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FAILURE to halt the destruction of China’s environment was one of the
many grievances that fuelled the dissatisfaction with the record of 40 years
of communist rule shown by the students during recent demonstrations. Environmentalists
were painting a grim picture of China, warning that the country is losing
its natural resources at an alarming speed.

He Bochuan, a professor of philosophy of science at Zhongshan University,
Guangdong, is one of the most outspoken critics of the management of China’s
environment and the economy. Many government officials dismiss his catalogue
of disasters, listed in his recent book, China in the Valley. But most researchers
in institutes agree with his conclusions. In the past few months, the official
press has reported many examples of environmental degeneration and the country’s
leaders have promised action to reverse this trend. But there were many
problems: some people said that the government’s new concern for the environment
as shown in the media was simply a ploy to deflect attention from the political
issues. Since the military crackdown last month, campaigns to protect the
environment are likely to become more difficult to mount. Opposition to
the Three Gorges Project, the government’s proposal to build the world’s
largest dam, was one of the first concerted protests by intellectuals and
scientists. In the current political climate it will be hard to repeat.
The irony, says He Bochuan, is that the environmental crisis may be far
more serious than political problems.

According to official figures, forests now cover 12 per cent of China,
compared with 12.7 per cent when the communists came to power in 1949. But
He Bochuan believes that the forest actually covers only an area between
10.5 per cent and 11 per cent, and that by the year 2000 it will have dropped
to 8.3 per cent. He Bochuan says that, in comparison, forests in Japan cover
66 per cent, the Soviet Union 35 per cent, the US 33 per cent, West Germany
29 per cent, France 26 per cent and India 26 per cent of the land.

Fire is one of the biggest causes of deforestation. China has the worst
forest fires in the world. In 25 years, the country has lost 8.6 million
hectares of forests due to fire, equivalent to one-third of saplings planted
and surviving in that period, according to estimates by He Bochuan and confirmed
by other forestry experts. The worst fire was in 1987. In the Da Xing Anling
forest region in north China 1 million hectares of forest were destroyed.

The People’s Daily reported that the annual consumption of timber for
fuel, building and paper of 300 million cubic metres far exceeded growth
of 200 million cubic metres. If this rate of consumption continues, it warned,
state timber enterprises would have nothing to log by the end of the century.

To reverse this trend, the ministry urged the country’s leaders to reiterate
the policy that everyone between the ages of 11 and 65 plant between three
and five trees a year. Forestry officials say that through its afforestation
drive China gains more wooded areas than it loses. They state that 65 per
cent of trees planted each year survive. But professors from one forestry
research institute say that half the annual afforestation figures are bogus,
and that in the other half, only 40 per cent of trees planted survive. He
Bochuan says that over the past 25 years, only 10 per cent of young trees
have survived.

Deforestation has had an inevitable impact on wildlife. Qin Jien Hua,
director of the wildlife management department in the forestry ministry,
says that in 1962, 60 species were threatened with extinction. That number
has now risen to 300 and includes the giant panda. The government has set
up 400 natural reserves covering 2 per cent of the total area of China and
passed a new wildlife protection law. But Qin says this has not been enough.

Increasing soil erosion is the other consequence of deforestation. About
5 billion tonnes of soil are lost each year. He Bochuan says that the area
suffering from soil erosion has increased by nearly a third since 1949.
One-sixth of the total area of China, or 1.5 million square kilometres,
is now affected.

As soil is eroded, rising levels of silt in China’s rivers increase
the risk of floods. In some stretches, the water level of the Yellow River
has risen by 10 metres: the water carries nearly 40 kilograms of silt a
cubic metre. The Yangtze River is turning into another ‘yellow river’, discharging
500 million tonnes of silt into the sea a year. Last year floods killed
6000 people, left 4 million homeless and inundated 11.3 million hectares
of land. Half the country’s provinces were affected.

China has 1.5 million square kilometres of desert, a sixth of the total
land. He Bochuan says that the ‘yellow dragon’, the popular name for desert
in China, is expanding at a rate of 1560 square kilometres a year. Song
Jian, minister of science and technology, confirms this. By the year 2000,
deserts will have doubled in area since 1949. In Inner Mongolia, desertification
threatens 86 000 square kilometres, equivalent to the desert area that developed
in the previous 2000 years. Four million hectares of farmland and 5 million
hectares of grasslands in north China are threatened. Desert land in northern
arid and semiarid areas is expected to increase from 17.6 million hectares
in 1983 to 25 million hectares by 2000.

Degenerating grasslands have increased from 15 per cent of the total
area to over 30 per cent. Salinity is another problem, affecting nearly
7 million hectares of China’s 100 million hectares. Many lakes are drying
up, including Lobupa Lake, the largest in Central Asia. In 1948, Hubei (North
Lake) Province had 1066 lakes; now it has 309.

China’s massive population has doubled since the 1949 revolution, taking
its toll on the environment. Officially, the country’s population has just
topped 1.1 billion. But many families evade the policy of one child a family
by not registering their children. He Bochuan estimates that China now holds
1.2 billion people.

The one-child policy is working only in the cities. In a nationwide
survey covering the years 1980 to 1987, the State Family Planning Commission
found that the average couple had 2.4 children. An editorial in the Economic
Daily said that, if such a high birth rate continued, there would be 1.32
billion Chinese by the end of the century, which would wreak havoc on the
country’s development plans.

China’s people constitute 23 per cent of the world’s total population,
but its farmland is only 7 per cent of the world total. That area is decreasing
at an alarming rate. Each year 15.34 million mu (15 mu = 1 hectare) of farmland
are lost, 1 per cent of the total. The annual amount of grain per person
per year has dropped from 393.2 kilograms in 1984 to 359 kilograms now.
Last year China harvested 389 million tonnes of grain, 13.3 million tonnes
less than it did in 1984 and 8.5 million tonnes less than in 1987. But the
population has increased by 61.39 million, according to Hu Ping, the commerce
minister.

Construction destroys 8.5 million hectares of the farmland lost each
year. Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms urged farming communities to set
up rural industrial enterprises, to absorb the surplus farming population.
Since 1984, rural industry has grown at a rate of 37 per cent a year, four
times that of state industries. The government is now backtracking on this
policy, partly because rural industries have put too much strain on scarce
raw materials and energy supplies.

Mass migration and the land

Rural industry has also grown at the expense of agriculture. The shift
in population away from the land has not been accompanied by more efficient
farming methods. Between 1982 and 1987, 68 million peasants moved out of
agriculture. But much of the land of those who leave has not been redistributed.
Often it is left in the hands of old family members who do not farm it effectively,
if at all, and who are supported by money sent back from sons and daughters
working in cities or rural industry.

Cities are filling up, saturated by what is called the floating population
who work on building sites or as hawkers and live in shanty towns previously
unheard of in communist China. Most are not registered as residents, and
so are not allowed to find full-time jobs. After the annual Chinese New
Year holiday, more than 2 million people arrived in Canton alone. Vast discrepancies
in rural and urban incomes are to blame. Construction workers in Canton
can make about Pounds sterling 70 a month. In the countryside, their incomes
are likely to have been as low as Pounds sterling 35 a year.

Grain harvests have also declined because farmers prefer to grow crops
that they can sell on the open market. More than half the grain that farmers
supply to the government is bought at low fixed prices. Farm collectives
were broken up a decade ago, in favour of a system of responsibility based
on the family. Investment in agriculture has dropped sharply since then.
Between 1965 and 1985, it was 10 per cent of total state funding. In 1986,
it dropped to 3 per cent, increasing to 4.8 per cent the following year.
Provinces, counties and towns have also cut back investment, in some cases
by as much as 90 per cent.

The area of irrigated farmland has declined by 930 000 hectares. Li
Boning, former vice-minister of water resources, says the state has decreased
money spent on irrigation, from 8 per cent of its capital construction budget
in the early 1960s to 2 per cent now. He adds that projects to conserve
water that were built in the 1950s and 1960s were now too old to meet demands
and needed renovation.

He Bochuan also says the shortage of water is an increasing problem.
Total resources per person is 2700 cubic metres, one quarter of the world
average. At present each person in China consumes 490 cubic metres of water
a year, one-fifth that of the level in the US and one half that of the Soviet
Union. But demand is increasing rapidly. China Environmental Journal reports
that industrial demand for water is expected to increase from 57 billion
cubic metres in 1980 to 100 billion before 2000. The demand from urban residents
will go up from 5 billion cubic metres to 20 billion. By the year 2000,
450 of China’s 644 cities are expected to have water shortages. Ground water
in Beijing and Tianjin is already exhausted.

China’s economic growth is the fastest in the world. But lack of government
funds and poor planning and administration have meant that pollution control
has not kept up with the pace of growth. Li Kang, director of the Institute
of Environmental Management in Beijing, says only 10 per cent of domestic
sewage is treated. By the year 2000 this will have risen to 20 per cent.

Yang Wenhe, deputy director of the National Bureau of Oceanography,
says that 1.5 billion cubic metres of domestic sewage and 4.5 billion cubic
metres of industrial sewage are discharged in the sea each year. As a result,
the total sea water fishing area has been reduced by a third. He Bochuan
says that prawns, river crab, yellow croaker, and whitebait have almost
disappeared from the Bohai Sea and its estuaries. At least K K 2400 kilometres
of rivers are so polluted they can not support fish or shrimps, he adds.
Even the government says that 150 million people are drinking polluted water.

Air pollution is as serious a problem. Li Kang says that 16 million
tonnes of sulphur dioxide are emitted into the atmosphere each year. China
depends on coal for 70 per cent of its energy, but only 15 per cent of coal
dust is treated with water. In Guangdong, Guangxi and Hubei provinces the
pH level during the rainy season is between 4 and 4.2.

Li Kang says that the state spends only 0.45 per cent of the GNP on
protecting the environment, a level he would like to see increased to 1.5
per cent. Qu Geping, head of China’s Environmental Protection Agency, agrees
that degeneration of the environment and pollution are both ‘very grave’
problems. The government wants to solve them, he says. In addressing the
Seventh National People’s Congress last year, Premier Li Peng said that
implementing family planning and environmental protection were among 10
major tasks for the next five years.

To control pollution, Qu’s bureau has developed a policy of ‘synchronised
development’. But he says that China does not have enough money to make
the control as comprehensive as developed countries. What it can do, though,
is tackle the ineffective planning and administration, which he estimates
caused 50 per cent of all industrial pollution. Increasing education, propaganda,
planning control and enforcing legislation is his strategy for tackling
the problem.

He Bochuan and other environmentalists do not believe these policies
are working. He says most environmental officers waste time drinking tea
and reading newspapers. The government is not going to enforce costly pollution
control measures and fine its factories, most of which do not make profits.
And at such a turbulent time, the environment is unlikely to be top of the
government’s agenda.

Katharine Forestier is a freelance journalist.