Posts tagged ‘Tianjin’

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09/01/2014

* China sets targets for curbing air pollution | Reuters

China has set new targets for its provinces to reduce air pollution by 5 to 25 percent, state media said late on Tuesday, underscoring the government\’s concern about a source of public anger.

English: Air pollution

English: Air pollution (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

China regularly issues directives to try to tackle air pollution in major cities, but these have had limited effect.

Former health minister Chen Zhu said air pollution in the country causes premature deaths of 350,000 to 500,000 people yearly, state media reported on Tuesday. Chen wrote the article in a December issue of the Lancet medical journal.

Air quality in large parts of northern and southern China reached unhealthy levels on Tuesday.

Under the new regulations, Beijing, its neighboring city of Tianjin and northern Hebei province will have to cut the amount of PM 2.5 particles, which are especially bad for health, by 25 percent annually, state news agency Xinhua said, citing the ministry of environmental protection.

China\’s commercial capital, Shanghai, the eastern provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and northern Shanxi will have to impose cuts of 20 percent. Reductions of 15 percent were set for Guangdong and Chongqing and 10 percent for the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Xinhua said.

The State Council, or cabinet, is mulling a system to evaluate each local government\’s progress and those who fail to reach goals will be \”named and shamed\”, said the China Daily newspaper.

Air quality in cities is of increasing concern to China\’s stability-obsessed leaders, anxious to douse potential unrest as a more affluent urban population turns against a growth-at-all-costs economic model that has poisoned much of the country\’s air, water and soil.

Authorities have invested in various projects to fight pollution and empowered courts to mete out the death penalty in serious cases.

via China sets targets for curbing air pollution | Reuters.

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28/12/2013

Li drops in to help realize home dream|Politics|chinadaily.com.cn

For Li Zongyi, 77, an unexpected visitor to her home has realized her decades-long dream.

The guest was Premier Li Keqiang. During a one-day trip to Tianjin on Friday, he paid a surprising visit to Li Zongyi\’s home in the Xiyuzhuang community, one of the oldest shantytowns in the city, and promised residents that they will be able to move into new apartments in the next year.

Han Huixia, Li Zongyi\’s daughter, said: \”I have been waiting for this moment for so long. I dare not burn coal to keep warm in winter, in case there is a gas leak or a fire.\”

Like families in the Xiyuzhuang community, hundreds of millions of residents in shantytowns nationwide are expected to move into new apartments, analysts said, as the country pushes ahead with renovation projects for these areas.

Huang Xiaohu, a researcher at a consultancy center affiliated to the Ministry of Land and Resources, said the renovation of some shanty areas can be very difficult, due to the complexity of the local population, a lack of financial support, and disagreements among residents on the relocation plan.

The Xiyuzhuang community, covering 64 hectares and with low-income residents comprising 20 percent of its households, is a typical case, Huang said, as the cost of compensation is too high.

\”The only way out in this case is to let the government play the dominant role and provide residents with low-cost houses, instead of costly commercial apartments,\” he said.

A State Council meeting in June pledged to improve housing conditions for the underprivileged and to promote urbanization by accelerating shantytown reform.

Urbanization will also be pushed for another 100 million people living in the country\’s less developed western areas.

To achieve the target, the government will encourage private capital and enterprises to invest in the shantytown transformation, and will allow local authorities to use corporate bonds to solve the financing problem.

As of 2013, China has solved the housing problems of 2.18 million households living in shantytown areas and embarked on projects that could solve such problems for another 3.23 million households, 6 percent higher than planned.

Tao Ran, a professor at Renmin University of China, said the government has looked to the resettlement of residents in shanty areas to be one of its key economic drives in coming years.

But some fundamental work should be addressed before any steps are taken, he said.

Tao suggested that a universal guideline be introduced for local governments to follow during demolition of homes to avoid misconduct and conflicts.

via Li drops in to help realize home dream|Politics|chinadaily.com.cn.

Posted in China alert, Economics, housing, Low income, Politics, Social & cultural, urban development | Leave a Comment »

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28/12/2013

China’s IT sector to gross 12.5 trillion yuan – Chinadaily.com.cn

The sales revenue of China\’s information technology sector will hit 12.5 trillion yuan (about $2.04 trillion) this year, a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology official has forecast.

English: Logo Information Technology

English: Logo Information Technology (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the first nine months of 2013, the sector\’s sales revenue reached 8.98 trillion yuan, up 14 percent year on year, said Ding Wenwu, chief of the ministry\’s electronics and information department, at the 13th China Tianjin Information Technology Exposition, which opened in Tianjin on Thursday.

China\’s information technology sector has maintained stable growth in the past three years, with its output of mobile phones, computers and color TV sets world leading, according to Ding.

With new developments such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing and big data, the information technology sector faces new growth opportunities, he said.

The ministry will underscore innovations in the sector to enhance its core competitiveness and promote the consumption of information products and services, and deep integration between industrialization and informationization, the official added.

China aims to boost the consumption of information products and services and make the sector a new engine for domestic demand and economic growth.

via China’s IT sector to gross 12.5 trillion yuan – Chinadaily.com.cn.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Internet, IT, Technology | 1 Comment »

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23/12/2013

China city caps car-buying to curb pollution | South China Morning Post

Another Chinese city has capped the total number of car licence plates it will issue annually, state media said Sunday, following moves by Beijing and other metropolises to curb pollution and congestion.

The world’s most populous nation is also the world’s largest car-buyer. But it is trying to curb poor air quality and other environmental damages caused by rapid development.

Tianjin, a coastal city near Beijing with 14 million people and 2.36 million registered motor vehicles last year, will cap new car plates to 100,000 a year, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The government will award 60,000 plates by lottery, reserving 10,000 of these for fuel-efficient cars, and auction the remaining 40,000.

Of the total plates issued, 88 per cent will go to individuals and the rest to companies and other entities, while government bodies will be ineligible, Xinhua said.

Although the details were reported over the weekend, the policy was announced a week earlier and took effect five hours later, sparking “overnight panic buying”, it added.

Four other cities — Beijing, the commercial hub of Shanghai, Guiyang in the southwest and Guangzhou in the south — have imposed similar restrictions.

Beijing, whose population tops 20 million, launched a lottery system in 2011 for an annual maximum of 240,000 car registrations.

The capital has more than 5.3 million cars on the road, Xinhua said. Demand is so high that applicants have just a 1 in 80 chance, the China Daily newspaper said in October.

Guangzhou last year capped registration for small- and medium-sized cars at 120,000. The city of 16 million people had about 2.4 million cars on the road as of May, local media reported at the time.

Starting next March, Tianjin will also restrict a fifth of private vehicles from using the road on workdays depending on their plate number — a practice first introduced in Beijing in 2008.

via China city caps car-buying to curb pollution | South China Morning Post.

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19/12/2013

China protects key river sources – Xinhua | English.news.cn

China plans to strengthen the environmental protection of the Sanjiangyuan region of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, the source of important rivers.

With an average altitude of 4,000 meters, Sanjiangyuan, which means \”source of three rivers\” in Chinese, lies in the hinterland of west China\’s Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and is home to China\’s biggest and highest wetlands ecosystem. (The place where the world famous Yangtse, Yellow and Lantsang  originate.)

A newly-approved protection plan for the region aims to expand the rehabilitation area from 152,000 to 395,000 square kilometers, according to a statement released after Wednesday\’s executive meeting of the State Council, the country\’s Cabinet, presided over by Premier Li Keqiang.

According to the plan, efforts will focus on protecting and rehabilitating vegetation in the area while improving a monitoring and warning network for local ecological conditions.

Meanwhile, a separate plan on lakes whose water quality are relatively sound was also approved at the meeting. It called for adjusting the industrial structure and distribution in major lake areas and strengthened pollution control of rivers that flow into these lakes.

The statement encouraged strengthened scientific management, wider use of proper technology and the strictest source protection rules, calling for greater government investment and a balance among environmental protection, economic development and people\’s livelihoods.

Also at the meeting, a report was delivered on combating sandstorms in Beijing and Tianjin, urging more forestation subsidies from the central government and a responsibility pursuit system for forests management.

\”Unapproved tree felling, land reclamation, farming, digging and the use of water resources in the forested areas must be strictly cracked down on,\” said the statement.

In addition, the meeting approved a blueprint on establishing a multifunction ecological experimentation zone in northwest China\’s Gansu Province that incorporates water saving, ecological protection, industrial restructuring, resettlement of residents and poverty relief.

via China protects key river sources – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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11/11/2013

High-speed railways: Faster than a speeding bullet | The Economist

China’s new rail network, already the world’s longest, will soon stretch considerably farther

THE new high-speed railway line to Urumqi climbs hundreds of metres onto the Tibetan plateau before slicing past the valley where the Dalai Lama was born. It climbs to oxygen-starved altitudes and then descends to the edge of the Gobi desert for a final sprint of several hundred windblown kilometres across a Martian landscape. The line will reach higher than any other bullet-train track in the world and extend what is already by far the world’s longest high-speed rail network by nearly one-fifth compared with its current length. The challenge will be explaining why this particular stretch is necessary.

Record-breaking milestones have become routine in the breathtaking development of high-speed railways in China, known as gaotie. In just five years, since the first one connected Beijing with the nearby port of Tianjin in 2008, high-speed track in service has reached 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles), more than in all of Europe. The network has expanded to link more than 100 cities. In December the last section was opened on the world’s longest gaotie line, stretching 2,400km from Beijing to Shenzhen, on the border with Hong Kong (see map). The network has confounded some sceptics who believed there would not be enough demand. High-speed trains carry almost 2m people daily, which is about one-third of the total number of rail passengers.

 

Most of China’s gaotie construction has focused on the country’s densely populated east and centre. The Beijing-Shenzhen line, which is due to be extended into Hong Kong by 2015, links half a dozen provinces and 28 cities. In 2009 work began on the section that will connect the north-west of the country, a line that could hardly be more different from those that criss-cross the booming east. It stretches 1,776km from Lanzhou, the capital of the western province of Gansu, to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, an “autonomous region” bordering on Central Asia. Officials put the cost at 144 billion yuan ($24 billion); cheap perhaps compared with the 400-billion-yuan line from Beijing to Shenzhen, but it traverses such a vast stretch of barely inhabited terrain that land and rehousing costs are negligible.

Officials have given the project the ponderous name of the Lanxin Railway Second Double-Tracked Line. This is to distinguish it from a conventional line from Lanzhou to Xinjiang (the first syllables of which form the name Lanxin) that was completed in 1962. Oddly, however, it does not follow the same route. Instead of heading north from Lanzhou along the old Silk Road through Gansu, it detours into adjacent Qinghai province on the Tibetan plateau and opts for a far tougher route through the snowy Qilian Mountains before re-entering Gansu 480km later and picking up the old trail into Xinjiang.

via High-speed railways: Faster than a speeding bullet | The Economist.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Transport | 1 Comment »

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25/10/2013

China punishes officials for not punishing polluters – Xinhua

China‘s Ministry of Supervision on Thursday revealed 10 major cases of environmental damage in which local officials were punished for failing to prevent or act after severe pollution.

“Promoting the conservation culture and protecting the environment is an important duty for government at all levels,” said a statement from the ministry.

Supervisory departments should ensure local governments fulfil their duties to environmental protection and pollution reduction, with an attitude of “high responsibility for younger generations”.

Iron fist policies should be adopted to punish lawbreakers and audit officials who oversee the matters.

The vice mayor of Hezhou in southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and other 26 officials were disciplined and four were prosecuted for failing to stop scores of mines from illegally discharging wastes, causing serious water pollution to the city itself and the Zhaoqing city downstream.

Three officials from Dagang district of Tianjin city were punished for allowing six factories including the Julong paper mill to operate without passing environmental impact evaluation and discharging waste water without treatment.

There were eight other cases of environmental damage in north China\’s Hebei and Shanxi, east China’s Shanghai and Shandong, and central China’s Henan, due to officials’ malfeasance.

via China punishes officials for not punishing polluters – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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16/09/2013

China’s international sister cities exceed 2,000

In my travels around the UK, I have yet to come across a British city twinned with a Chinese one.  There are lots twinned with other European cities. Are British municipalities missing a great opportunity ?

Xinhua: “China has established sister-city relations with 2,022 cities or states in 131 countries worldwide, the overseas edition of the People’s Daily reported on Monday.

“Sister cities have become a major channel for communication and cooperation between Chinese governments and their foreign counterparts,” Li Xiaolin, president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, told the newspaper.

Li Liguo, secretary-general of the China International Friendship Cities Association (CIFCA), said the number of China’s sister cities will increase to more than 3,000 by 2020 amid rapid urbanization in China.

“China will deepen exchanges and cooperation in terms of bilateral and multilateral politics, economy and trade, science and technology, culture and education with its sister cities,” Li was quoted as saying.

Tianjin, a municipality south of Beijing, formed sister-city relations with Japan’s Kobe in 1973, establishing China’s first pair of international sister cities.

“The development of twin cities reflects the achievements of China’s reform and opening-up policy,” the People’s Daily quoted CIFCA deputy secretary-general Zhang Heqiang as saying.

“Some coastal cities in China have started to improve their international images, promote industrial upgrading and technological innovation along with their sister cities,” Zhang said.”

via China’s international sister cities exceed 2,000 – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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19/06/2013

Rich Chinese Provinces ‘Outsource’ Pollution to Poor Ones

BusinessWeek: “A flurry of citizen-led protests against polluting (or proposed) chemical factories in Chinese cities has recently made headlines. And for good reason, as hundreds of peaceful marchers parading in front of government buildings and waving hand-made signs (such as “We Want to Survive” and “Say No to PX,” a hazardous chemical) isn’t something you see every day in authoritarian China.

The sun sets behind commercial buildings shrouded in haze in Shanghai

In recent years, such environmental demonstrations have erupted in the prosperous coastal cities of Xiamen, Dalian, Ningbo, and the southern city of Kunming. Middle-class citizens, wielding smartphones and sharing information about pollutants via social media, have organized the protests. When developers’ plans have been put on hold—as happened last month in Kunming—popular Chinese and Western media have declared a victory for nascent people power in China.

But what happens next? Chances are that factory plans won’t fizzle entirely, but rather that construction will move to another location—usually in a poorer province, with a less informed and media-savvy local population.

In a paper published in the June 10 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (pdf), researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Maryland, and University of Cambridge mapped the flow of goods, money, and interprovincial emissions to document what they call the “outsourcing” of pollution “within China.” Their study focused in particular on CO2 emissions, which spew from the same coal-fired power plants and other factories responsible for smog-causing domestic pollution.

As the researchers discovered, “the most affluent cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin, and provinces such as Guangdong and Zhejiang, outsource more than 50% of the emissions related to the products they consume” to provinces in the central and western hinterlands. In short, eastern urbanites enjoy the fruits of energy, steel, cement, and other goods produced in China’s less-developed regions. (To be sure, Western consumers also benefit from goods produced in China, at an even greater distance from the pollution.)

“Although China is often seen as a homogeneous entity, it is a vast country with substantial regional variation in physical geography, economic development, infrastructure, population density, demographics, and lifestyles” the researchers wrote. One example: The carbon footprint of residents of Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin, three wealthy eastern cities, is four times higher than that of residents of Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou, three poor southwestern provinces.”

via Rich Chinese Provinces ‘Outsource’ Pollution to Poor Ones – Businessweek.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/06/19/china-launches-trial-carbon-trading-scheme/

Posted in carbon emission, China alert, Climate change, Ecology, Economics, Environment | 1 Comment »

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06/05/2013

* Seawater can save thirsty country

desalination plant

desalination plant (Photo credit: roplant.org)

China Daily: “More government support, including subsidies and a favorable pricing mechanism, is needed for the country to use desalinated seawater to quench its thirst, a top industry expert said.

 

“The lack of an effective pricing mechanism for desalinated water and support for an operable policy is affecting the development of the country’s sea desalination industry,” said Li Linmei, director of the State Oceanic Administration‘s Institute of Seawater Desalination and Multipurpose Utilization in Tianjin.

The country aims to produce 2.2 million cubic meters of desalinated seawater daily in 2015, about three times current capacity, according to a National Development and Reform Commission plan released last year.

Current domestic water prices range from 2.4 yuan to 4.9 yuan a metric ton in the coastal regions, while the price of water for industry ranges from 3.3 yuan to 7.9 yuan a ton, according to ChinaWaterNet.

However, desalination plants can produce 674,000 tons daily at a cost of about 5 yuan ($0.80) a ton — not including infrastructure such as pipelines.

Li said the government should consider bringing desalinated water into the water grid.

Aside from subsidies and funding for pilot programs, Li believes desalination is a key part of water security.

“The seawater desalination industry is as important as water conservancy projects for China to cope with its water shortage,” Li said.”

via Seawater can save thirsty country[1]|chinadaily.com.cn.

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