Attempts by Chinese companies and local governments to conceal pollution violations are “extremely stupid” and will not succeed, the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment said yesterday, after a spate of cover-ups in the country.
Now in the fifth year of its war on pollution, China has struggled to enforce its environmental laws and Beijing wants market regulators, graft watchdogs, police and the courts to play a bigger role in punishing polluters.
The ministry has named and shamed several local jurisdictions and companies over the past month for deliberate acts of deception designed to hide compliance failures.
Photo: AFP
This month, one firm deliberately misreported the spilling of nearly 70 tonnes of petrochemicals into the sea at Quanzhou port in southeast Fujian Province, the local government said in a statement, adding that seven company workers have been arrested and several officials dismissed.
“Any attempt to conceal the truth is extremely stupid and in vain,” ministry spokesman Liu Youbin (劉友賓) said at a news briefing in Beijing when asked about the port incident.
“The relevant company is directly responsible for the incident, but the local government also didn’t do a good job dealing with the emergency, especially in disclosing relevant information,” he added.
China is in the middle of a new campaign to curb winter smog and forced at least 46 cities this week to adopt emergency measures to cut emissions after air quality deteriorated across northern and eastern regions.
Despite pressure from Beijing, many growth-obsessed local governments turn a blind eye to polluting enterprises they consider vital sources of jobs and economic growth.
This month, state media reported that officials in China’s Shandong Province were caught throwing chemicals worth 46 million yuan (US$6.63 million) into a river to disguise pollution levels.
In Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province, officials were accused of trying to cover a 1km section of a river with tarpaulin to hide water pollution from inspectors, according to a state media report last month.
Liu said environmental inspections enable local governments to promote “high-quality economic development” and the scrutiny would continue.
“We will not ease supervision and will continue to carry out inspections,” he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing