From Sandton to Shanghai

I lost a few precious years months off my life last year. Thanks to the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China and I can even tell you exactly when this happened. Here is the story…

The Ministry of Environmental Protection ranks 84 Chinese cities on a daily Air Pollution Indices basis according to three major air pollutants - sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and inhaleable pollutants.

According to the stats, Shanghai averaged an Air Pollution Index (API) of about 68 for 2007. The higher the number the higher the air pollution levels, but more on that later.

Beijing is blessed with an air pollution triumvir of heavy industry in the north east, huge annual sandstorms from Inner Mongolia whose sand particulates pick up more pollution and inland proximity away from coastal breezes to disperse the pollution.

As a result, Beijing’s API for 2007 was over 90 and hence the reason why some top athletes with asthma problems are considering staying away from the Beijing Olympics later this year. One such example is Haile Gebrselassie - Ethiopia’s long distance legend - who will not take part in the marathon (but probably in the 10 000 meters)

But if the Olympic athletes have it bad, spare a thought for us brave souls living here outside of Olympic time. We do not have the luxury of cloud seeding (to artificially induce rain), cutting half the traffic off roads and closing down the biggest polluting factories that will all kick off around the Olympics and end soon thereafter!

Now, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s API categorization, Shanghai’s 2007 average of 68 is qualified as good and ‘Daily activities are not affected’ (In China ‘good’ is relative). This means for most of last year, I led a healthy, happy life.

The API scale goes from 1 to 300 with anything in excess of 300 being heavily polluted. According to their website, (I quote directly without grammar amendments!) the effects of heavy pollution to health are that ‘The exercise endurance of the healthy people drops down, some appears strong symptoms remarkably. Some diseases appear earlier.’

Recommended counter measures are for: ‘The aged and patients should stay indoors and avoid strength draining; the ordinary should avoid outdoor activities.’

So, keep in mind that these are the effects of an API of 301. Now on 19^th January last year, Shanghai’s Air Pollution went up to a staggering 412 - the first instance of months taken off my life. If that was not bad enough, a couple of months later on 2^nd April, the API soared to 500 taking with it more of my precious heartbeats.

While pollution is an ugly reality of living in China, it of course does not help getting too paranoid about this either. It is a (big) downside to living here, but upsides abound too. However, if you are living back in South Africa (or any other nice place with daily challenges) and wondering about all the worrying negative externalities to living there, here is some advice:

“Take a deep breath of fresh air, peek out of your window at the blue skies, step outside into warm sunshine and then click here to see Shanghai’s (上海) latest air pollution that has just passed through my lungs.”

(Because this cement plant is on a tourist route near the Yantze River, plans are afoot to move it a couple of valleys along. Out of sight… Photo: Julian Hewitt)

Much has been said about China’s political and economical challenges. The reality is that China’s biggest challenge will not come from either of these tightly controlled and well managed aspects of society. China’s biggest problem will be environmental.

Mao once famously said that a revolution is not a dinner party, and the Industrial Revolution that swept across the Western world in the 18^th and 19^th centuries was by no means a pretty affair for the environment. The Industrial Revolution gave rise to great fossil fuel-guzzling, coal-burning factories that massively increased air pollution and chemical discharges.

China’s industrial revolution is hardly a walk in the park either. The difference is that Britain industrialized a population of less than 20 million and the USA went through the same process with under 100 million. China is walking down the same path, but with 1.3 billion people and it is doing so under the microscopic scrutiny of the West.

There was no internet, Greenpeace, Al Gore and Kyoto Protocol to maintain accountability 2 centuries ago. Nor were there delicate trade issues to consider. When a Dutch research team recently announced that China had overtaken the USA on the pollution stakes, it was splashed across the American newspapers, but received scant attention here. China rightly claims that it has 4 times the population of the USA and most of its industrial output ends up in the American homes anyway.

However, there are different issues at stake. China has more localized problems to be concerned about. There has been a rash of publicity regarding defective and hazardous Chinese products hitting international shelves. A few examples include contaminated toothpaste, deadly dog food, and according to the New York Times, seafood that was stopped 391 times at the USA border last year. Essentially, what were isolated issues has now become a serious bout of negative publicity for Chinese foodstuffs

These problems have found their way back to South Africa, right to the doorstep of my hometown. High levels of cadmium have been discovered in South African pineapples after local farmers unknowing used contaminated Chinese fertilizer. Shipments of canned South African pineapples have subsequently been rejected by the EU, after they were found to contain high levels of lead, arsenic and the carginogenic cadmium.

Bear in mind that for every case of contamination reported overseas, there are hundreds more happening on a daily basis in China. Addressing defective products is not that complex. What is required are many more balances and checks – tighter legislation, greater consequences for overstepping the boundaries and increased manpower to monitor product safety standards.

In a sign of growing urgency, the former head of China’s Food and Safety industry watchdog - Zheng Xiaoyu – was recently executed after being convicted of taking bribes to register substandard medicines. These inferior medicines resulted in the deaths of at least 10 people. Much attention has been given to this landmark case. To put it in a more Chinese way, it was a question of killing the chicken to scare the monkeys away.

The real challenge is to address the causes and not the symptoms though. While superficial issues rage around the global media, China has a much bigger fire looming in the background. The problem is not a complication one. China is still largely driven by manufacturing output. The manufacturing sector has large energy requirements as inputs and large amounts of effluents are discharged into the environment as outputs.

If this process is not competitive, then business moves to Vietnam, Myanmar or India. Using coal for energy is less expensive than sustainable energies and discharging untreated chemicals into the local river is cheaper than treating them.

However, when a massive lake has been so polluted from industrial discharges, that huge swathes are covered in a poisonous algae and the adjacent city of nearly 5 million people can’t even boil the water to make it potable, then your environmental challenge becomes a question of social harmony.

When this same incident repeats itself in nearby lakes and affects other large cities, then these isolated incidents soon become trends. This then leads on to a question of priorities. What is more important – a city with high economic growth or one with lower growth but where you can at least drink the water when you have boiled it.

The big issue at stake is that environmental challenges are less predictable than next year’s economic growth rate, next month’s trade surplus with the USA, the appreciation of the Chinese currency or even the next country president. Less predictable means less manageable and therefore more risky. The next outbreak of SARS or the next occurrence of poisonous algae has a much more direct impact on the man on the street than next month’s global trade figures.