“Welcome to Shenyang,” says the sign above the expressway entering this city in the heart of China’s polluted industrial and coal mining belt. “All is Well,” the sign promises.
Shenyang’s 6.5 million residents see the sun only a few weeks of the year, however. On most other days, a cloud of orange-colored coal dust hangs on the horizon like a tapestry.
Snowflakes turn black, winter smog seems as thick as pea soup and office workers have to change shirts twice a day to keep a white collar.
In this industrial trough surrounded by mountains, the smog is so dense that cities become invisible in winter and Benxi (population 2 million) disappears from satellite photos for weeks.
Shenyang and its neighboring smokestack cities-Fushun, Benxi and Anshan-shelter the hard core of China’s factories that belch 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere every year, sending acid rain down over Japan and a trail of smog 1,000 miles long over the Pacific.
A World Bank report says the concentration of noxious gases in China exceeds minimum air quality standards. Groundwater is contaminated; the price of precious drinking water goes up 7 percent a year. Lakes and rivers have become “waste sinks.” Only 40 percent of urban residents in China have access to sewers.
The report found that China wallows in “unsustainable levels of pollution” and is headed for deep, deep trouble.
Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan and Chengdu are smog-locked for long periods. Toxic wastes, discharged chemicals and untreated sewage ooze down the Min, Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. At giant state companies, fire-spewing coal furnaces steam like old fashioned locomotives.
Only a handful of cities in the world are as polluted as Shenyang or contribute as much sulfur dioxide to global warming, the so-called greenhouse effect.
Every year the city’s Environmental Protection Bureau imposes fines of 700,000 yuan ($81,400) on each of Shenyang’s 200 factories that for years have emitted 85 percent of the city’s pollutants. They pay without protest.
“It is cheaper for them to pay the fine every year than to buy anti-pollution equipment or new technology,” conceded Environmental Protection Bureau chief Song Dian Tang.
Song has just 14 inspectors to police 5,400 other urban enterprises, so his agency sends them questionnaires.
The first item says: “Admit if you have exeeded the authorized pollution level.”
The second demands: “If you have not, explain why.”
A third of the factories immediately plead guilty.
“If a factory cheats and we catch them they are fined very heavily,” Song said. But if the factory performs self-criticism, the penalty is around a modest $1,000. Last year the bureau collected 15 million yuan ($1.7 million) in pollution fines from 1,600 self-confessed culprits.
“Air pollution in Shenyang is world famous,” said Song. “We know Japan claims it gets acid rain because of sulfur dioxide pollution from China. The problem is that 70 percent of China’s fuel comes from coal, while developed countries use only 10 percent of coal fuel.
“Unfortunately,” Song added, “China will have to use coal as its principal source of energy for the next 100 years.”
He nodded toward Fushun, 40 minutes east of Shenyang, where one of China’s biggest open pit coal mines is buried under a permanent haze. Its terraced hills have provided coal for 60 years and will do so for another 30.
Nobody has ever much bothered about environmental issues until they realized advantages might be gained by turning “green.”
“It would have been cheaper to keep paying the fine,” acknowledged Dong Gui De, general manager of Shenyang Machine Tool Co., which has installed anti-pollution equipment on its foundry’s chimney and no longer pays the annual penalty.
Dong had good reason to become a convert. His company was chosen by the Communist Party hierarchy as a model state enterprise, and the World Bank is providing a $121 million loan to upgrade its equipment.
China, which spends only .67 percent of its national budget to fight pollution, has never been shy about using its pollution as a bargaining chip on the negotiating table.
American environmental consultant David Nelson said Beijing’s central planners recently horrified the world when they announced the construction of 100 chlorofluorocarbon plants. Nelson, of Salt Lake City, was on a U.S. Information Service-sponsored tour of Pacific Rim and Southeast Asian countries.
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used as a propellant in aerosol cans, are considered the main culprit for damaging the ozone layer that protects human beings from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.
“The Chinese said they were willing to change their plans if the West or companies like Du Pont made the new technology available to them, free of charge, of course. Du Pont balked and the Chinese said they would go ahead with the CFC plants, though I suspect in the end the West will cave in and Beijing will get largely what it wants,” Nelson said.
Shenyang is no novice at such hard bargaining.
This year the French government signed a $13 million low-interest loan to build a factory in Shenyang that can recycle 50,000 tons of waste water a year. Australia has signed a $10 million loan to construct a plant to convert household waste into electricity and the World Bank provided another $10 million loan to build a plant to neutralize toxic waste. Other projects are in the pipeline.
“What we need is more help,” said Song, the Environmental Protection Bureau chief.
Two reasons have prompted the official cry for help: Pressure from abroad to clean up pollution at a time when China needs foreign good will to maintain its export boom; and a rising awareness at home, where better communications have informed more Chinese that industrial pollution is causing health hazards.
In southern Guangzhou (Canton City) a senior government official said his office received 10,000 complaints this year from people alarmed by pollution near them. And Song said he has received 500 to 600 complaints, startling numbers in a country sensitive to any kind of protest.
In Simin county, 30 miles west of Shenyang, some sheep strayed onto a textile factory dump that contained concentrated hydrogen. Twelve sheep died and the farmers took their grievances to the Peoples Court in what proved to be a test case.
The court ruled in their favor but ordered the factory to pay only the market value of the sheep and a $232 fine for being careless in disposing of the chemicals.
“We have to go slowly, step by step, so we do not upset China’s economic pace of progress,” explained Song.
Outside his window, the smog was growing thicker and the air thinner.
