Tens of thousands of residents in a Chinese city took to the streets last week to protest, forcing the government to scrap plans to build a copper plant. The incident is the latest in a rising number of localised protests as expression of public anger aimed at over-ambitious or corrupt officials in China over-boils.

Thousands of anti-riot police were deployed to Shifang city, located in China’s Western Sichuan province last week during the protests which turned violent as residents smashed police cars and stormed the government headquarters. Two protestors have since been reported to have died, according to NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

In a highly unusual compromise, the local government announced that plans for the metals plant, which locals said would result in heavily polluting factory emissions, would be stopped. Twenty-one of 27 people detained during the protests have been released.

A number of high-profile protests have erupted in the last few years. In December 2011, the village Wukan made international headlines after villagers rose against corrupt local officials they claimed were stealing their land. Following a stand-off, senior government officials intervened. Local officials were sacked and – in a surprising twist – Wukan residents were given the right to vote for their own village chief and officials.

In August 2011, around 12,000 residents protested against a chemicals plant in the northeastern city Dalian, leading to the plant’s closure. In September of the same year, villagers in Haining, located in Zhejiang province, protested for three days against a solar panel factory which had dumped toxic waste into a local river killing fish. The factory has since been closed.

“Official reports do chart a rising number of protests over the past five years or so,” Michael DeGolyer, professor in the Department of Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, tells IPS. “Social volatility (the potential for sudden outbreaks of mass behaviours demanding structural change) is rising due to a number of factors. Then, all it takes is a triggering event or events to unleash it.”

The rapid rise of social media has played a significant role in growing civic awareness among the populace. China’s micro-blogs have helped inspire large gatherings of protestors. Users, many who were born in the post-1990s and are well-educated, have quickly spread details and images of protests around the country, forcing the hand of the government.

“I see Chinese people’s civic consciousness budding,” says Li Yonglin, 19, an entrepreneur who travelled to Shifang from Mianyang city in Sichuan province to take part in the protests. “Several years ago when a city government decided to implement an environmentally-unfriendly project, citizens would probably bear with it. Shifang people’s fight is just the beginning. Resentment among people has been suppressed for too long.”

Li claims to have witnessed police using batons to break up gatherings. When matters escalated they used tear gas and stun grenades. Li has repeatedly tried to post reports online of what he witnessed. But they have all been deleted.

Last week, the word “Shifang” (which the government did not block online) was the most widely searched term on China’s micro-blogs. Protestors relayed details of incidents as they happened, including complaints of police brutality and the liberal use of pepper spray against protestors. Graphic photographs of protestors with blood pouring down their faces and chests – reportedly after been beaten by government forces – went viral on the micro-blog Sina Weibo. The posts have since been deleted.

“Talking about the Shifang incident, it is the government’s fault,” wrote a Weibo user named ‘Skaterboy’. “If they communicated right, would we have gone this far? The people are reasonable, the police are not bullies, it is the government who has made the wrong moves.”

Cultural commentators have waded in to fan the fires. Han Han, the millionaire race-car driving author and blogger, wrote a widely-circulated blog post supporting residents of Shifang and condemning the brute force of the police.

“People’s requests for improving their environment must be respected,” wrote Han Han in the post. “You leaders change every few years. You take on environmental destruction with nice-looking certificates of achievement. If you do well you get promoted, if you don’t you get jail. The best of you emigrate, the worst of you are shot. But none of you actually live in the pollution. Only ordinary people live there.”

“Thanks to the spread of information, more people are aware of their rights,” the 19-year-old protestor Li Yonglin adds. “The people have drawn a line between them and the government. The people will not continue believing what the government feeds them and simply follow it. I hope that the influence of Shifang will travel around. China will improve little by little.”

Graphic online photographs of seven month-pregnant Feng Jianmei lying prostrate on a hospital bed next to a bloody foetus have created outrage in China over the brutal enforcement of the controversial one-child-policy. The husband of the woman whose forced late-term abortion caused uproar worldwide has gone missing, according to his family.

Feng’s husband Deng Jicai’s whereabouts are unknown, but his disappearance follows continued harassment by thugs and officials. Banners erected in the couple’s hometown in northern Zengjia county, Shaanxi, call them “traitors” and declare that they must be driven out for publicising the forced abortion online and accepting interviews from foreign media.

“The authorities concerned even threatened to send our relative who works in the government to talk to me and tell me not to make a big public scene (over the forced abortion),” Deng said, talking to IPS last week before he disappeared. “I am speechless.”

Earlier this month Feng was given a stark choice by local officials: pay a 40,000RMB (6,200 dollars) fine or have an abortion on her second pregnancy, then in its seventh term.

When unable to meet the fine, officials dragged Feng to a hospital while her husband was away. There they beat her, blindfolded her, and forced her to sign a “consent” form before administrating a lethal injection into her stomach. On Jun. 4 Feng gave birth to a still-born baby girl.

Feng and Deng originally believed their second child was legal since couples whose first child is a girl in rural areas are routinely allowed to have a second one. But Feng’s hukou (household registration document) was registered in Inner Mongolia, not Shaanxi, rendering the privilege void.

“The family planning department gave us three days to go back to Inner Mongolia to transfer my wife’s hukou,” Deng, 29, told IPS. “As soon as her hukou gets transferred to Zengjia county, we will qualify to have a second child and my baby would have been legal. But everyone knows by train it takes more than a week to go to Inner Mongolia and get back. It was an impossible mission.”

Three family planning officials in Shaanxi have since been suspended.

The couple’s case has caused furore online – and Deng’s disappearance has only fanned the flames. “Shaanxi stop embarrassing yourself!” wrote one user calling named rzsc5151 on the micro-blog site Sina Weibo. “(The) seven month pregnant woman forced abortion incident is escalating. Deng Jiyuan ran away. The local government is looking for him like crazy… Now each member of the family is under watch, is being followed, and cannot return home. In such a small place, such behaviour will drive the family mad.”

Since implementing the one-child policy in the late 1970s, China claims to have prevented over 400 million births. Abortions have become a commonplace way to prevent couples from having more children. In 1983, 14.37 million women had abortions according to the Ministry of Health. In 2008, there were 9.17 million. With over-zealous officials keen to meet government birth quotas, many are involuntary.

Li Pin, project manager of the Beijing-based NGO Gender Watch Women’s Voice, believes Feng’s case has opened unprecedented debate in a country where forced abortions are rarely discussed.

“In the past, forced abortion victims could not find ways to channel (complaints) and come to the public’s attention,” Li tells IPS. “The Internet and discussion on forums provides an opportunity for sensitive issues to be made public. This case is not the only one, it is just one of the many.”

“Deng’s case is not the first one, but it’s the first one that has been discussed openly online,” agrees lawyer Zhang Kai, who offered Deng assistance (which he refused) to sue the county government. “Maybe it’s because the brutal pictures caught people’s eyes.”

Crucially, the incident has raised questions in China over the legitimacy of the one-child policy as a whole. Loopholes and variations within the system are myriad. Ethnic minorities can have more than one child, while the wealthy have an option to pay large fines for the privilege of having a second or third child. “Does China’s new social situation call for a loosened population policy?” the nationalistic newspaper Global Times asked in an editorial.

However, activists who speak out against forced family planning risk severe persecution. The blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng was detained in 2005 after exposing thousands of forced abortions and sterilisations. While Chen now studies in New York University after dramatically fleeing to the U.S. embassy, he and his family suffered years of abuse and stifling house arrest at the hands of local authorities.

For now, Feng remains in hospital as her husband’s whereabouts are unknown. The pain continues. “My five-and-a-half year old daughter asked her mother: ‘Where did the baby in your tummy go?’” Deng said last week. “My wife said: ‘God took it away’.”

China is notorious for containing some of the world’s deadliest mines – a reputation that has been corroborated in recent months by a series of fatal accidents. China is the world’s largest consumer and producer of coal. But the mining industry is beset by illegal operations, dangerous working conditions, local corruption and cover-ups of fatalities.

Nine coal miners died and 16 were injured in an explosion in Inner Mongolia in the latest disaster Apr. 23.Twenty-one persons were detained for allegedly attempting to cover up the deaths of miners, a crime punishable with a fine and imprisonment.

At least ten workers in an illegal coal mine in China’s northern Shanxi province died in a flood. In a separate accident in central Henan province last month at least five miners were killed in a flood.

Safety conditions at China’s mines have advanced considerably. But they continue to be counted as among the world’s most dangerous. According to official figures last year there were 1,973 fatalities, down from 2,433 in 2010 and 7,000 in 2002. In 2010, estimates saw six die a day in China’s mines – compared with just 48 deaths a year in America.

Activists, however, believe the real numbers are higher still. Reporting of accidents is hampered by cover- ups and lack of free press.

Human rights activist Pen Fei claims that a high percentage of mine accidents are covered up. Mine owners often offer victims’ families private compensation at a far higher price than official legal compensation as a pay-off to keep quiet.

“That the local government is corrupt is not a matter of yes or no – it is a matter of how much,” Pen tells IPS. “(Mine workers suffer from) abuse of power, low wages, and a lack of public supervision. They choose their jobs to relieve financial burdens for their families, but they end up miserable.”

Pen points out that many miners are forced to work as virtual “slaves” underground for periods that can stretch to as long as 48 hours. The result is severe long-term health problems.

Measures enacted by the government to improve safety standards include an order to mines to build and improve underground emergency shelter systems by June 2013. The shelters must contain airtight doors, oxygen machines and protective walls.

The government has also worked to close down illegal mines and to fire officials who flout safety rules. The 2009 Heilongjiang catastrophe, in which 104 miners died in a methane and coal dust explosion, saw the sacking of three top officials.

In 2010 China pushed through a new law stating that supervisors must go down the shaft with workers or face severe fines of up to 80 percent of their annual income and a lifetime ban on supervision work.

The law is a move to hold bosses accountable. It has also opened the doors for elaborate attempts to conceal abuses and avoid the shafts. In September 2010, Chinese media reported that one mine simply hired substitutes to stand in for the supervisors.

Most notoriously in November last year a mine boss smeared coal over his face to pretend he had been down the shaft with his staff when 34 miners died in a powerful gas leak.

Qi Guming, deputy head of Sizhuang Coal Mine in southwest Yunnan province, “rushed down the shaft and smeared coal on his face to pretend he had escaped from underground,” state media reported at the time. The mine was operating illegally and its licence had previously been revoked.

“We say lots of mines are illegal because the government doesn’t want to issue all the documents needed when mine owners file for applications,” says He Bing, law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law.

“For example, the government will hold back and not issue the permit (to operate a mine). In that case, if accidents happen, the government can always stay out of it and let the mine owners take all the responsibility,” says He. “At the same time, government officials are shareholders in local mines…under such conditions the local government will not be democratic and legal.”

For conditions to improve, He believes that the government must intensify efforts to enforce the law and increase the legal compensation rate for victims and their families to prevent underhand pay-offs.

Pressure from the public in an increasingly vocal Internet age is crucial in China to push through reforms and highlight specific cases. The Internet – which now has over 500 million users in China – has become a platform for whistleblowers.

“The government has made efforts, but not enough,” says Pen. “The (impetus) from public opinion is crucial. The senior leaders in the system should make responses. Changes only take place when the government and society interact.”

By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore and - -
BEIJING, Mar 15 2012 (IPS)

Millions of Chinese micro-blog users will be forced to hand over their details this week in a real-name registration drive. The new state regulations – piloted in five Chinese cities – have created uproar amidst fears the move will bring heightened censorship and a crackdown on users.

China has witnessed an explosion in social media over recent years, with the number of micro-blog users quadrupling in 2011. Around 300 million are registered on micro-blogs across the country, and many use the Twitter-like posts to verbalise anger over subjects ranging from corruption to pollution. Until now they have been allowed to post their views anonymously.

Sina Weibo, which was launched in 2009, has become the favourite mirco-blogging site in China with over 250 million registered users. Despite censors blocking sensitive words on the site – such as Tibet or Tiananmen – it has become a haven for whistleblowers.

But in December the Beijing city government announced that all micro-blog operators based in the capital, including Sina Weibo, must force users to provide a verifiable real name and mobile telephone number within a three-month deadline, which expires Mar. 16. Those who fail to comply will no longer be able to post comments on the site.

The pilot scheme will be extended to other areas if successful, Wang Chen, minister of the State Council Information Office, stated in January.

The regulations are an attempt to prevent “the spread of rumours”, Wang said. Micro-blogging, he added, “can spread information rapidly and have a big influence. It covers a wide population and can mobilise people.”

“This is a violation of privacy and security,” Wang Junxiu, CEO of Blogchina, tells IPS. “It will have negative effects, for sure. The government said it will maintain social stability – they must have meant maintain their stability.”

Wang adds that the rules are bound to turn away users. “Web portals are not very keen on this policy, because strict applications will decrease their users.”

With media strictly controlled by the state, the public have few outlets to express opinions. Past hot topics on Weibo have ranged from the abuse of local power to land grabs.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) warns that the rules will curb public empowerment and prevent individuals from highlighting contentious issues for fear of retaliation.

“In terms of real name registration, there are two angles. For those individuals who are known to the authorities for perceived dissent or challenges to the status quo – the most famous being people such as Ai Wei Wei – this real name registration doesn’t make a difference because they are already on the grid,” says Phelim Kine, a senior Asia researcher at the New York-based HRW.

“The real concern is that real name registration will have a chilling effect by discouraging individuals from making disclosures based on a not unfounded fear that there might be official reprisals from such actions.”

Liu Wenbing, a 32-year-old IT worker, is just one of the many who opposes real name registration. Liu will no longer use Sina Weibo and will instead turn to Twitter. The site is blocked on the mainland, but many Twitter-users get around the Great Firewall via use of a proxy.

“Weibo is a platform to publish and spread information – real identity is not necessary. The government just wants to control citizens and interfere with personal freedom. It is an expression of un-confidence,” Liu tells IPS.

“The government said it is for maintaining social stability. It sounds hypocritical and typical with ‘Chinese characteristics’. It is really designed to undermine the platform. Citizens should be able to say whatever they want to say. People like freedom. Registration is a way of depriving it.”

Online reaction has been just as vehement. “Weibo is a tool to spread information,” said a user named Leo- Majia on Sina Weibo. “It brings surprises to our lives, such as anti-corruption, the Guo Meimei scandal (in which a 20-year-old girl who claimed to work for the Red Cross of China flaunted her designer lifestyle in pictures on Weibo, sparking a national crisis of confidence in Chinese charities), crackdowns on abducting and selling children etc. If it goes real name, I am afraid Weibo will lose its charm and value too.”

Despite such concerns, Sina Weibo has announced that it expects 60 percent of its account holders to meet the deadline. Forty percent have failed to complete the registration, according to Sina’s chief executive Charles Chao.

A spokesperson at the Sina headquarters tells IPS: “It is a government move. Sina isn’t in the right place to say much.”

Excerpt:

Imported television shows watched by millions will be canned during the country’s prime “golden time” hours, the government announced last week. Last month, popular prime time entertainment programmes were slashed by two-thirds. This was after programmes featuring time travel were all but banned last year.

In the latest signs of an escalating clampdown on entertainment in China, the television broadcast regulator has declared that “vulgar” foreign television shows – which mostly hail from Asia – will be barred 7-10pm.

The newest rules aim to boost China’s domestic television industry, forcing audiences away from Asian competition towards local shows. Many feel that the move is also an attempt to protect state-run China Central Television (CCTV), known for its stiff evening news and stale dramas.

The incapacitating series of regulations were felt most keenly in October when the industry watchdog, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), announced a cap on mass-watched “entertainment” shows, which were declared pure “poison” by one official.

By the end of last year, China’s 34 satellite channels had cut the number of entertainment shows – largely spin-offs of Western hits such as American Idol and Top Gear – from 126 to just 38 during the prime-time hours, marking a 69 percent decrease. The ban came into effect officially on Jan. 1.

In the place of the rags to riches singing competitions and sassy dating shows which have proliferated under China’s enterprising provincial television channels, SARFT stated that each channel must air “morality building” programmes weekly. Talent contents will be limited to just 10 nationwide per year.

“SARFT does not want provincial TV to pose a threat to the national influence of CCTV. So they have stopped many programmes,” says Dr. Grace Leung, a visiting scholar at Beijing’s Tsinghua University who specialises in television regulation.

In the latest rules, announced last Monday, all foreign shows – which are mainly sourced from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea – must pass state approval.

“TV series that contain vulgar and violent scenes should not be imported,” stated China Daily, adding that “severe punishments” will be handed out to channels who violate the new rules.

According to the state-run newspaper, the regulations will help create a “favourable environment for TV shows made by companies on the Chinese mainland.”

Propaganda over profit remains a crucial concern for SARFT, which functions under the propaganda arm of the Communist Party. Pushing the Party creed over the competitiveness of the television industry as a whole remains paramount.

“With more than 96 or 97 percent of the total population (tuning in), TV is still the most influential vehicle for propaganda. One of SARFT’s major tasks is ideological control,” says Dr Leung.

“There is concern whether (satellite stations) are doing the correct job to educate their audience rather than provide entertainment alone. So profit making is not a primary concern for them – they would prefer to stick to their original task of educating and propaganda to prevent controversial issues arising,” she adds.

Programmes that have felt the full force of the state truncheon over the past year include the highly marketable “time-travel” genre, in which characters travel back in time to different dynasties.

In September, SARFT suspended Super Girl, a Pop Idol spin-off. At its peak it generated 400 million messages. Further victims include the dating show If You Are The One, which, although still running, has curtailed its more salacious elements in favour of heavy-handed moral messages.

“The cycle of tightening and loosening up is nothing new in China,” says Ying Zhu, author of Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television. “Obviously the tightening up cannot last long when the issue of bread and butter is at stake. The real clash is between the mandate of a Chinese cultural tradition dictated by morality and the demand of a market system dictated by profit.”

The newest regulations, however, might backfire. Internet users in China now number over 500 million and many people are switching off their television sets in favour of finding entertainment on their smart phones and laptops, where censorship is less pervasive and the state has less hold.

“Only people like my mother-in-law would watch (programmes) on TV and now even she has switched to the Internet,” says Raymond Zhou, 49, a Beijing-based newspaper columnist and social critic. “These regulations are going to drive more and more young people away from television, because they are leaving anyway. You are giving them the extra push – now they leave happily.” (END/IPS/AP/IP/AE/CR/HD/CN/CM/SS/12)

A recent series of public spats between Hong Kong locals and mainland Chinese have highlighted escalating tensions between Beijing and the former colony – and heralded in one of the most conspicuous anti-mainland campaigns seen in Hong Kong since the handover.

An outspoken Peking University professor called Hong Kong natives “dogs of British colonialists” last month; in return, protesters in Hong Kong have labelled mainland locals as “locusts”.

The clash has called into question the ‘one country, two systems’ formula agreed when Hong Kong was returned to China by the British in 1997 and raised issues about a growing identity crisis in the territory amid China’s increasing global and cultural clout.

The arguments kicked off when a video showing a Hong Kong man berating a mainland visitor for eating on the subway went viral, receiving thousands of hits across China.

In a controversial interview Prof. Kong Qingdong – who claims direct lineage to the philosopher Confucius and is well known for espousing heavy nationalist views – waded into the altercation on the news website v1.cn.

“As far as I know, many Hong Kong people don’t regard themselves as Chinese. Those kinds of people are used to being the dogs of British colonialists – they are dogs, not humans,” said the professor of Chinese studies. He added that in the handover the British handled the “Hong Kong dogs by spanking them.”

Kong stated that “everybody should have a duty to speak Mandarin.” In the subway argument the man used his native tongue Cantonese, rather than Beijing’s official Putonghua, to scold the girl.

In retaliation, a group of 800 Hong Kong donors raised over 100,000 Hong Kong dollars (12,900 dollars) online through Facebook and the Hong Kong Golden Forum to take out a full-page ad in the Hong Kong based Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily. It depicted a locust looking across at the Hong Kong skyline.

The ad, which refers to the millions of Chinese who travel to Hong Kong to use resources ranging from the education and healthcare system to designer shops, read: “Hong Kong people, we have endured enough in silence”.

During the Chinese New Year holiday period locals launched an “anti-locusts” crusade, shouting and singing at mainland Chinese who had travelled across the border to buy up luxury goods.

The protests highlight increasing concern over Beijing’s encroaching powers.

A recent poll showed that the number of Hong Kong residents who consider themselves Chinese citizens is currently at a 12-year low. Despite nearly 15 years having passed since the handover, just 16.6 percent consider themselves Chinese citizens as opposed to 38.6 percent three years ago.

Fears over Hong Kong’s ability to conduct a free press, fury at the perceived lack of manners of Chinese tourists, and frustration at the scramble over public resources have escalated worries.

In a recent argument, the designer store Dolce & Gabbana was forced to apologise after it stopped local Hong Kong visitors from taking snaps outside while allowing mainlanders to continue. Over the Chinese New Year, 69 percent of luxury consumption in Hong Kong came from Chinese buyers who spent a record 7.2 billion dollars overseas on luxury goods, according to state media.

Public anger in the territory has largely concentrated on the growing amount of wealthy pregnant Chinese women who travel from the mainland to Hong Kong hospitals to give birth. Numbers have soared from just over 700 in 2000 to more than 33,000 last year.

Dr Grace Leung, a professor of media history and society at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, explains that China’s growing confidence as a global power and second-largest economy in the world has fanned the flames.

“Chinese people have become more conscious of China emerging as a world power. They believe that economic prosperity of Hong Kong solely relied on the financial support from the mainland.

“On the other hand, Hong Kong people are dissatisfied with the huge influx of mainland consumers who bought away all the formula milk powder, pushed up the property prices, and pushed up the rental market,” says Dr Leung.

“The (subway) argument was very trivial… However, it became the last straw on the camel’s back that led to the outburst of recent Sino-Hong Kong conflict,” she adds.

Web users on both sides have responded with fury. “Everything they drink, eat, and use is produced and subsidised by the mainland…(yet) they treat us as below them,” said one user on Sina Weibo, China’s largest micro-blogging site.

“Mainland mothers…have been seen so often lifting up their little emperors and empresses to urinate into McDonald’s and KFC wash basins which are meant for customers to wash their hands after enjoying a great meal of ‘finger licking goodness’!” railed a user on the China Daily forum, referring to the common complaint among Hong Kong locals that mainlanders have no social graces.

“Even though Hong Kong was handed over to China many years ago, the local people here still don’t have the feeling that they are Chinese,” Xiao Shuang, a 20-year-old Guizhou native studying film at Hong Kong Baptist University tells IPS over the phone. “If we speak Mandarin, they always treat us differently to other local people.

“We are mainlanders but we study in Hong Kong, so when Hong Kong local students show their anger in front of us we don’t know how to respond,” she says.

Prof. Kong had a much more direct message. “If you keep (discriminating)…then we won’t provide you with water, vegetables, fruit and rice. Can you Hong Kongers still survive? Go to seek help from your British daddy.”

By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
BEIJING, Dec 19 2011 (IPS)

In a country which houses 21 of the world’s 100 most polluted cities, outcry over official underplaying of pollution is escalating as residents refuse to take government readings of the problem at face value.

Beijing environmental authorities claim that the capital had already reached its annual ‘blue sky days’ target for 2011, stating that the air quality this year was better than the Olympic year of 2008.

The latest claims have been met with derision online, amid fears among the population that the government is covering up pollution.

On Sunday the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that Beijing has enjoyed 274 days of ‘blue sky’ in 2011.

“Beijing has seen an overall decline in the concentration of various pollutants in 2011” said Zhuang Zhidong, deputy director of Beijing’s Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau (BJEPB).

The article conceded that the capital also experienced “several days of poor air quality as a result of bad weather conditions.” The BJEPB blamed factors including weaker winds and a rise in humidity for failing to disperse atmospheric pollutants.

Netziens on China’s most popular micro-blogging site Sina Weibo have met the latest claims with scorn. “Is today April Fool’s Day?” asked one Weibo-user, cited in the Hong Kong-published South China Morning Post. “I suggest that Beijing’s environmental authorities wear sunglasses with a blue lens, so that every day is a blue sky day!” “The BJEPB has lost credibility with the Chinese people,” the Beijing-based environmental consultant Steven Q. Andrews tells IPS over email. “Ozone and fine particulate are monitored by the government but not publicly reported. Significant concerns have also been raised regarding the accuracy of BJEPB monitoring.

“For example, previously the BJEPB shut down monitoring stations set up to measure roadway pollution and claimed that air quality had improved as a result even though the concentrations of various pollutants would have increased if the monitoring locations had remained consistent.

“By not reporting fine particulate the government is able to claim that air quality has improved in the capital, even when the severity of air pollution and the health impacts have been increasing,” he adds.

Earlier this month Beijing’s population was in uproar over large discrepancies between the BJEPB’s official air quality readings and the U.S. embassy’s monitor readings. The embassy produces its own pollution readings and transmits them online and via Twitter.

The disparity between the readings lies in the size of the airborne particulates measured. Official readings measure the larger airborne particulate matter known as PM10, while the U.S. embassy measures the smaller PM2.5, which are seen as more dangerous to human health because they penetrate deeper into the lungs.

According to a report by Andrews published on the environmental website China Dialogue, officials in Beijing over the last two years have announced that there has been good, or excellent, air quality in the capital almost 80 percent of the time. By contrast, the U.S. embassy measured that over 80 percent of days have had unhealthy levels of pollution.

Increasing public pressure has led to announcements last month that officials are revising air quality evaluation standards. Proposed revisions state that by 2016 cities across China will be required to monitor air by measuring PM2.5.

“Different data are collected by using different monitoring methods. These two methods are not comparable. For PM2.5, we can and do have monitoring data, but this data is not freely available to the public. Publishing data on air quality and environmental quality is a very serious matter,’ Du Shaozhong, vice-president of BJEPB tells IPS.

“At present, the public feels that the information published by the government in Beijing is not as good as the U.S. embassy. I think we should improve our information releasing system and create user-friendly methods, such as apps on mobiles.

“We are confident with the information we have released, because we have many air quality watch bureaus and we produce accurate data. Beijing’s air quality has gradually improved,” Du adds.

On the ground, however, residents see a very different view. In early December skies chocked with pollution coincided with around 700 flights being cancelled out of Beijing airport, blamed by authorities on bad weather.

While the government described the days of gray acrid smog which shrouded the sky as “light pollution”, the U.S. embassy read the air as “hazardous” or off the scales.

Fear of the polluted air has led to soaring sales of facemasks, with some stores selling out completely.

According to figures from Taobao Mall, China’s largest online marketplace, over 30,000 facemasks were sold on Sunday Dec. 4 alone – the day when the first planes were grounded.

The sales follow previous outrage on blogs last month over the news that China’s leaders had apparently been purchasing sophisticated air filters for the Communist Party’s leadership compound Zhongnanhai, while simultaneously claiming that the capital does not have a pollution problem.

The costs are high. A World Bank report from 2007 stated that as many as 750,000 people die annually in China from indoor and outdoor exposure to pollution.

“Put government officials and ‘experts’ to work in the area where the concentration of PM2.5 is the highest, I bet they will be more efficient,” posted one user called Fanfanstudio on Weibo.

Another user named Linye Neo wrote simply: “The Hangzhou radio station said Beijing is covered with yellow sand, traffic jams and poisonous air. Beijing has it all.”

Excerpt:

By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore and - -
BEIJING, Nov 13 2011 (IPS)

In a country of 180 million single people and a growing gender imbalance, tens of thousands of people across China went looking for love on Singles’ Day Nov. 11. But events on the day may only have helped point to the continuing and growing difficulty of being single.

Singles looking for spouses at a match-making party in Shanghai. Credit: Nicola Davison/IPS

The six “1”s in the sequence 11/11/11 combined to create what has been referred to in China as “Super Singles’ Day”.

More than ten thousand single people attended a match-making party held in Thames Town, a faux- European urban centre 30km from Shanghai. Two thirds of the participants were reported to be women.

Four thousand parents – anxious to see their offspring married off – also attended the event.

“We had to stop registration to prevent any possible chaos,” Zhou Juemin, director of the Shanghai Matchmaking Trade Association, who organised the event, told the Shanghai Daily.

The state newspaper added that the event was made up mostly of single women in a high education and income bracket who had failed to find partners with similar backgrounds and expectations.

China will have a surplus of 24 million men by 2020 according to government statistics, a result of the one-child policy and skewed birth rate.

However, most of the nation’s single men are located in the country’s impoverished rural regions where a preference for sons to help on the land and look after parents in their old age has led to a skewed birth ratio. China’s 2010 sixth national census reported that the gender ratio at birth stood at 118.06 males per 100 females.

Despite this, affluent cities are seeing the number of unmarried women rising, as careers and lifestyle take precedence over finding a husband.

In Shanghai, China’s financial epicentre, singles make up 20 percent of the total adult female population.

The number of unmarried women in the city has increased faster over the last decade than the number of unmarried men, at 2.2 percent since 2000 compared to an increase of just 1 percent for men, according to the 2010 population census.

Despite modern lifestyles these “leftovers” – the derogatory term commonly used to describe an unmarried woman over the age of 27 – remain under pressure from families to marry. Single women above 35 are referred to as “high as heaven” – suggesting that these woman are often beyond reach.

Pressures to find a husband are rising in a country where wealth is a marker of success, and men must be able to provide an apartment and a car before they are considered suitable matches.

In the Thames Town match-making party women aged 30-35 accounted for the largest number of participants, say organisers.

“I believe in fate,” Liu, 24, who attended the party today, tells IPS. Liu wishes to pre-empt becoming a “leftover” by finding a husband in the next few years. “I do hope to meet my Mr Right as soon as possible and this event is a chance for me.

“The pressure I get because of being unmarried is mainly from my parents. They want me get married as soon as possible. And at present, blind dating is the most fast and efficient way to meet men,” she adds.

Meanwhile in the capital, more than 2,000 singles gathered in a large room inside a generic city centre mall for a match-making event organised by China’s largest online dating website, Jiayuan.com.

Warm-up activities to overcome any awkwardness and facilitate an informal atmosphere included three- minute speed dates and a Guinness World Record for the longest kiss-chain.

“These days, many leftover men and women are compelled to face stress from family, friends and society,” Qu Wei, vice-president of Jiayuan.com – a company that has over 47 million registered users – tells IPS at the event.

“Due to lack of time, most don’t have a chance to meet the opposite sex. We have held this event to provide an opportunity for singles to meet each other in a casual atmosphere.”

One participant Liu Xiaofei, 33, admitted that she came with little hope of finding a date.

“If I am dating now, it will be for the prospect of marriage. I came to have a look, but I don’t hold too many expectations because there are so many negative reports these days,” says Liu, a fashionably-dressed career woman.

“I am looking for someone who is mature and stable, 30 to 40 years old, who has a vocational graduate diploma at the very least and a decent financial background. I don’t care about his looks,” she adds.

At nearly 200 million, the number of singles in China is only set to grow, says Prof. Duan Chengrong, director of the Research Centre for Population and Development at Beijing’s Renmin University of China.

“It is true that there will be many more single people in China in the future,” says Prof. Duan. “In today’s China the largest pressures mainly come from economics. Nowadays, a woman will only want to marry a man who already owns a house. But such pressure is limited – you can’t stay unmarried forever if you can’t find someone who has a house.”

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