Studies / Reports: December 2006 Archives

By Radio Free Asia
December 18, 2006

Chinese officials are trying to deflect blame for the country’s pollution onto foreign firms, accusing them of “environmental colonialism,” experts say. The move follows government concern over thousands of anti-pollution protests in the past year.

In a December 3 opinion piece in The Washington Post, a leading China analyst called the effort a “blame game.”

Elizabeth Economy, director for Asia studies at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said that Chinese officials, the press, and some activists have charged multinational corporations with “exporting pollution” by sourcing their products in China and ignoring environmental rules.

Economy said the campaign aimed at foreign investors began in October when Pan Yue, deputy director of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), accused developed countries of practicing “environmental colonialism” by investing in China’s polluting industries.

Similar accusations followed, including a report by China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, which published a list of over 2,700 “serious polluters,” including 33 joint ventures of multinational corporations.

The group’s list included Chinese affiliates of Panasonic, PepsiCo, and Nestle among other foreign firms, according to a report in the official China Daily.

According to Economy, Chinese press reports “focused exclusively on the 33 multinationals … and ignored the more than 2,600 Chinese companies similarly cited. The reason, she thinks, is that worldwide attention has been drawn to China’s pollution problems with the approach of the 2008 Olympic Games.

Officials have sought to avoid blame after a wave of over 50,000 environmental protests in the country last year, she said.

In an interview with Radio Free Asia, Economy said, “I think blaming foreigners is a very attractive way of deflecting attention, and perhaps even deflecting some of the social unrest away from corrupt local officials and poorly enforced regulations and onto the international community.”

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By AFP | Yahoo
19 December 2006

BEIJING (AFP) - Retail giant Wal-Mart, an icon of American capitalism, has said it had authorised the establishment of a Communist Party union branch at its China headquarters.

The branch was set up in the southern city of Shenzhen, where Wal-Mart operates its China business, said a spokeswoman at its headquarters, Huang Yunling.

"We set up the Communist Party (branch) last Friday. It's one of our steps to adapt better to China."

It followed the establishment of similar party organizations in around a third of Wal-Mart's 66 stores in China since August, after two years of intense pressure from the All China Confederation of Trade Unions to allow unions.

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By Howard W. French | The New York Times
19 December 2006

SHENZHEN, China — When Zhang Feifei lost her job in this booming Chinese factory town, she was not terribly concerned. Jobs had always been plentiful in Shenzhen’s flourishing economy.

Then Ms. Zhang, a 20-year-old migrant laborer, lost her identity card and was shocked to find that no factory would hire her without a bribe that she could not afford. Desperate for money, she ended up working in a grimy two-room massage parlor in a congested alley here, where she has sex with four or five men each day.

“I was terrified at first, and I was really embarrassed not even knowing how to use a condom,” said the soft-spoken young woman, casting her eyes downward as she spoke. “I didn’t have any choice, though. Little by little, you have to get used to it.”

Few cities anywhere have created wealth faster than Shenzhen, but the costs of its phenomenal success stare out from every corner: environmental destruction, soaring crime rates and the disillusionment and degradation of its vast force of migrant workers, Ms. Zhang among them.

Shenzhen was a sleepy fishing village in the Pearl River delta, next to Hong Kong, when it was decreed a special economic zone in 1980 by the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Since then, the city has grown at an annual rate of 28 percent, though it slowed to 15 percent in 2005.

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