A mixed bag of environmental news – China’s latest political and current affairs news

There were many notable headlines in news about China’s energy needs and environmental triumphs and troubles this week. Here is a rundown:

A cloud forms over — and under — Beijing

• The region surrounding Beijing saw extraordinary increases in air pollution in the first half of 2017 — over 10 percent increases in particulate matter gave the lie to Beijing’s promises for “extraordinary” efforts to reel in pollution. It was dispiriting news not just for residents, but also for authorities as they worked to “meet politically crucial 2017 pollution targets,” Reuters says.
• A Chinese non-governmental think tank found that even the underground subway in Beijing provided no respite from particulate matter in the air: In fact, sampled rates over the winter were as much as 50 percent higher than above ground, SCMP reports.

Bad behavior by companies and officials across the country was evident

• As The China Project summarized on August 15, a battery-making town in central Henan Province continues to struggle with the toxic legacy of cadmium poisoning, and workers in pain are unlikely to find legal relief, as the battery companies are state owned.
• Other victims of pollution may have more luck: Caixin reports that 11 farmers in Shandong Province are suing their local government for the contamination of irrigation water, and that the case of a fish farmer in Hebei Province suing two steel companies and local officials for negligence has become a “watershed moment in the country’s environmental litigation.”
• There was punishment doled out for environmental damage in at least two cases: Sixth Tone reports that Jiangsu Province shut down 14 electric tricycle manufacturers for “discharging acid waste into the surrounding environment” and that a high-ranking official in Henan Province was dismissed for lax environmental oversight.

More natural gas and nuclear power

• Official goals for lower air pollution have led to a spike in demand for natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal. Caixin reports that consumption is expected to increase 8.1 percent annually through 2030 — quadruple the global average, and so fast that Bloomberg predicts possible shortages come wintertime.
• The “world’s most advanced nuclear reactor” is about to become operational in Sanmen county of eastern Zhejiang Province. Read about it here on SCMP, and more about nuclear technology in China here on The China Project.

• U.S.-China relations
  Nationalistic advisor Steve Bannon is leaving the White House, the New York Times reports (paywall). Yesterday, The China Project covered his latest barrage of China criticism — much of which is a line of attack that we expect to continue in Bannon’s absence.
  Think what you want about Steve Bannon, but he’s got a good point on China / Washington Post
• Impacts of development
  Protect green peacocks from dam, environmentalists urge court / Caixin
  Tianjin wetlands under threat from resumed land reclamation / Sixth Tone
  1.3 million people along flood-prone Yellow River will be moved / Sixth Tone
• Infectious disease
  China confirms bird flu outbreak at quail farms in Guizhou province / Reuters
• Communist Party politicking
  China’s top party school urges cadres to learn from Xi’s teenage travails / Reuters
  Ex-leaders’ influence ‘wanes’ at secretive Chinese Communist Party summer getaway / SCMP
• Dissidents
  New video shows Liu Xiaobo’s widow saying she needs to avoid public eye / SCMP
• North Korea
  Your ‘made in China’ clothes may actually have been made in North Korea / Quartz
  Do your China products come from North Korea? What will the jury say? / China Law Blog
  What’s China worried about? Clue lies in where it’s holding navy drills / SCMP