Beijing Newspeak

I’m half expecting my task for today will be to trawl through the Xinhua database editing caveats about potential environmental damage into all the Three Gorges stories released since Hu Jintao came to power. Sounds like one of Winston Smith’s more rewarding days at the Ministry of Truth.

After years of positive spinning, the central leadership has come as clean as the Yangtze River was about 100 years ago about the environmental consequences of the Three Gorges Dam, admitting that if ”no preventive measures are taken, the project could lead to catastrophe”. Here are the opening few pars of the Times story:

It was hailed as one of the engineering feats of the 20th century. Now the Three Gorges Dam across China’s mighty Yangtze River threatens to become an environmental catastrophe.

In an unprecedented admission of blame, Communist Party officials gave a stark warning yesterday of impending disaster in the vast area around the dam if preventive measures are not urgently introduced.

For more than a decade China has promoted the world’s biggest hydro-electric project as the best way to end centuries of floods along the basin of the Yangtze and to provide energy to fuel the country’s economic boom.

The Government ignored critics who claimed that the Three Gorges, first proposed nearly a century ago and immortalised in a poem by Mao Zedong, was an ecological disaster waiting to happen.

Now those same officials who oversaw construction of the £13 billion dam admit that surrounding areas are paying a heavy, and potentially calamitous, environmental cost. Hundreds of thousands of people may have to be moved. A total of 1.3 million have been displaced by the dam already.

A report issued by the Xinhua news agency, mouthpiece for the Government, said: “There exist many ecological and environmental problems concerning the Three Gorges Dam. If no preventive measures are taken, the project could lead to catastrophe.”

The leadership should be applauded for a retreat that would impress a Long Marcher although the clapping shouldn’t quite reach fervent levels given the political nature of the announcement and the information that has been relayed through state media about the dam in recent years. As the Times article points out:

The timing of yesterday’s warning is significant, coming just two weeks before the Communist Party holds a five-yearly congress at which it will cement policy and anoint a new generation of leaders. One political analyst said: “It is a way for President Hu Jintao to distance himself [from the Three Gorges project] further. He stayed away from the completion ceremonies a year ago and this underlines that his administration does not want to be associated with the Three Gorges.”

If you look back at some of the Xinhua reports from the last two years the overall picture portrayed is more comic than a Marvel title. On May 19, 2006, this story was released with the confident headline, “Negative effects of Three Gorges project on environment under control: undertaker” and the tag of “China Exclusive” no less. (I have no idea why there were asking an undertaker for an opinion - perhaps they already realised the project was dead and buried. Sorry).

A few months later, in November of the same year, a report headlined “Water quality remains sound at Three Gorges Dam area” which opened:

Little water pollution has been detected at the Three Gorges Dam area since the water level of the gigantic dam reached the 156-meter mark on Friday, the latest monitoring reports show.

The dam area has maintained a sound ecological environment and water in the dam area is still potable, according to Hubei provincial government office in charge of water-pollution control in the Three Gorges Reservoir.

Leap forward to April, 2007 and this more realistic report was released, which conveyed a very different view through the first annual health report on the Yangtze River. The Three Gorges assessment was presented as a sideshow.

The report also assessed the Three Gorges Dam project, showing its huge reservoir is seriously polluted by pesticides, fertilizers and sewage from passenger boats.

China allocated 4 billion yuan (513 million U.S. dollars) in 2002 to offset the impact of the dam on the ecology, the local environment and the local people, said Prof. Weng Lida, former head of the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission, adding that more cash is coming.

“We have to take into consideration the proper settlement of the people who have been displaced, environmental protection, heavy silting and the prevention of geological disasters,” said Weng who cautioned that “faster is not always better.”

The water level in the Three Gorges reservoir reached a landmark 156 meters last October, but some provinces want the level to go higher so more electricity can be produced, Weng said.

“Higher water levels will worsen pollution and silting. We have to seek more sustained development,” he said.

It should be noted that Professor Weng Lida has always been the one advocating caution regarding the Three Gorges project. He was quoted by the Wall Street Journal at the end of August this year, warning of the problems facing the eco-system around the dam. Unfortunately subscription renders this story unlinkable but it has been summarised on this environmental website.

“We thought of all the possible issues,” environmental scientist Weng Lida, secretary general of the Yangtze River Forum, a coalition of the Chinese government and nongovernmental organizations, told the Wall Street Journal. “But the problems are all more serious than we expected.”

Amusingly, Xinhua tried to release a story a week later talking about the rosy situation on the banks of the reservoir - the reservoir where 36 km of shoreline has collapsed. I rejected it pending an ounce of balance and a reaction to the Wall Street Journal article. I regret that decision now as the story would have been nicely juxtaposed with yesterday’s announcement. In fact, the reaction to that Wall Street Journal article was reported yesterday by Xinhua, for which the agency journalist (naturally the only reporter at the Three Gorges forum earlier this week) deserves praise for getting some good quotes outside of the statement released with central government approval.

Commenting on the newspaper report, Wang said he thought most of the statements were said out of a concern for the Three Gorges Project, but some of the phrasing did reflect ulterior motives.

But he also admitted, “The problems mentioned in the Wall Street Journal should merit adequate attention from all of us.”

“Ulterior motives” aside, that is high praise indeed from a Chinese government official for a damning (excuse pun) report by foreign media.

So now that officials, scientists and the ubiquitous experts have been blinded by a great big flashing green light to pour forth tales of environmental woe, maybe we can expect progressively more shocking statistics such as this one from Xinhua:

Frequent geological disasters have threatened the lives of residents around the reservoir area, said Huang Xuebin, head of the Headquarters for Prevention and Control of Geological Disasters in the Three Gorges Reservoir.

At the forum he described landslides around the reservoir that had produced waves as high as 50 meters, which crashed into the adjacent shoreline, causing even more damage.

I am finding the “50 meter” line difficult to believe given some tsunamis don’t even get that high but maybe it is true. It certainly sounds like Huang Xuebin has been waiting to get that off his chest for a long time.

I’m nearly at the end of this post and I seem to have wasted the opportunity to give the Chinese government due credit. This is what everyone wanted - an open discussion on how to tackle the huge environmental concerns that have arisen from the construction of the dam - and it emphatically supports the leadership’s pledge to place environmental concerns over economic development ahead of the CPC congress. Of course many people will say it should have happened sooner and the treatment of environmental activist and journalist Dai Qing, whose book Yangtze! Yangtze! earned her 10 months in a maximum security prison and the threat of the death sentence (according to the Independent), should not be forgotten.