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Water Pollution in China

 Weirong Han

Several hundred years ago, a Chinese poet wrote ”the fish are swimming in the clouds while the birds are flying in the river.” One may wonder how the fish can swim in the clouds. Is something wrong with the poet? Actually, what the poet wanted to explain was that the river was so clean that one could see the clouds (reflection) in it. However, just looking around today, one may wonder whether such a beautiful scenery would ever again be possible. Sadly, the answer may be in the negative.   

After the industrial revolution, many factories, like the spread of wild grass after the first rain in spring, rose all across China. No one then could imagine these factories, which initially aimed to provide people with a better life, would ultimately harm them. In Shangba, a city in the southern region of Guangdong Province, had a footwear factory pollute the river with huge amounts of heavy metals and poisonous chemicals. As a result, the river, which was once so clean that on could see all the way to the bottom, is now the startling color of orange. One villager said that “It was really a nightmare: all the fishes, even those poor ducks and chickens that drank water from the polluted river died. If you put your leg into that river, you will get rashes and a terrible itch.” Several villagers died from cancer due to polluted water, and the small village has come to be called ”the cancer village.”

In 2013, Shanghai awoke to find thousands of dead pigs floating in the river due to the feeders’ unethical disposal of carcasses. Although obviously horrible, this is not that awful in comparison to industrial water pollution. Further, in January 2013, some factories leaked benzene into one of the main sources of water for Shanghai: the Huangpujiang River. As a result, more than 20 people were hospitalized. Later that year, a Zhejinag businessman named Jin, after his sister died of water pollution, offered RMB 200,000 ($32,000) to any local environmental official who would swim across the dirty river where Jin used to swim as a little boy. Until now, no one claimed the reward.

Due to these polluting factories, more than half of the country’s entire surface water has become polluted, and a quarter of the whole surface water is not safe even for industrial use. And sadly, 90% of all ground water is polluted due to the overuse of fertilizer.

Indeed, China has many people, and it is certainly difficult to provide each individual with a good life. However, this should not be the one concern of the government in allowing factories to be built indiscriminately. Further, the government should certainly be much more vigilant in going after polluting factories and cleaning up the polluted environment.

In recent years, the government has started to pay increasing attention to polluted villages and polluting factories, spending RMB 2 trillion ($330 billion) to tackle industrial water in 2013. But this is not enough. What the country really needs includes stricter laws on industrial water discharge and chemical fertilizer use and greater awareness among the public on the severity of environmental problems facing China.

More people are beginning to believe that a better life does not necessarily mean having more money. Therefore, the Chinese government should focus on achieving a good balance between financial benefits and a healthy environment.

In this way, future generations may hopefully have another opportunity to see the birds flying in deep in the river.