At a media briefing on Saturday, Zhong Xuequan, a spokesman for the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s parliament, said the draft amendments were passed by 154 votes to 4, with five abstentions, reports Reuters.
For a long time, the ruling government of China has been reluctant to admit the extent of the pollution problems affecting the country. The 21-million people of Beijing live in a toxic soup of particulate matter, ozone, sulphur dioxide, mercury, cadmium, lead and other contaminants, the result of burning of coal.
But finally acknowledging the damage that decades of rampant economic growth have produced, the ruling government is now trying to equip its environmental inspection offices with greater powers, an unprecedented move, aimed at getting to the local leaders of governments that are protecting persistent polluters.
Business Insider noted something new in the draft amendments is that local governments will now be directly responsible for meeting environmental pollution targets. This makes only one entity responsible if targets are not met. The new laws also make it illegal to switch off polluting equipment during inspections, or engage in behavior that suggests emission reports are distorted.
Tong Weidong, vice-director of the NPC’s legal work committee told the press briefing this will make it possible for local governments to draw up their own plans. “Amendments to this air pollution law have strengthened pollution treatment from the source – from sources such as industrial policy, energy consumption and automobile pollution,” Tong said.
Not everyone thinks the amendments have gone far enough
Tong dismissed criticism of the new draft amendments, saying it was to be expected, and “was normal.” But interestingly, the criticism is not because they amendments are too harsh, but because they haven’t gone far enough in addressing the problems.
Chang Jiwen, an environmental researcher with the Development and Research Council, a government think-tank, describes the law as “not being very useful.” He told the Chinese press that the voting on the law should have been postponed until all the proposals on coal consumption caps had been resolved. “It is filled with many slogan-like clauses and is more like a policy document than legislation,” said Chang.
Then there was the article written on March 13, this year in Carbon Counter. The article points out that China has had a number of “caps on coal consumption” over the past several years, and they all end with, “China to simply cap coal use within 3 years.”
The writer also points out that as of March, 2015, China had already exceeded its cap on coal for the year, having done so two years ago. So where does that leave them in capping coal consumption? In the red, so to speak. The writer says, “They still tell you that China produced 3.68 billion tons of coal in 2013.”
But what most people don’t know was found hidden within a recently published statistical communique from China. “data have been revised based on the results of the Third National Economic Census. The output of coal in 2013 has been revised from 3.68 billion tons to 3.97 billion tons.”
This doesn’t sound like much difference but consider this – coal production in 2013 was revised upwards by 7.9 percent, and by 0.29 billion tons. This revision is the equivalent of 1/3 of the annual coal production of America. Based on this document and other statistics coming out of China, it may leave many people skeptical of the facts. So what do we believe?