“Report on mainland China’s soil pollution a ‘state secret’”, article in
SCMP, 26 February:
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1158602/report-mainland-soil-pollution-state-secret
Ministry rejects request to
make findings of five-year study of ground contamination public, leaving critics wondering what’s being hidden.
I love the statement. In
other words: “Yes the situation is very grave, to the point you better don’t know, because this is China policy”. How more clear can that
be. In my book I mention some data on soil pollution in China: agricultural land, 10% contaminated with heavy metals – official figure
probably too low; contaminated soil under new apartment blocks. Add to that the alarming levels of water pollution, in rivers, lakes and
underground, then you get the picture. Fortunately the Chinese people don’t swallow anymore the empty talk of the government. Yes, when will
they learn “Serve the People”?

China latest policy will require six heavy polluting industries to meet
global standards in 47 cities and to gradually comply with special international emission limits on airborne pollutants, starting on March 1.
The targeted industries: thermal power, iron and steel, petrochemical, cement, non-ferrous metal and chemical as the annual amount of smoke
and dust from the six industries contributes more than 70% of total emissions, according to the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental
Sciences in an interview with China Daily.
The new policy would have the biggest influence on thermal power generation companies that have to
invest a lot of money in upgrading the current environmental protection equipment and purchasing new ones for production according to experts.
But we do not need experts to tell us that. The vast majority of coal fired plants could care less, as investments and operating costs are too
high to limit pollution and as electricity prices won’t increase it will have dubious advantages. China does not have the courage to increase
prices, fearing a public backlash. So, when inspectors turn up they may switch on the equipment, and later switch off again. Or they stop
generating electricity for “maintenance” as more production means bigger losses.
Anyway, only applying the limits to the 47 cities does not
solve the problem: you can’t build a Pollution Great Wall around the cities.

Besides arable land areas being under threat, urbanization, unreliable or
polluted water resources, another challenge are the poor storage, processing: 35 millions tons of grain are wasted every year.
As said
earlier, food valued at 200 billion yuan is wasted every year.
Not to be surprised China in 2012 imported 70 million tons of grain, with
soybeans counting for nearly 60 million tons.

See the earlier post: “Air pollution in Beijing and fuel quality”
China Daily confirmed the
figures. Most parts of China still use the National III standard, which allows sulfur content of up to 150 ppm for gasoline and 350 ppm for
diesel. The current standard in Europe is 10 ppm and in the US the restriction is 30 ppm. Some areas of China even still allow the National II
diesel standard that caps sulfur content at 2,000 ppm.
According to local media reports, the average number of commercial trucks – many of
them low-tech diesels registered in areas with lower emission standards – that enter Beijing each night can hit 140,000.

The news is overall, talking about the food scandal in Europe where horse
meat was used without proper labeling, mostly to save money. There is little health concern, except for some sporadic painkillers that may
have entered the horse meat supply chain.
Some may object to eating horse meat but few people talk about that. In Belgium you can find horse
meat in shops and most people do not realize that salamis often contains horse meat, to enhance the flavor rather than to save money.
Now
what happens? Massive recalls that will lead to all the food being dumped and wasted. What a shame. Why not simply put a sticker on the items
to reveal the real content and sell at a big discount instead? I am sure people would buy it, thus avoiding one source of food waste. If
others object to the horse meat, they have a choice. In my case, I would certainly object to cat and dog meat (China!) but not horse or donkey
meat.

China Daily: “Capital to expand public transportation”, article 21
February.
I applaud all the efforts being made to expand the subway and bus networks. The length of subway lines is now 442 Km and at the end
of this year will reach 465 Km. It is an important contribution to improve Beijing’s air. However too little attention is paid to bikers
(like myself). The city is putting a total of 50,000 rental bikes on the streets but we bikers are considered second class citizens. Cars
obstruct bike lanes, pedestrians love to walk in the lanes while they have all the space on the side walks (often they are smoking and talking
on their mobiles, paying no attention to our warning). People have a total disregard for others, especially bikers; if we complain we get very
angry remarks from car drivers and pedestrians. We can call them “the ugly Chinese” and there are lots of them.
When will police and the
authorities act? Unlikely as police is nowhere to be seen and does never help us.

The latest research from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found a large amount
of nitrogen-containing organic compounds in the recent smog that shrouded Beijing and neighboring cities. The compounds are key components of
the photochemical smog that shrouded Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s, causing hundreds of premature deaths and around 2,000 traffic
accidents in a single day in 1954.
Exposure to nitrogen dioxide might damage the lungs and increase respiratory infections, especially in
children and the elderly.
The nitrogen-containing organic compounds are mainly from exhausts and account for a large amount of the city’s
PM2.5, it is said.

Pollutants in the Pearl River Delta are more dangerous than those choking the capital because they
contain higher levels of hazardous nitrogenous organic compounds, according to an expert at the China Academy of Meteorological Sciences.
The
volatile organic compounds were mainly emitted during the manufacture of shoes and cosmetics and were the main components of photochemical
smog.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine established a clear link between exposure to PM2.5 pollutants and
early death after following 154,000 patients in England and Wales who had been taken to hospital with heart attacks between 2004 and 2007.
They followed the patients for more than three years after their release from hospital. Nearly 40,000 died in that period. If PM2.5 levels had
been reduced to their natural background rate, they calculated the number of deaths would have fallen by 4,873, or 12%.
“We found that for
every 10 microgrammes/m³ in PM2.5, there was a 20% increase in the death rate,” said the research.
About 30 times thinner than a
human hair, PM2.5 particles have long been identified as a respiratory problem, as their size enables them to lodge deep in the lungs. The
average PM2.5 level in Hong Kong is around 30 to 35 microgrammes/m³. The World Health Organization has set guidelines of a maximum
of 10 microgram of PM2.5/m³ as an annual average exposure.
In Beijing last month, PM2.5 levels reached 993
microgrammes/m³, almost 40 times the WHO’s recommended safe limit of 25 microgram over a 24-hour period, triggering a public
outcry.
If some people still underestimate the dangers of air pollution, they are really naïve.
Read more:
21 February 2013 – Smog in Pearl
River Delta ‘worse than in Beijing’
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1154950/smog-pearl-river-delta-worse-beijing
and this one, with a questionable
title:
19 February 2013 – ‘Smog readings in Beijing nothing to be concerned about’
By Zheng Xin (China Daily)
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2013-02/19/content_16236264.htm

In my book I show China’s imports, overseas deals and its goals to tap into
its huge shale gas reserves and the way it is trying to implement the process – facing much more difficult geological conditions than in the
USA. But also barring access to foreign companies.
Some experts have doubts China can achieve the targets set, being 80 billion m³
(bcm) by 2020, or 23% of total expected demand. Until now, it has not yet started commercial production.
Experts contacted by Bloomberg have
now reduced their estimate for 2020 to rather 18 bcm.
According to U.S. specialists (and they are the only ones who have the technology and
expertise), China needs to invest more in exploration and development of the projects, and should relax fuel price controls.
Under the
present conditions, foreign entities have very limited access to the projects, not allowed to bid directly for the blocks and playing
subcontractor while Chinese companies involved in winning bids seem to have little or no expertise: there is limited enthusiasm to invest with
the current low price ceilings.
That could well mean that China will continue to massively import natural gas; it is spending US$17 billion a
year on imports of natural gas, mostly in the form of LNG (US$8.3 billion in 2012), mainly from Australia and other countries. It also has
thousands of kilometers of  natural gas pipelines coming from other countries, through western or northern provinces.
As said, with the low
quality of the winning bids the companies involved are raising the question in how far they will do it right and not cutting corners.

In the article of IHT/NYT, “Spreading an Energy Revolution”. by CHRISTOF
RÜHL, published: February 5, 2013, the group chief economist of BP preaches all the wonderful results of fracking. I agree that fracking has
its advantages and marks progress. But as I explain in detail in Toxic Capitalism, the technology is also very dangerous if not planned and
executed with utmost care. Rühl obviously glances over all those problems. The prospect of North American energy self-sufficiency is real but
comes often at a cost that is shifted to future generations to deal with. Especially if some companies, like BP, are known to cut corners with
terrible consequences.
See the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/opinion/global/spreading-an-energy-revolution.html
SCMP reported that worldwide shale
oil production could add US$2.7 trillion to the global economy annually by 2035 by slashing the price of crude by as much as US$50 a barrel,
according to a recent PWC report. Shale oil production could surge to 14 million barrels per day, or as much as 12% of total oil output from
around 1% now, as it expands from its US base over the next two decades, PWC reported.
But not everybody is buying it.
In another IHT/NYT
article, “Vast Oil Reserve May Now Be Within Reach, and Battle Heats Up”, by NORIMITSU ONISHI, published February 3, 2013 the author digs into
some of the controversies regarding the Monterey Shale in California.
The oil companies’ plans for the Monterey Shale are drawing increasing
scrutiny from environmental groups. Though oil companies have engaged in fracking in California for decades, the process was only loosely
monitored by state regulators.
The Monterey Shale’s geological formation will require companies to engage in more intensive fracking and
deeper, horizontal drilling, a dangerous prospect in a seismically active region like California, environmental groups say.
Environmental
groups, including the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, are suing the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of
Conservation to prevent the opening up of further land to oil exploration and to enforce stricter environmental practices.
Said Kassie
Siegel, a lawyer at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Fracking poisons the air we breathe and the water we drink. It is one of the most,
if not the most, important environmental issue in California.”
As a result, there is now more attention paid to regulate the whole process
and make sure it goes as the oil companies pretend: “there are no problems, no incidents”.
Read the whole story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/us/vast-oil-reserve-may-now-be-within-reach-and-battle-heats-up.html
More worrying is
that China is looking at fracking for its own energy revolution – but conditions are much tougher than in the U.S. And Chinese excel in
cutting corners. More about fracking in China in a next post.

On Saturday evening I went with the family and several Chinese friends to one
of those huge Spa places, close to Sihui Metro Station, one famous for its buffet food. The restaurant was fully packed and Chinese were
consuming enormous amounts of food in a near frenzy. I saw a lot of food going to waste, as people fill up enormous plates and often fail to
finish. It is one of the examples of food being wasted, not just in the official or wedding banquets, where doggy bags are seldom used for
obvious reasons.
Not only China Daily but also incoming president Xi Jinping has pleaded for wasting less.
Chinese New Year is one of those
occasions were waste of food, useless presents and extravagant packaging are still the norm.
China Daily has published several calls for
thrift, such as:
“Thrift is better than an annuity”, by Op Rana. (8 February 2013)
http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2013-02/08/content_16214356.htm
The article mentions some disturbing
figures:
–  According to one estimate, more than 200 billion yuan ($32.16 billion) worth of food is wasted as leftovers in China every year.
Others say the amount of food wasted in the country every year is enough to feed 200 million people.
– The Institution of Mechanical
Engineers says in its recent report that up to half of the food produced in the world ends up as waste every year. This, according to the
UK-based independent group’s report, means that as much as 2 billion tons of food never makes it on to a plate.
– A 2011 study by the
Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology – sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization – which said that about
one-third of all food produced (1.3 billion tons) ended up as waste annually, in equal measure in developed and developing nations.
– Up to
30% of the British vegetable crop is not harvested because it fails to meet marketing standards for size and looks.
As I mention in Toxic
Capitalism, problems in transportation & storage, unnecessarily strict sell-by dates and buy-one-get-one free offers are to blame. But
also consumers’ demand for cosmetically perfect food, along with “poor engineering and agricultural practices” are to blame.
Says Op Rana:
“Those indulging in extravagance and exhibitionism should remember another Chinese proverb: A thriftless woman burns the entire candle looking
for a match.”