CHINA: Worsening water and air pollution resulting from rampant economic growth in China could soon translate into social tension, riots and protests, the head of China's environment watchdog warned yesterday.
"The environment has become a focal issue that triggers social contradictions," Zhou Shengxian, head of the State Environmental Protection Administration (Sepa), told the Beijing News, in a rare admission by China's powers-that-be that a worsening environment could have political repercussions.
His comments came as residents of Beijing and other cities in northern China cleaned up after days of choking dust storms, which Premier Wen Jiabao said were a sharp reminder of the country's environmental problems.
"The succession of dust storms is a warning to us. Ecological destruction and environmental pollution are creating massive economic losses and gravely threatening people's lives and health," Mr Wen told an environmental meeting held in Beijing earlier this week. China's surging economy is being driven by huge increases in industrial production which have wreaked havoc on the environment.
The World Bank says 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China and the yellow dust covering streets, houses, cars in Beijing for the past week underlined that statistic.
So far this year the capital has recorded just 56 days with blue skies - 16 fewer than for the same time last year.
Around 300 million people in China have no access to clean water.
Mr Zhou was appointed in December after his predecessor was forced to resign over his handling of a toxic spill that poisoned the Songhua River and left millions of residents of Harbin and neighbouring areas without drinking water.
Environmental damage has sparked widespread anger in many parts of China and in the absence of a platform for their grievances, many citizens have taken to the streets to protest.
In Huaxi in Zhejiang province a year ago, villagers took on thousands of police and officials in a riot over polluting chemical plants located in the centre of the village, forcing their closure.
The demonstrations left a trail of destruction and led to arrests of villagers, but also official recriminations and the sacking of local cadres.
Mr Zhou said "mass incidents", which is how the Communist Party describes protests and riots, had grown by nearly 30 per cent a year and there were 51,000 pollution-related disputes in 2005.
Wary of further destabilising unrest, the government has tried to encourage environmentally sustainable growth as part of the latest Five Year Plan.
Peng Lei, of the conservation group WWF, said China was sacrificing the environment for fast economic growth.
"China is still a developing country and the model of economic development is not sustainable," Mr Peng said, adding that the Asian-Pacific region's three billion people were using resources at double the sustainable rate.
Even the Communist Party's chief organ, the People's Daily, admitted that environmental problems "remain extremely severe".