Wikileaks Cable Shows Grim Truth of Air Pollution in China's South

By Shannon Liao
August 27, 2011

Southern Chinese know the health hazards of their environment—they just have to look up and see the brown haze obscuring the Pearl River Delta, an urban hub of cities in Guangdong, China.

But nothing makes Chinese air pollution more evident to the outside world than a Wikileaks cable, prepared by diplomats in the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou in 2006 and released Aug. 26, providing candid statements from Chinese communist officials and foreign officials that prove the point.

One-third of China’s urban inhabitants live in cities with harmful air pollution or even very dangerous pollution, says Wang Jinnan, the chief engineer at the Chinese Academy on Environmental Planning, part of the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), according to the Wikileaks cable.

Air quality is getting worse, especially in major cities, leading to more and more serious health problems, said the vice minister of SEPA, Zhang Lijun, according to the cable.

Officials have also said that air pollution’s financial cost is large and growing.

Zhu Guangyao, deputy chief of the SEPA said that the damage to China’s environment costs about ten percent of China’s yearly GDP. Ten percent was about $200 billion in 2006, at the time Zhu made the statement, but would be $500 billion in 2011.

By 2030, 15 percent of China’s GDP will be lost due to health costs and causalities from air pollution, says a Harvard scholar, according to the cable.

In the report, a Yale scholar estimated more than half of China’s yearly GDP growth would be wiped out due to air pollution.

The cable elaborated other facts that brought to light the pervasiveness of pollution in the south.

For example, when scientists finally started measuring the pollutants in south China, their findings alarmed the world--but the pollutant with the most impact on public health was not even measured. The levels of fine particulate (PM2.5) pollution are suspected to be so high that they would create political difficulties if revealed.

Heavy industry and residential coal burning fuels 70 percent of China’s energy. Air pollution is also caused by inadequate pollution controls, deforestation, and a sharp increase in the number of motor vehicles.

According to the report, in the next 15 years, Chinese pollution discharges may increase four or five times if reforms aren’t made.

“Air pollution in south China is bad and getting worse, mirroring conditions in many other regions in China,” the cable said.

“It is a sad irony that this region of China—seen as a beacon for poor migrants who want to find fame and fortune—has actually become harmful to those migrants’ and others’ health.”

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/wikileaks-cable-shows-grim-truth-of-air-pollution-in-chinas-south-60838.html.