Environment
03.13.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/74215204.jpg?itok=7kJm67Fx)
Chinese Fracking Plans Prompt “Water-Grabbing” Fears
from chinadialogue
China has become one of Asia’s leaders in expanding unconventional shale-gas extraction in the name of energy self-sufficiency and national autonomy. Experiences of “fracking” worldwide, however, suggest the costs to China of joining this revolution...
Environment
03.06.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/153051449.jpg?itok=nhyBWoRI)
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...
Environment
03.02.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/154120313.jpg?itok=lrakZT1-)
China Criticized over Tiger Farms and Illegal Ivory
from chinadialogue
China is under pressure to regulate its rampant trade in illegal ivory and tiger parts ahead of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), opening this weekend in Bangkok.It has also been accused of quietly stimulating...
Environment
02.28.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/2818locations-of-nuclear-plants-620.jpg?itok=ySxI96SK)
Drought and Earthquakes Pose “Enormous Risk” to China’s Nuclear Plans
from chinadialogue
When the Fukushima nuclear disaster struck, China was building new nuclear power capacity at a rate unprecedented in world history: 40 percent of all reactors planned or under construction were in China. Targets for installed nuclear generation...
Environment
02.22.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/161947488.jpg?itok=qGhABm1p)
Could Smartphones Help Clear China’s Congested Roads?
from chinadialogue
The extraordinary growth of China’s cities is well-known. Today, 160 Chinese metropolises have over one million inhabitants and more than half the population lives in urban areas, which are growing at two to three times the rate of Western cities...
Environment
02.20.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/tln-china-pollution-1500.jpg?itok=2kMWEjtv)
Air Quality in China: A Snapshot
Nearly five weeks ago, Beijing experienced its worst day of air quality on record: Levels of PM2.5—small particulates that can cause lung, cardiovascular, and respiratory disease—soared to more than thirty times the level considered safe by the...
Environment
02.19.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/threegorges_etm_2006311_lrg_0.jpg?itok=nb1sZefb)
China’s Disappointing Absence from U.N. Water Summit
from chinadialogue
After recent heated debate over China’s mega-dam plans, any visitor to the launch on February 11 of the U.N.’s much-vaunted International Year of Water Cooperation would have been disappointed.As well as a notable absence of any...
Environment
02.14.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/125705133.jpg?itok=G3aXqWOb)
A Progress Report on U.S.-China Energy & Climate Change Cooperation
In his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama committed to confronting climate change, stating, “The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it...
Environment
02.13.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/4908466769_151b474c82_b.jpg?itok=0OCYoHQv)
Nuclear Fusion: An Answer to China’s Energy Problems?
from chinadialogue
The global nuclear sector has been through something of an apocalyptic patch since the disaster at Fukushima—from power station shutdowns in Japan and Germany to waste-plan chaos in the U.K. to doubts about China’s ability to showcase new reactor...
Environment
02.07.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/159159410.jpg?itok=ISTXp52F)
Xi Jinping Must Tackle Corruption and Boost Innovation in Food Sector
from chinadialogue
In January 2013, Australia’s biggest supermarket chain Woolworths began restricting sales of baby formula to four tins per customer after a massive increase in demand stripped shelves bare of popular brands such as Karicare.The buyers were not...
Environment
01.25.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/102101562.jpg?itok=QAmMX8NG)
Climate Change, Not Grazing, Destroying the Tibetan Plateau
from chinadialogue
Sanjiangyuan—which literally translates as the “three river source area”—feeds China’s mightiest rivers. The 300,000-square kilometer region, high on western China’s Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, provides a quarter of the Yangtze’s water, almost half of...
Environment
01.23.13U.S. Cities Suffer Impact of Downwind Chinese Air Pollution
from chinadialogue
Around 9,000 feet up, on a remote mountaintop in the state of Oregon, a group of researchers are on the lookout. It is not planes or wildlife they are tracking but pollution clouds.The monitoring site is run by Dan Jaffe, professor of atmospheric...
Environment
01.15.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/159338871.jpg?itok=WW3akRgp)
We’re Winning the Air Pollution Data Battle—So What Next?
from chinadialogue
Last year, China made a breakthrough in the publication of air quality data, as more than sixty cities started to monitor and publish levels of the dangerous air pollutant PM2.5. But the figures themselves were depressing. With PM2.5—fine...
Environment
01.08.13Officials Failing to Stop Textile Factories Dumping Waste in Qiantong River
from chinadialogue
The Qiantang River is the most important river in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, one of the country’s most developed regions. On its banks, textiles plants work to supply fashion labels around the world. But they are polluting the environment in...
Environment
01.07.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/107228985.jpg?itok=5Uzklm4j)
Taxi Drivers in China Have Highest PM2.5 Air Pollutant Exposure
from chinadialogue
A study conducted by Greenpeace has revealed that taxi drivers suffer the greatest levels of exposure to PM2.5 air pollution: three times that of the average person, and five times the world standard.The study, carried out by Greenpeace in...
Environment
01.07.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/80071204.jpg?itok=jbGbzBw-)
Car-Driving Officials in China Urged to Get on a Bus
from chinadialogue
China’s new leadership has asked government officials to travel simply and, in normal circumstances, not to close roads to ease their journeys. In a recent visit to the Qianhai area of Shenzhen, south China, incoming president Xi Jinping made sure...
Environment
01.02.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/154853616.jpg?itok=NycPREWV)
China’s New “Middle Class” Environmental Protests
from chinadialogue
China’s urban residents (or the new “middle class”) protest on the streets only very rarely. Discontent is expressed almost exclusively online, via angry typing. But this has changed over the last five years—protests have come offline and on to the...
Environment
12.21.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/138475405.jpg?itok=Y78Vrbs7)
China’s Environment in 2012
from chinadialogue
From mass protests to trade wars, shale-gas drilling to hazardous cosmetics, it’s been a topsy turvy twelve months for China’s environment. Here’s a quick refresher of the year that was.JanuaryThe year got off to a bang – literally. The customary...
Environment
12.07.12Environmentalist Liu Futang Found Guilty of “Illegal Business Activities”
from chinadialogue
Well-known Chinese environmentalist Liu Futang has been convicted of carrying out “illegal business activities,” given a three-year suspended prison sentence, and fined 17,000 yuan.Liu Futang, named best citizen journalist in chinadialogue’s 2012...
Environment
11.28.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/89940982.jpg?itok=1SS9mdqW)
Russia’s Siberian Dams Power “Electric Boilers” in Beijing
from chinadialogue
The underdeveloped, sparsely populated Eastern Siberia region that shares a 4,000-kilometer border with China has vast resources to offer its heavily populated and fast-developing neighbor. Hydroelectricity is key among them.A major new...
Environment
11.27.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/155031749.jpg?itok=iLzaBl-t)
Millions Await News of Test-tube Panda Taotao’s “Return” to the Wild
from chinadialogue
On October 11, at the age of two years and two months, giant panda Taotao went home.This was China’s second attempt to introduce a giant panda born through artificial insemination into the wild. Unlike last time, however, Taotao was born and raised...
Environment
11.15.12An Insight into the Green Vocabulary of the Chinese Communist Party
from chinadialogue
After years of neglect, the environment is gradually gaining more attention from China’s leaders. The most noticeable manifestation of this is in their vocabulary.Six months ago, Hu Jintao, speaking at the opening of a study session for provincial...
Environment
11.15.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/151959917.jpg?itok=OlMbB4Bc)
China’s Low-Carbon Zones Lack Motivation, Guidance, and Ideas
from chinadialogue
None of China’s so-called low-carbon industrial zones currently live up to the name. That’s the conclusion to draw from the work of the U.S. Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), which this year released a guide for the development of green...
Environment
11.02.12Clampdown on Gold Dredging in China Sees Switch to Mongolia and Russia
from chinadialogue
The Heilongjiang basin, in northeast China, was attracting gold prospectors as early as the late Qing dynasty, which collapsed in 1912. Panning for gold is damaging for rivers and wetlands, but at the time the region was sparsely populated and only...
Environment
10.19.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/84121823.jpg?itok=eU7561xC)
Overfishing Pushes 80% of Chinese Fishermen Towards Bankruptcy
from chinadialogue
In mid-September, the fishing season got under way as usual in Ningbo, on China’s east coast, after the three-month season when fishing is forbidden. Over 2,000 steel-hulled boats headed out to sea. But, on board, there was little cause for optimism...
Environment
10.16.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/mars3.jpg?itok=D-0egCn8)
Chinese Boycott Airline China Southern After Mysterious Death of Dog
from chinadialogue
On the morning of October 10, a high-profile lawsuit against China Southern, one of China’s “big three” airlines, opened at Chaoyang People’s Court in Beijing. The plaintiffs? Zhao Nan and Chen Lei, a couple from Tianjin, north China, who blame the...
Environment
10.11.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/71910183.jpg?itok=XWok9tBt)
China’s New Leaders Must Respect Environmental Rights
from chinadialogue
China has achieved remarkable economic successes over the last three decades. For years, it has led the world in GDP growth. But widespread industrialization and urbanization, along with growth based on increased use of resources, mean the nation...
Environment
10.09.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/4486006837_8343b9ecdd_b.jpg?itok=gasaKXV-)
Top Clothing Brands Linked to Water Pollution Scandal in China
from chinadialogue
China is the major hub of the international textile industry, exporting US$200 billion worth of textile and apparel products in 2010—accounting for 34 percent of global exports.It’s provided cheap T-shirts and other clothes to people around the...
Environment
10.02.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/80576205.jpg?itok=t_oVFl-_)
Decline of Bees Forces China’s Apple Farmers to Pollinate by Hand
from chinadialogue
In the last fifty years, the global human population has nearly doubled, while the average calories consumed per person has increased by about 30 percent.To cope with the ever growing demand for food, more land has been brought into agricultural...
Environment
09.20.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/6041582166_a98338ef93_o.jpg?itok=_dqE-wKq)
Desertification in Tibet’s Wetlands Threatens the Yellow River
from chinadialogue
The “kidneys” of the Tibetan plateau are failing.The Zoige Wetland National Nature Reserve, which sits on the northeastern fringe of western China’s Qinghai-Tibet plateau, contains the largest alpine peat wetlands in the world. It is also the...
Environment
09.06.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/75979893.jpg?itok=67gC_hQv)
Sinking Shanghai “Not Prepared to Admit” Climate Change Threat
from chinadialogue
It’s been a brutal summer for much of urban China. From the once-in-sixty-years storm that lashed Beijing in July, killing seventy-nine people and costing US$1.6 million, to the typhoon floods that triggered mass evacuations in Jingdezhen city, the...
Environment
09.06.12Chinese Fear Price Hikes After Electricity Reforms
from chinadialogue
This summer, Chinese people have been thinking twice before turning on their air conditioners.In July, tiered electricity pricing came into effect across China, except in the far western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. This means the people who...
Environment
08.30.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/57556197.jpg?itok=h5AoMwWv)
Milk Price War Puts Squeeze on China’s Dairy Farmers
from chinadialogue
China’s dairy industry has been in a precarious state since 2008, the year of the Sanlu milk-powder scandal, when babies across the country were poisoned by melamine-tainted infant formula. This incident revealed to the world the flaws in China’s...
Environment
08.28.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/73863561.jpg?itok=aO24Wb5j)
China’s South-North Water Transfer is “Irrational”
from chinadialogue
Ruth Matthews, executive director of the Water Footprint Network, tells Tom Levitt how food has come to dominate our water use and why China may need to re-think its South-North water transfer project.Tom Levitt: What do you mean by our water...
Environment
08.20.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/103722739.jpg?itok=oNkFbQmU)
Tibetans Fight Tourism on Holy Lakes
from chinadialogue
Mining, dam construction, sand excavation, poaching, and grassland degradation are seriously damaging the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, the world’s most fragile ecosystem. But without a second thought, the tourism industry has joined their ranks. The only...
Environment
08.15.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/88528043.jpg?itok=FnS3rPqZ)
Can New Trials Boost Chinese Wind?
from chinadialogue
For the last half year, the National Energy Administration (NEA) has been making its interest in Inner Mongolia’s western regions crystal clear. This part of north China, rich in wind-power potential, has hosted group after group of energy officials...
Environment
08.15.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/125383365_0.jpg?itok=CcZrDape)
Official Shrugs Off Public Food “Panic”
from chinadialogue
Wang Guowei heads up the policy and legislation department at the State Council Food Safety Commission. He spoke to Xu Nan and Zhou Wei about the nature of China’s food safety problems and the ongoing policy response.chinadialogue: Compared with...
Environment
08.09.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/74843927.jpg?itok=egw2YbwT)
Data Gaps Hobble Carbon Trading
from chinadialogue
Late last October, China’s top economic planning body—the National Development and Reform Commission—instructed the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen, plus Hubei and Guangdong provinces, to get ready to run carbon-trading...
Environment
08.08.12Doomed Toilet Scheme Was “Valuable Experience”
from chinadialogue
For a large share of the 750 million urban people worldwide who lack adequate sanitation, flush toilets connected to municipal sewers are not a viable option due to poverty, water shortages, groundwater contamination risks, and other issues. The...
Environment
08.02.12Eco-toilet Scheme Ends in Failure
from chinadialogue
The large banner at the front gate of what used to be called Daxing Ecological Community has been changed to read “Civilized City.” A showroom by the nearby supermarket is locked up and empty while a little further away, near a scenic lake, lies a...
Environment
08.01.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/135158958.jpg?itok=5CCNgqHZ)
Protests Show Chinese Kids’ Fears
from chinadialogue
The decision to cancel the metal refinery project in Shifang last month after protesters clashed with the police has been widely reported in the Chinese and global media. This is not the first time a project has been shelved due to public...
Environment
07.24.12Guangzhou’s Rubbish Charge Struggle
from chinadialogue
Like many of China’s rapidly growing cities, Guangzhou is under siege from landfill. The southern city produces about 18,000 tons of household waste every day, 14,000 tons of which needs to be disposed of after sorting and recycling. That is as much...
Environment
07.18.12China’s Overseas Food Footprint
from chinadialogue
For the last three decades, China’s factories have turned out goods for export markets, while Chinese citizens have paid the environmental price of industrialization in the pollution of their air and water and in the contamination of their land. But...
Environment
07.18.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/147819605.jpg?itok=wF-VvxWl)
Shifang: A Crisis of Local Rule
from chinadialogue
China has been engrossed in the mass protests in Shifang, Sichuan province, where on the morning of July 2, locals and police clashed during demonstrations against a planned molybdenum and copper refinery. The next day, the government announced a...
Environment
07.11.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/146184219.jpg?itok=WlJjRkoG)
Why Big Dams Don’t Work
from chinadialogue
The record of Africa’s large dams is one of widespread environmental destruction to the continent’s major river systems, upon which millions of people depend for their livelihoods; forcible resettlement and human rights abuses; corruption and cost...
Environment
07.10.12Restoring Eco-balance
from chinadialogue
In the late 1970s, China was swept by a wave of economic growth, and with it a wholesale attack on nature. Grain was planted on grasslands and profits extracted from rivers. Land was reclaimed from lakes and seas and forests were felled for arable...
Environment
07.04.12Dirty Truth about China’s Incinerators
from chinadialogue
Xie Yong could be called a pioneer. He is one of very few to date to sue a Chinese government agency over its unlawful refusal of requested data. His crusade for change has little to do with civic altruism, however. Xie’s struggle is personal in...
Environment
06.29.12The Double Life of Dali Lake
from chinadialogue
Every spring, migratory birds start arriving at Dali Lake in Inner Mongolia just as the fish-breeding season gets under way. This has been the time—at least until recently—when herders living around the lake have heard the sounds of firecrackers...
Environment
06.14.12Rio and China’s Global Future
from chinadialogue
We have a common predicament, and solving it requires humanity to work together. But state actors are, to a large degree, controlled by the confrontational logic of international politics. The dualities and contradictions common in sustainable...
Environment
06.11.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/146166375.jpg?itok=Cevx_e45)
The Diplomacy of Air Pollution
from chinadialogue
On June 5, World Environment Day, China’s environment ministry published its annual “state of the environment” report as normal. But this year, the launch attracted unusual levels of attention thanks to a statement from vice minister Wu...
Environment
06.08.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/141733821_0.jpg?itok=UY1z3R3m)
In Ecuador, Home Truths for China
from chinadialogue
“We need to make contact with the Chinese media as urgently as possible.” I was on my university campus in New York when I received this call for help from an Ecuadorean NGO on March 5.Some 4,000 kilometers south, in Quito, the Chinese embassy was...
Environment
06.07.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/74385834.jpg?itok=ASstEUFF)
What’s Coming Out of China’s Taps
from chinadialogue
China’s urbanites use a lot of water. Every day, more than 4,000 water-treatment plants supply 60 million tons of water to 400 million people living in Chinese cities. Despite the impressive figures, the water industry is grappling with widespread...
Environment
06.05.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/beijingairgood20090622_perfectmatch.jpg?itok=IVY2ncxQ)
Hot Air?
It has been a busy season for U.S. diplomatic activity in China. Given the tensions aroused by U.S. involvement in the Bo Xilai scandal and the flight of the blind activist Chen Guangcheng, perhaps it should come as no surprise that even relatively...
Environment
06.02.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/146211286.jpg?itok=Q7A686PR)
A Fallacy of Steel and Glass
from chinadialogue
Among its many environmental challenges, China faces an enormous increase in energy consumption by buildings over the coming decades. Bricks and mortar already account for 25% of China’s total primary energy consumption, but are currently consuming...
Environment
05.30.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/82117999.jpg?itok=d3s1WPgQ)
We’re All Farmers Now
from chinadialogue
At a monthly “friends of farming” dinner held by Green Heartland, an NGO based in Chengdu, west China, Chen Xia quietly reads an ode to the land against light background music. It’s a simple thanksgiving ceremony the hosts conduct before leaving the...
Environment
05.24.12![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/91318098.jpg?itok=CKSY9gq7)
Unplugging from China
from chinadialogue
Apparent preparations by US energy giant AES Corporation to withdraw from China have raised eyebrows lately. Earlier this year, it emerged that the firm—one of the world’s biggest independent power generators—had engaged an investment bank to sell...
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05.22.12China’s Carbon Market Challenge
chinadialogue
A big question mark still hangs over the accuracy of China’s energy data, in particular its data on coal, use of which is highly decentralised. Without industry-level figures, the ability of local governments to produce reliable energy statistics is...
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05.22.12Ruihua Popsicles Possibly Tainted, Production Halted
Global Times
Ruihua Old Popsicle, which sells around 50,000 units per day for 1 yuan each, mostly in tourist sites, contains bacteria 1,767 times higher than that stipulated in the national standards for cold beverages, according to the Beijing News.
Environment
05.18.12Europe Can Do Better
from chinadialogue
Since 2005, the European Union and China have sought to develop dialogue and cooperation in the area of climate-change policy. This has taken place primarily within the framework of the EU-China Partnership on Climate Change, agreed at the 2005 EU-...
Environment
05.14.12Keeping an Eye on China’s Bankers
from chinadialogue
Last August, a major pollution story broke in China: 5,000 tonnes of toxic chromium tailings had been dumped near a Yunnan reservoir, contaminating water supplies and killing livestock. Worse revelations were to come. The company behind the incident...