Chinese School - More than the lake, water is the problem

Opinion / You Nuo

More than the lake, water is the problem

By You Nuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-07-02 07:29

As a citizen of Hong Kong, I thought about using my column on the 10th
anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty to praise the
Special Administrative Region's rule of law and freedom and to praise the
notion of "one country, two systems".

However, precisely because the two systems ultimately belong to the one
country, and because Hong Kong cannot sustain its well-being without the
entire Chinese mainland developing in a healthier way, I finally decided
to devote this column to an event that is not as highlighted as Hong
Kong's anniversary.

That was Premier Wen Jiabao's weekend inspection trip to Taihu Lake, site
of an environmental crisis in mid-May. A sudden overgrowth of blue algae
polluted the daily water supply for millions of lakeside people.

The accumulation of chemical contamination from industrial discharge from
lakeside cities, mainly Wuxi and Changzhou, triggered the blue algae's
growth over huge areas of the lake's surface. The algae destroyed the
water's oxygen content, killing all other lake life and creating an
unbearable stench.

Hong Kong is far from Taihu Lake. The lake belongs to the Yangtze River
system while Hong Kong is on the South China Sea. But the quality of the
mainland water system matters a great deal to Hong Kong since Hong Kong
gets most of its drinking water from the Pearl River.

Similar to Taihu Lake, plenty of newly industrialized towns and cities
are developing along the Pearl River and its tributaries. Presumably they
will soon be joined by more cities with more factories and more sewage
discharge.

Moreover, no matter where Hong Kong or any city or individual gets water
for today or tomorrow - from the bottles in supermarkets or from hugely
expensive desalination projects - we all belong to the same planet.

Countries that are developing faster than others also bear larger
environmental responsibilities. If China does not quickly digest the
lessons that are already popping up one after another to disturb its
development, it may set a disappointing example.

But if it demonstrates - as Premier Wen pledged on his Taihu trip - both
strong will and effective governance in the control of pollution and all
other environmental hazards, China will be doing a great favor to the
world.

The cruel fact is that, as the premier may have learned from his lakeside
trip, keeping the environment clean may be more complicated and expensive
than many people are prepared for.

The lakeside cities contribute 45 percent of the gross domestic product
(GDP) to Jiangsu Province, one of the most powerful provincial economies
in China. So the local officials might have thought the factories they
built were too important to interfere with, whether or not they treated
their waste water.

But that very mindset, which Chinese critics call the GDP fetish, not
only wasted well over 10 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) of government funds
in the past on blue algae control. It has also given rise to much greater
costs to correct the current problem.

Some scientists estimate it would cost at least 200 billion yuan ($26.3
billion) to restore Taihu's environmental quality to the level of just 30
to 40 years ago.

Fighting pollution now looks like a mammoth challenge for us.

E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/02/2007 page4)

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