China Environmet

4 Pages 909 Words

China and the Environment: Air Pollution and the Secrecy
Concerns by local and some national-level officials about public reaction to news of the worsening of environmental conditions has delayed implementation of the 1989 PRC Environmental Law which requires regular environmental reports by all levels of government until 1997. The 1989 PRC Environmental Law stipulates “The departments with administrative responsibility for environmental protection of the State Council, each province, autonomous region and municipality directly subject to the central government should periodically publish reports on the environmental situation”. The State Council has for several years issued annual reports about the state of the environment in the PRC. Local governments however, with the notable exception of Shenyang in China’s northeast, have long resisted informing their citizens about local environmental conditions.
Why Did Local Officials Keep Air Pollution Secret?
Many local officials have strongly opposed implementing the requirement of the 1989 NPC law calling for regular reports on the environment are made to the public. Many local environmental bureau officials, with the notable exception of Shenyang officials, favored environmental secrecy in interviews published over one year ago in a February 1997 issue of the PRC magazine Sanlian Life Weekly [Sanlian Shenghuo Zhoukan]. The article was published before Shanghai and twenty-seven other cities began releasing regular environmental notices to the mass media beginning in May 1997. The interviews give a good picture of the local government attitudes that NEPA and other environmental players such as Qu Geping in Beijing have had to overcome.
1997 Brought Much Greater Openness on Air Pollution
A big change came about during 1997. A Guangdong Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) official told ESTOFF in September 1997 that air quality figures for Guangdong cities were confidential until p...