Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0088/00880.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 24KB | 427 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00880}
$Pretitle{260}
$Title{China
Environmental Protection in China. Part 1}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{New Star Publishing}
$Affiliation{Foreign Language Press, Beijing}
$Subject{pollution
environmental
protection
city
water
new
china
control
environment
plant}
$Date{1989}
$Log{}
Country:     China
Book:        What's New in China
Author:      New Star Publishing
Affiliation: Foreign Language Press, Beijing
Date:        1989

Environmental Protection in China. Part 1

Foreword

     Never before have the people of the world needed so strongly to give
concern and protection to the earth, the only celestial body in space which
has the necessary conditions to nurture human existence - because today it
faces serious pollution, blind development of industry and technology,
irrational exploitation of natural resources and ever-expanding deserts.

     And what about China? She is also confronted with the threat of
pollution. Painful lessons have made her realize that while carrying out
large-scale economic construction, she must give consideration to
environmental protection. In fact, China has been adopting various measures
for this purpose.

     This booklet gives a general introduction to China's environmental
protection status quo. Articles entitled "Protecting the Environment" and
"China's Struggle to Safeguard Her Environment" by Qu Geping, head of the
State Bureau of Environmental Protection, explain the achievements and
problems of China in such work during the period from 1949 to 1985; "Luoyang:
Protecting Public Health and Ancient Relics" and "'Smoke City' Cleans Up Its
Air" tell what Luoyang and Lanzhou did in protecting the environment, while
"Gongxian County: A Negative Example" reveals the shortcomings of the
country. Readers can gain insight into China's efforts in keeping her deserts
from extending by reading "Fighting Back the Deserts" and "Creating Farmland
from Deserts."

Protecting the Environment

QU GEPING

     China takes environmental protection seriously, for as a socialist
country her highest principle is to safeguard and foster the interests of the
people. Some good results have been achieved.

     One of the problems that arises with widespread use of chemical
insecticides is pollution of the soil, water and crops, which directly or
indirectly endangers the people's health. These insecticides also kill many
beneficial insects and birds, thus reducing natural preventives of plant
diseases and insect pests.

     China's agro-scientists sought to cut down on these undesirable effects
through using selective insecticides, mixtures and thinner solutions. When
this did not fundamentally solve the problem they turned to biological
control. Some success has been gained in employing beneficial insects and
pathogenic microbes to prevent and control plant diseases and pests. Insects
like trichogramma, ladybrids and green lacewings kill pests that harm grain,
oil crops, cotton and trees. Microbes control the corn borer, pine moth and
rice plant skipper. Antibiotics are employed to prevent rice sheath and culm
blight, rice blast, millet smut and apple rot. In rice-growing areas ducks
turned out into the paddy fields to eat rice hoppers get rid of 70 to 80
percent of them.

     Such measures are being widely introduced throughout China. Figures for
1978 show that they were used on 6,700,000 hectares of land, counter-insects
on 2,070,000 ha. and antibiotics on 2,000,000 ha. against plant diseases and
1,800,000 against pests. Ducks were used to kill hoppers on 670,000 ha. of
paddy fields. Biological control networks have been set up in many regions, as
well as pest forecast stations and biological breeding farms. Millions of
peasants are taking part in this work and cooperating with the scientists on
control.

     Eighty percent of China's population lives in the countryside where
brush and other vegetation is the traditional domestic fuel. About 500 million
tons a year of such fuel, the equivalent of 400 million tons of coal, is
burned and thus does not return to the soil as organic matter. In the past in
some places indiscriminate tree-felling for fuel aggravated soil erosion and
began to affect the climate.

New Sources of Energy

     New sources of energy are being promoted in the countryside to protect
the natural environment and the ecological balance. Chief ones are small
hydropower stations and marsh gas. China has water resources for small or
medium-sized hydropower stations capable of producing a total of 150 million
kilowatts. A total of 88,000 such stations have been set up in three-fourths
of China's 2,100 counties, with an installed capacity of 5,300,000 kw. These
now provide an inexpensive source of power and lighting and will play a big
role in modernizing agriculture.

     Marsh gas is also widely used. Home garbage, night soil and vegetation
are fermented in sealed methane-generating pits, each of which can serve one
or several households. By 1978 China had 7,000,000 of them and they had become
the main source of energy for cooking and lighting in 21 counties. Altogether
35,000,000 people throughout the country are cooking or lighting with methane.

     Marsh gas does not pollute the environment and the residue after
fermentation is good organic fertilizer. In addition, fermentation in the
generating pits kills most bacteria in the night soil as well as eggs of
parasites such as liver fluke and hookworms, thus greatly lowering the chance
for spread of disease that exists with unfermented night soil.

Curbing Industrial Pollution

     Pollution is in some measure cut by the policy followed since liberation
of setting up new industries throughout the country instead of being
concentrated in the coastal cities as they were before. The policy is also to
build smaller, scattered industrial towns to avoid concentration of population
and the pollution that accompanies it.

     Many measures are taken to transform or renovate existing enterprises to
cut pollution. They include comprehensive utilization of raw materials and
recycling of toxic substances into some useful product. Gas from oil refining
serves as raw material for synthetic fibers and rubber, plastics and chemical
fertilizer. Factory and mine tailings, instead of being dumped and covering up
cultivable land, are reprocessed to yield valuable industrial chemicals and
chemical fertilizer, and made into cement bricks and refractory materials.
Several hundred products are being recovered from water expelled from
chemical, pharmaceutical and light industrial plants.

     Factories contributing to inner city pollution are moved to the suburbs,
and when new ones are set up they are built some distance from the city. As
an initial measure, those discharging gases must be placed downwind from the
cities and those expelling polluted water must lead it away from rivers or
lakes.

     In the atmosphere of anarchism fostered by Lin Biao and the gang of four
during the cultural revolution such regulations were ignored in many factories
and mines. In the past few years the authorities have reviewed existing laws
on environmental protection, drafted some new ones and made efforts to put
them into effect. Unfortunately, solving many of the problems takes time and
money, so solutions can be reached only step by step. Starting from what is
feasible in the current period, in 1978 the state set dates by which 167
industrial and mining enterprises with serious pollution problems must solve
them or be closed down. Research is being done on control of city noise and
air and water purification, and some measures have been taken.

     Proper salvage of refuse, both from home and industry, also helps keep
the environment clean. Between 1956 and 1977 the state collected 89,000,000
tons of reusable refuse, including leftover materials, discarded equipment,
glass, plastics, rubber, scrap metal, rags and paper. Because through
treatment and reprocessing it could be turned into something useful, it was
valued at