Wei Dongying dumped 30 plastic bottles from an oversized plastic bag onto her living room floor.
"Look at all the different colors: red, black, yellow, brown," said Wei as she picked up the bottles containing samples of water taken from the canals and viaducts surrounding Wuli, a village of 1,500 people in eastern China.
"The water used to be clear here. Now look at it. Filthy, undrinkable polluted water," she said.
Wei, 38, is a fisherman's wife who became an environmental activist after a personal health scare she believes was related to the intense pollution in the village.
In late 2002, Wei discovered two hard lumps on her lymph nodes.
"I had them removed and the doctors said it was a 90 percent chance that the problem was related to the environment," said Wei, 38, revealing the scar across her throat from the operation.
Although her growths proved benign, about 60 other Wuli residents have contracted cancer, including her brother-in-law who died in 1998 at the age of 47.
Wuli is described in China's media as being one of the nation's so-called "cancer villages," a legacy of the pollution caused by a chemical industrial park with 25 factories that was set up there in 1992.
Located about 220km southwest of Shanghai along the Qiantang river, it is not just the water that has been degraded but also the air.
Gaseous, bitter chemicals assault the nose, lingering on the tongue and itching the throat.
The situation in Wuli is a depressingly familiar one around China, especially along the heavily industrialized eastern beltway where factories take advantage of the natural waterways to expel toxic waste.
More than 70 percent of China's rivers and lakes are polluted, while underground water supplies in 90 percent of Chinese cities are contaminated, according to government reports.
Chen Weifang (
The factories often discharge their chemicals into the water at night to avoid detection and are happy to pay the fines when they were eventually caught, Chen said.
Corruption involving industry and local officials is also widely regarded as a major problem, environmental activists say.
Chen said that while the rates of cancer in the village were not higher than surrounding areas, he still believed there could be a link between the pollution and the disease.
The story is disturbingly similar across the border in Jiangsu Province, if not worse.
In Yixing, a city of more than 1 million people, water pollution in its townships is so severe that the area has received numerous official visits by top party brass, including Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶).
Wen admitted at the end of the annual parliamentary session in Beijing last week that the Chinese Communist Party had allowed the unbridled economic expansion of the past two decades to severely damage the nation's environment.
"We need to step up our efforts to carry out special environmental and ecological campaigns ... we need to pay attention to the protection of major waters, air and land," Wen urged.
Despite heightened party worries, environmental activists say little is being done because immediate economic interests continue to come first.
The military is to begin conscripting civilians next year, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said yesterday, citing rising tensions with Thailand as the reason for activating a long-dormant mandatory enlistment law. The Cambodian parliament in 2006 approved a law that would require all Cambodians aged 18 to 30 to serve in the military for 18 months, although it has never been enforced. Relations with Thailand have been tense since May, when a long-standing territorial dispute boiled over into cross-border clashes, killing one Cambodian soldier. “This episode of confrontation is a lesson for us and is an opportunity for us to review, assess and
The Russian minister of foreign affairs warned the US, South Korea and Japan against forming a security partnership targeting North Korea as he visited the ally country for talks on further solidifying their booming military and other cooperation. Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov spoke on Saturday in Wonsan City, North Korea, where he met North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un and conveyed greetings from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kim during the meeting reaffirmed his government’s commitment to “unconditionally support and encourage all measures” taken by Russia in its conflict with Ukraine. Pyongyang and Moscow share identical views on “all strategic issues in
‘FALSE NARRATIVE’: China and the Solomon Islands inked a secretive security pact in 2022, which is believed to be a prelude to building a Chinese base, which Beijing denied The Australian government yesterday said it expects China to spy on major military drills it is conducting with the US and other allies. It also renewed a charge — denounced by Beijing as a “false narrative” — that China wants to establish a military base in the South Pacific. The comments by a government minister came as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a six-day visit to China to bolster recently repaired trade ties. More than 30,000 military personnel from 19 nations are set to join in the annual Talisman Sabre exercises from yesterday across Australia and Papua New Guinea. “The Chinese military have
The US Department of Education on Tuesday said it opened a foreign funding investigation into the University of Michigan (UM) while alleging it found “inaccurate and incomplete disclosures” in a review of the university’s foreign reports, after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the US. As part of the investigation, the department asked the university to share, within 30 days, tax records related to foreign funding, a list of foreign gifts, grants and contracts with any foreign source, and other documents, the department said in a statement and in a letter to