ChinaFile Recommends
10.16.17China's Pollution Crackdown Is Gaining Momentum
Bloomberg
That political will overlaps with an economic need to rein in surplus production of steel, aluminum and other basic materials after years of over-investment. How and when that capacity gets replaced will be a key factor in the economy’s performance...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.12.17300 Tonnes of Diseased Pig Carcasses – the Latest Example of China's Pollution Crisis
Guardian
Stomach-churning symbols of the environmental calamity facing China have never been in short supply: exploding watermelons, toxic running tracks, rivers that flow the colour of blood.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.07.16China to Pillory, or Praise, Cities Based on Water Pollution
New York Times
Water and soil pollution have received less attention than foul air but are just as hazardous, if not more so.
Caixin Media
06.24.16
China Has a Plan to Clean Up Its Soil But No Way to Pay For It
The 231-clause, 13,000-Chinese character action plan for Soil Pollution Prevention and Control was released May 31 by the State Council, China’s cabinet, after undergoing some 50 draft revisions over the previous three years.The final version was...
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06.21.16China Prosecutors Win Landmark Lawsuit Against Environmental Department
Reuters
First public interest case vs. government department producing dyes with inappropriate safeguards....
Media
05.03.16
Scandal Highlights China’s Weak Environmental Enforcement
from chinadialogue
For many Chinese, the country’s soil pollution crisis has become increasingly acute in recent weeks after several hundred children fell ill from attending a school built close to a former fertilizer factory.Almost 500 students at the Changzhou...
Conversation
03.11.16
Is China Doing Enough for the Environment?
This week, at their biggest annual session in Beijing, Chinese lawmakers are expected to ratify the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan, which contains many new measures to address rampant pollution of the country’s air, soil, and water. Will the plan be...
Environment
03.10.16
How China’s 13th Five-Year Plan Addresses Energy and the Environment
For the first time ever, a senior Chinese leader announced in his work report to the National People’s Congress—his most important formal speech of the year—that environmental violators and those who fail to report such violations will be “severely...
Environment
04.24.15
Fracking May be Needed in China to Wean it Off Coal
from chinadialogue
Fracking of China’s huge shale gas reserves will only have a modest impact on the environment if anti-pollution controls—many of them new—are enforced rigorously, says a new report from the U.K.-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI).The ODI...
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10.15.14China’s Other Pollution Problem – Its Soil
Reveal
China’s air pollution is infamous. The haze from belching factories and clogged highways can make it impossible to see buildings across the street. It forces schools to close. Face masks are commonplace. But China has another pollution problem –...
Reports
09.07.14
Pollution and Health in China: Confronting the Human Crisis
chinadialogue
Anyone who lives in north China understands that the air quality that they endure is potentially hazardous. There are other environmental hazards to health that have been less obvious or less widely understood, but that emerge in patterns of illness...
Environment
08.07.14
What to Do About China’s Polluted Farmland?
While the extent of China's soil pollution crisis is becoming clearer, the consensus on what to do next is still lacking.The results of the state soil survey earlier this year were damning: 16.1% of sampling points nationwide were in breach of...
Environment
07.17.14The Legacy of Hunan’s Polluted Soils
from chinadialogue
This is the second of a special three-part series of investigations jointly run by chinadialogue and Yale Environment 360 with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. You can also read parts one and three.Cao Fushe spent much of 2013...
Environment
07.17.14
China Faces Long Battle to Clean Polluted Soil
from chinadialogue
This is the third of a special three-part series of investigations jointly run by chinadialogue and Yale Environment 360 with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. You can also read parts one and two.Luo Jinzhi is 52 and lives in...
Environment
07.03.14The Victims of China’s Soil Pollution Crisis
from chinadialogue
This is the first of a special three-part series of investigations jointly run by chinadialogue and Yale Environment 360, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. You can also read parts two and three.When Zhang Junwei’s uncle died...
Caixin Media
05.13.14
China Comes to Grips with Poisons Underfoot
Pollution that is easily perceptible in China's rivers and urban air has gotten a lot of attention in recent years.Now a less obvious environmental concern with equally serious repercussions—soil contamination—is getting the attention it...
Environment
04.24.14
Almost One-Fifth of China’s Arable Land is Polluted
from chinadialogue
Almost one-fifth of China’s arable land is polluted to various degrees, according to a national soil quality report on April 17.The report, based on seven-years’ worth of tests on 6.3 million square kilometers (2.4 million square miles) of land,...
Reports
04.01.14
Distribution of Metals in Soils From Uncultivated Land, Soils From Rice Fields and in Rice Grown in the Area of an Industrial Complex With Metal Smelting and Processing Facilities in Hunan Province, China
Greenpeace
Contamination of soil with a number of toxic metals, including cadmium and lead, is known to be an existing problem for many parts of Hunan province, China. High levels of these metals have also been reported for rice grown in many parts of the...
Caixin Media
08.12.13
China’s Urban Sludge Dilemma: Sinking in Stink
Promptly at noon on March 17, a heavy truck hauling a dark substance and on a dark mission pulled out of the Gaobeidian Wastewater Treatment Plant in eastern Beijing.A wastewater treatment engineer helped a Caixin reporter identify the unusual load...
Environment
03.06.13
Environmentalists Unconvinced by Wen Jiabao’s Green Words
from chinadialogue
China’s outgoing premier Wen Jiabao vowed that the government would solve the country’s ever-worsening pollution in his final work report yesterday as he opened the annual session of parliament.But coming amid rising public concern about China’s air...