Beijing Newspeak

Honesty is the best policy. Maybe not for Zheng Binghui. In fact Zheng, the director of the Chinese Research Academy of the Environmental Sciences’ Institute of Water Environment, is so honest he flags up a brutally frank form of dishonesty.

My eagle-eyed polishing comrade spied an article in Monday’s South China Morning Post headlined “Government to spend billions to clean water”. Half-interested, he waded through the first 200 words - at least one trillion yuan will be spent by the central government to target the Huai, the Hai and the Liao rivers, and the Tai, Chao and Dianchi lakes - before diving into the juice:

Dr Zheng said nearly half of all urban drinking water sources failed to meet national standards in 1981, and, in 1998, the failure rate was more than 83 per cent, according to studies carried out by his institute.

Their latest survey suggests more than 450 drinking water sources in key national environmental protection cities could not meet the standards, a number six times higher than the official figure. But these results have not been made available to the mainland public.

“If we release these figures to the public, there will be total havoc … The figures we reported to the central government are classified,” he said.

“There is only one correct figure you and Xinhua can report, and that is the official figure.”

Now clearly it is common practice for the Chinese government to not so much massage statistics as give them a merciless pummelling for the people’s consumption but it is rare to see such a glaring admission of governmental deception. According to the SCMP, Zheng was delivering the report (which included the real figure) in English to a multinational audience at the annual meeting of the China Association for Science and Technology in Wuhan. I presume that when he says “you and Xinhua” he is talking to the SCMP reporter directly with naive confidence that his comments would not be reproduced in print.

How galling it must have been for the SCMP reporter to have his publication aranged on the same censorship shelf as Xinhua. And the question has to be asked of course. Did the SCMP writer want to lead with the government cover-up angle only for an editorial decision to force the comments to be buried in the middle of text rather than mocking Beijing in bold print at the top of the page? I know what line I would have gone with - out of duty to the mainland public who collectively have been treated as fools.

I’ll be looking out for the “official figures” at Xinhua with these stats in mind:

“For the river-type water sources, Hunan province and Anhui province had the lowest rate of meeting national standards, just 60.28 per cent and 46.7 per cent respectively; for lake and reservoir type water sources, the lowest rates were in Anhui province with 71.4 per cent and Jiangsu province with 30.7 per cent.”

Nearly half of the undergound water sources in Shanxi were not suitable for drinking, he said.

In terms of the mainalnd’s high-profile algal outbreaks this year, Dr Zheng said lake and reservoir type water resources were serious polluted and nutrient levels generally exceeded standards.

“Seventy-five per cent of the lakes show [excessive nutrient levels] to a different extent. The drinking water sources in the Three Gorges Reservoir tributaries are in danger.”

Dr Zheng said existing controls covering protected source water areas were ineffective.

“In Hubei province, investigations showed that unauthorised construction existed in 23 water source protection zones.

“In Ningxia , in a centralised drinking water source protection zone there are 73 enterprises with … annual ammonia emissions of 1,023 tonnes.”

Something tells me the Three Gorges fact might not resurface for a while so make a note of it for future dam debates.