinery (Reuters), citing environmental concerns……. (more details from the Council on Foreign Relations)

2008 China Olympics: U.S. cyclists wear masks upon arrival in Beijing

- from USA Today

- More photos available from USA Today

Air Pollution Still Troubles China Ahead of Olympics

By Stephanie Ho, VOA News, Beijing, 04 August 2008-

As China makes last minute preparations to host the Olympics, the environment is proving to be one major wild card that Chinese leaders cannot totally control. Olympic host city Beijing has some of the most polluted air in the world. Despite measures aimed at clearing the skies, the air is still often a disturbing murky gray. Stephanie Ho reports from the Chinese capital.

These days, people watch the skies above Beijing closely. Some days, especially after it rains, the skies are relatively clear.

More often than not, though, a thick murky haze fills the air and makes it nearly impossible to see nearby buildings.

What is causing Beijing’s gray skies? Is it natural phenomena, or is it pollution?

The city’s notoriously polluted air is one of the biggest question marks hanging over the Olympic games, which begin August 8. China hopes the event will dazzle the world. Will smoggy skies overshadow the party?

The Australian Olympic Committee’s Peter Montgomery says the air pollution concerns him and his team.

“For us, the athletes’ attitude to the event is paramount,” he said. If they don’t want to compete, fine. They will be absolutely under no pressure to compete if they feel uneasy or do not want to compete.”

Some Olympic delegations, including the U.S. Olympic Committee, are making protective masks available to their athletes.

Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau spokesman Du Shaozhong says his office has worked “very hard” to ensure the air quality.

Du says there is no need to wear a face mask when participating in the games. He says if the athletes insist on doing so, it will only end up an extra item in their luggage and make their luggage heavier……. ( more details from VOA News)

China: 100 unidentified radioactive sources to move below quake lake

AFP, May 30, 2008-

DUJIANGYAN, China (AFP) — China rushed Friday to remove radioactive and chemical materials sitting downstream from a “quake lake” that threatens to burst and send torrents of water into heavily populated areas.

Nearly 100 unidentified radioactive sources were ordered to be removed by Friday evening from the path of the potential torrent of water, state press reported, citing the nation’s environmental protection bureau.

“Moving those radioactive sources has become a top, urgent priority,” the Beijing Times quoted Ma Ning, a senior regional official at the bureau, as saying.

The directive to move the radioactive material came as authorities were already working to relocate about 5,000 tonnes of dangerous chemicals that were downstream of the lake at Tangjiashan.

Dealing with the “quake lake” has become one of the key challenges in the aftermath of the May 12 earthquake that devastated large tracts of mountainous Sichuan province, killing more than 68,500 people.

The lake was created when landslides triggered by the quake created a dam across a river in a valley.

Helicopters have been used to airlift supplies to hundreds of soldiers working to create a channel that can drain the lake, which contains enough water to fill over 50,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.

After three days of non-stop efforts, the soldiers had dug a 50-metre (164-foot) wide channel 300 metres long, but despite the frantic pace the work would not be completed until next Thursday, the state-run China Daily reported.

More than a million people risk being affected if the Tanjiashan lake empties onto towns and villages downstream, and many residents have been doing regular drills to move quickly to higher ground.

By Saturday morning, close to 200,000 people were expected to have been evacuated from the area, the state-run China International Radio said Friday evening.

However, it was not the only area of Sichuan at risk. There were 33 other lakes created by the quake, 28 of which were at risk of bursting, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Other unexpected dangers also continued to arise amid the massive task of looking after the 15 million people made homeless in the quake.

Gas from a chemical fire in Leigu town, near the epicentre of the quake, poisoned four people and forced more than 800 to evacuate on Thursday, Xinhua reported, citing a local official.

The fire occurred when bleach powder, used as a disinfectant, self-ignited when it reacted with leaked rainwater, said Song Ming, Communist Party secretary for Beichuan county, one of the worst-hit areas.

The dense chlorine gas poisoned two rescue soldiers and two medical workers, who were taken to hospital, according to Xinhua.

No one was available at the environmental protection bureau on Friday to comment on the report about the radioactive sources that were being cleared.

But previous reports in the state press said these sources could emanate from machines used to test defects in the construction of bridges or boats, or from X-ray machines.

There were also several nuclear installations not used for electricity generation in areas near the epicentre of the quake, according to the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) in France.

These included a manufacturing site for nuclear weapons, as well as a nuclear reactor.

The government said last week that nuclear facilities and radioactive sites in Sichuan province were “safe and controllable.”

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said late Friday that authorities had dispatched thousands of people to inspect businesses in quake-hit areas, finding some with possible environmental risks.

Of 14,357 companies, including some 2,900 chemical firms, surveyed in Sichuan province, inspectors found 134 potential risks, Xinhua news agency said, quoting a statement on the ministry’s website on Friday.

Nearly 30 of the potential risks had been dealt with.

The ministry also said the province’s environmental quality remained stable and water was acceptable for drinking.

The death toll from the quake has reached 68,558, with another 18,618 missing, the government said Friday. Some 15 million people have been displaced in the disaster.

- Afp: China rushes to clear radioactive materials below quake lake

China Seismologist’s Prediction of Earthquake Ignored, Says Scientist

By Xinfei, Epoch Times staff, May 14, 2008-

The same night of Sichuan’s May 12 earthquake, Chinese scientist Li Shihui revealed on his blog that Chinese seismologist Geng Qingguo accurately predicted the quake and warned authorities about the disaster in late April. According to Li, Geng’s report was ignored by Chinese authorities.

Mr. Li, a visiting fellow scientist at the Key Laboratory of Geo-mechanical Engineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in the article that Geng first raised the issue as early as 2006, warning that a major quake will occur in Aba area of Sichuan Province where the 5.12 quake happened.

(Photo: [L-R] Geng Qingguo, Wang Chengmin, and Li Shihui. Picture taken at the “From Haicheng Earthquake to Qinglong Wonder Forum” , The 20th Academic Conference on Heaven, Earth and Man. Photo from Li Shihui’s blog)

According to Li, on April 26 and 27, the Committee of Natural Disaster Prediction, an organization under China Geophysical Institute, discussed Geng’s findings and further predicted that a quake measuring 6 to 7 will occur between May 2008 and April 2009 in the area south to Lanzhou City where Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces meet. The committee’s report was turned into China Seismology Bureau as a confidential document on April 30.

In addition, Geng Qingguo clearly pointed out that in Aba region a quake of 7 or higher magnitude is most likely to occur in 10 days before and after May 8, 2008. His prediction has been proved accurate in every aspect: magnitude, location, and time. But his report received no respond from the authorities.

“On hearing about Wenchuan’s 7.8-manitude earthquake, Chinese seismologist Geng Qingguo was struck with a tearless grief,” said Li in his blog. “His heart was bleeding.”

Geng Qingguo is a researcher for China Seismology Bureau and the Vice-Chair Examiner of The Committee for Natural Disaster Prediction at the China Geophysical Institute. According to Li Shihui, Geng developed the method of predicting major earthquakes with drought occurrence in 1972. With this method, Geng successfully predicted the 1975 earthquake in Haicheng City and the Tangshan quake in 1976 which killed at least 240,000 people. In the 1980s Geng published his theories in his book The Relationship Between Drought and Earthquake in China (published by Science Press).

“However,” Li said, “his scientific achievements offended authorities in the seismology field, and Geng was removed from the prediction team and transferred to a seismology newspaper.”

Li’s article has quickly drawn extensive attention. Many bloggers responded, condemning the Chinese authorities for ignoring the expert’s warning.

“I don’t understand why the authorities do not pay attention to the seismologists and let innocent people suffer!” said an angry blogger.

Another said, “If people were warned about it earlier, the quake would not have caused so many deaths.”

One blogger said, “I am one of the survivors of the Tangshan Quake. Tangshan people are extremely hostile toward the National Seismology Bureau. Because of their failure to predict such a devastating quake, over 240,000 people lost their lives. Now 32 years later, they again failed to predict the Sichuan quake. Why should we tax-payers spend money on you high officials in the National Seismology Bureau? The head of the National Seismology Bureau should resign from his position.”

- Original from the Epochtimes: Seismologist’s Prediction of Sichuan Quake Ignored, Says Scientist

China earthquake toll could above 50,000, hundreds of reservoirs in danger

AFP, May 15, 2008-

YINGXIU, China (AFP) — China said Thursday that over 50,000 people had likely died in the devastating earthquake that hit its southwest as time runs out to save survivors buried in the rubble of broken communities.

Experts said the search-and-rescue operation was entering its most crucial phase yet four days after the 7.9-magnitude quake struck, with the chances of finding survivors diminishing by the hour.

“The deaths are estimated to be over 50,000,” state television said, citing figures from the national quake relief headquarters.

The epic scale of Monday’s quake is becoming clearer as teams hike into the remote epicentre in Sichuan province, where whole towns were levelled.

“If there are some survivors under such conditions, it would be a matter of luck, or a miracle,” said Zhang Zhoushu, vice director of the state-run China Earthquake Disaster Prevention Centre.

Yet amidst the tragedy , miracles did occur.

In Yingxiu, a town at the epicentre, rescue workers pulled an 11-year-old girl out of the rubble 68 hours after the quake demolished her school, an AFP reporter who made it into the stricken community witnessed.

Rescuers were sifting through the debris when they heard a voice.

“It’s wonderful, she’s alive!” a delighted onlooker shouted as the girl was pulled out on a stretcher and given a small cup of water.

China has rebuffed most foreign offers to send rescuers, but said Thursday it would accept a Japanese team flying in with sniffer dogs.

“Most people are saved in the first three or four days,” Willie McMartin, director of the British-based charity International Rescue Corps, told AFP in Hong Kong where his team is trying to get permission to enter China.

“People can survive up to 15 days, but that is when you are talking about miracles, and miracles do not happen very often.”

Sichuan officials upped the confirmed death toll there to more than 19,500, but several tens of thousands more are missing or entombed in debris.

As the military ramped up its rescue efforts with more troops and aircraft, a new threat emerged from creaking dams and reservoirs shaken by the quake.

State-run television said authorities had found “dangerous situations” at more than 400 reservoirs — two of them major — across five provinces.

Underlining the desperate efforts, China launched a mass public appeal for thousands of shovels, hammers and cranes, saying some rescuers were having to shift huge concrete slabs by hand to get to survivors……. (more details from AFP: China says quake toll likely above 50,000)

(photo) China earthquake: fissure on the road from Wenchuan to Chengdu city

Photo from Internet, Via The Epochtimes, May. 13, 2008-

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