China Daily reports that the Ministry of Environmental Protection found in a month-long study that three provincial-level governments — of the megacity of Tianjin near Beijing, and of the eastern Anhui and Shanxi provinces — had overseen considerably worsened air and water pollution.
The state media outlet noted that “the common thread in these cases was that leadership was weak and officials failed to give sufficient attention to pollution control.” Authorities gave each government a 30-day notice to submit public plans for improvement.
What went wrong?
Caixin records stunning details of what the inspection team called a “lack [of] a sense of responsibility” among Tianjin’s officials, who received the harshest criticism from the inspection team.
In two separate districts, the city government had knowingly approved the development of parks on protected land, and “on multiple occasions” had “deployed tanker trucks to spray water” near air-monitoring stations to skew readings.
Also, Tianjin reportedly went “easy on curbing pollution from steel plants and motor vehicles, as well as the burning of coal in the city,” leading to a 25 percent increase in cancer-causing particulate matter in the air in just a year.
Sixth Tone notes, “In the first case of its kind in the capital, [Beijing’s] public prosecutor is suing a steel factory for not complying with the national environmental standards.” Also, Xinhua mentions a new plan to “create 500 green manufacturing demonstration plants, 50 industrial zones and promote over 5,000 green products” in the Yangtze River Economic Belt in eastern China.
Trump China hits back at Trump criticism over North Korea / Reuters “We think the North Korea nuclear issue and China-U.S. trade are issues that are in two completely different domains.
They aren’t related.
They should not be discussed together,” said Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Qian Keming 钱克明 in response to Trump’s pair of angry tweets over the weekend (1, 2).