19/11/2019
- Li Keqiang tells senior officials to step up efforts to channel water from Yangtze River to arid regions
- Impact of pollution and rising population has prompted increased efforts to improve efficiency and supply
A cement plant on the banks of the Yangtze in Chongqing. The authorities are now trying to stop further development along the river. Photo: Reuters
China needs to divert more water to its arid northern regions and invest more in water infrastructure as shortages get worse because of pollution, overexploitation and rising population levels, Premier Li Keqiang has said.
China’s per capita water supplies are around a quarter of the global average. With demand still rising, the government has sought to make more of scarce supplies by rehabilitating contaminated sources and improving efficiency.
Water remained one of China’s major growth bottlenecks, and persistent droughts this year underlined the need to build new infrastructure, Li told a meeting of senior Communist Party officials on Monday. An account of the meeting was published by China’s official government website.
Local government bonds should be “tilted” in the direction of water infrastructure, he said, and innovative financing tools were also needed.
He also called for research into new pricing policies to encourage conservation.
Li said China’s water supply problems had been improved considerably as a result of the South-North Water Diversion Project, a plan to divert billions of cubic metres of water to the north by building channels connecting the Yangtze and Yellow rivers.
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He said opening up more channels to deliver water to regions north of the Yangtze River Delta would support economic and social development and optimise China’s national development strategy, according to a summary of the meeting on the government website.
China is in the middle of a wide-reaching programme to clean up the Yangtze River, its biggest waterway, and put an end to major development along its banks.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang inspects an empty reservoir during a visit to Jiangxi province last week. Photo: Xinhua
Local governments have been under pressure to dismantle dams, relocate factories and even ban fishing and farming in ecologically fragile regions.
But experts say the ongoing campaign to divert the course of the Yangtze to other regions is still causing long-term damage to the river’s environmental health.
Many cities that had polluted their own water sources had drawn replacement supplies from the Yangtze, exceeding the river’s environmental capacity, said Ma Jun, founder of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, which monitors water pollution.
Beijing already relied on diversion channels from the Yangtze to supply 70 per cent of its water, but had done little to improve conservation or reduce per capita consumption, which was higher than many Western countries, he said.
“[Diversion] has caused so much suffering and needs so many dams to keep up supply, and that has impacted biodiversity,” he said.
Source: SCMP
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24/09/2019
- Observers say domestic issues prompted Kremlin to tighten environmental protection around the lake in Siberia, but Chinese activities also played a part
- Businesses catering to growing number of visitors from China may be easy scapegoats as they are ‘among the most visible because they are foreign’
A growing number of Chinese tourists are visiting Lake Baikal in Siberia. Photo: Shutterstock
Russia has tightened environmental protection around Lake Baikal amid growing concerns over degradation, with Chinese development and tourism at the heart of recent debates on the nationally treasured Siberian lake.
New protocols signed by President Vladimir Putin on September 12 clarify how authorities will monitor “compliance with the law on Lake Baikal’s conservation and environmental rehabilitation”.
They also call for improved state environmental monitoring of the lake’s unique ecosystem, aquatic animal and plant life; prevention of and response to risks; analysis of the pressure from fishing on its biological resources; as well as measures to conserve those unique aquatic resources.
Observers say domestic issues – including a backlash over the government’s hand in accelerating environmental damage – prompted the Kremlin to act, but concerns over Chinese activities in the area also played a part.
Eugene Simonov, coordinator of the Rivers Without Boundaries International Coalition, said the protocols were a bid by Moscow to show it was concerned about the lake, where mismanagement and relaxed standards had damaged water quality and the ecosystem – drawing concern from Unesco, which has designated it a World Heritage Site.
But it was also related to local concerns that an influx of Chinese money and tourists in the region was making matters worse.
“One of the leading causes of problems on Lake Baikal is the development of the lake shore for tourism these days, which, at least in the Irkutsk region, is greatly driven by Chinese business,” said Simonov, who has worked extensively on the area’s environmental issues.
He pointed to the “not legal” hotels opened by local and Chinese businesses that cater to the increasing number of tourists from China, saying they stood out as easy scapegoats.
“The real driving force is the desire of locals to privatise the lake shore, illegally, but the Chinese demand is one of the reasons they want to privatise it, while Chinese businesses are among the most visible because they are foreign,” he said.
Public opposition to a water bottling plant being built by a Chinese-owned company pushed local authorities to halt the project in March. Photo: Weibo
Some 186,000 Chinese tourists visited the region last year, up 37 per cent from 2017, according to official Irkutsk figures. But while they accounted for about two-thirds of foreign visitors to the Irkutsk region, they made up only about 10 per cent of the 1.7 million tourists who visited last year.
Concern about Chinese investment and development in the region reached a crescendo in March, when public opposition pushed local authorities to halt the construction of a water bottling plant operated by AquaSib, a Russian firm owned by a Chinese company called Lake Baikal Water Industry, based in China’s Heilongjiang province.
The Irkutsk government acted after more than a million people – more than the city’s population – signed a petition calling for the “Chinese plant” to be halted.
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“There were at least 10 problems [around Lake Baikal] that were much more important at that moment, but it was the Chinese plan that was the focus,” Simonov said, noting the nationalism surrounding the lake as a Russian point of pride.
Paul Goble, a Eurasia specialist who has been tracking the issues at Lake Baikal, said stirring up resentment over Chinese encroachment in Siberia and the country’s Far East had long been a government tactic to quell dissent and unite popular opinion.
But he said the new protocols showed Moscow realised that locals – facing the effects of a deteriorating environment including deforestation driven by China’s domestic market demand – may not be satisfied with that explanation.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev exchange documents after talks in St Petersburg on Tuesday. Photo: AFP
“People are angry not at China, as might have been the case a year ago or more, but they are angry at Moscow for not standing up to China and what it’s doing,” he said, pointing to this as the reason the Kremlin tightened environmental controls on the lake.
Concerns about the impact of Chinese activities on Russia’s environment come as the two neighbours are playing up closer diplomatic and economic ties. One of the outcomes of a
between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Russian heads of state last week was an agreement to increase bilateral trade to more than US$200 billion over the next five years.
But how that investment could be sustainable for Russia – a key supplier of raw materials needed by China such as oil, gas and timber – remained to be seen, observers said.
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“Our great relationship is going well, but we have not seen the accompanying rise in Chinese foreign direct investment into Russia – that remains very small, despite all the talk,” said Artyom Lukin, an associate professor with the School of Regional and International Studies at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok.
“Russia is not satisfied with that, they would like to see more Chinese money, more Chinese greenfield investment coming into Russia, into more productive areas of the Russian economy, not just into the extraction sector like oil, timber or coal,” he said.
Lake Baikal has been seen as an area that could draw a lot of Chinese investment. Back in 2016 there were reports of a tourism development deal, worth up to US$11 billion, between Russian operator Grand Baikal and a consortium of Chinese firms, according to Russian state media reports.
But so far most development from Chinese businesses has remained at the small and medium scale.
The reasons for that, according to experts, range from the difficulty of competing with powerful local rivals and the need to tread carefully around anti-China sentiment.
However, the burden and liability of complying with environmental standards also kept operations at a smaller scale.
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“It’s simpler and easier to operate smaller businesses and facilities, and it’s easier to monitor and manage them,” said Vitaly Mozharowski, a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner in Moscow, who specialises in environmental law, noting that concerns included management of waste water and garbage.
Meanwhile, big complexes were obvious targets for scrutiny, and that would only increase with the new protocols in place, Mozharowski said. “Any large-scale initiatives would be considered from the very top of the Russian establishment,” he said.
Source: SCMP
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10/09/2019
- Deity has all the necessary travel documents for seven-day journey bringing blessings to coastal communities
The statue of Chinese sea goddess Mazu on board the train for her seven-day tour of eastern China. Photo: Weibo
High-speed rail travellers in eastern China may find themselves in exalted company this week as one of China’s most beloved deities is on a seven-day tour.
Mazu, protector of seafarers, boarded the train at Putian in Fujian province on Friday with an entourage of 230 worshippers for one of her regular “inspection tours”. And, like any modern traveller, the sea goddess had the necessary identity card and ticket for the journey.
Mazu, known as Tin Hau in Hong Kong, began life more than 1,000 years ago as a mortal named Lin Mo, according to Chinese folk belief. As a girl she is said to have saved some of her family members when they were caught in a typhoon while out fishing. In another version of the myth, Lin Mo died while trying to rescue shipwreck victims.
She fell out of favour in mainland China during the Cultural Revolution, when her ancestral temple on Meizhou Island in the southeastern province of Fujian was destroyed to make way for a People’s Liberation Army garrison. In the late 1970s the temple was rebuilt and in 2009 the beliefs and customs surrounding Mazu were recognised as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by Unesco.
Inspectors on China’s high speed rail will find everything in order if they ask to see the goddess Mazu’s ticket during her seven-day tour. Photo: Weibo
Staff at the Meizhou Mazu Temple applied for an ID card for the goddess, in her earthly name of Lin Mo. Tickets were also organised for two other fairy figures who traditionally protect her, according to Chinese folklore.
“Not only Mazu but Thousand-Mile Eye and Wind-Accompanying Ear were all bought tickets,” a temple representative told the Southern Metropolis News.
This is not the first time the trio have been bought travel tickets. Two years ago their airfares were paid for when they visited Malaysia and Singapore and, a year later, they took a cruise ship to the Philippines.
This year’s tour includes a visit to Kunshan in Jiangsu and Shanghai, before Mazu returns to her home temple on the island of Meizhou. At each stop, devotees believe Mazu blesses the location with her presence and protects its residents from harm.
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The tour has been organised jointly by the Meizhou Temple as well as the Huiju Mazu Temple in Kunshan and the Lugang Mazu Temple in Taiwan.
News of the celestial train journey quickly went viral on Chinese social media, with posts on Mazu receiving 460 million views on Weibo, the Twitter-like microblogging platform, since Monday. “First, respect. Second, she takes up a seat so it’s not crazy to buy her a ticket,” one comment read.
Source: SCMP
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 