When a Billion Chinese Jump (63 page)

19.
World Bank and China’s Environmental Protection Agency, “The Cost of Pollution in China,” 2007.

20.
According to the World Bank and China’s Environmental Protection Agency, “Cost of Pollution in China,” the economic burden of premature mortality and morbidity associated with air pollution in China is between 1.16 and 3.8 percent of the country’s GDP. Burning coal releases large quantities of mercury and other hazardous chemicals into the atmosphere. In an enclosed environment, this can have dire health consequences. In Guizhou, cancerous lesions, arsenic poisoning, deformities, and fluorosis—a disfiguring of teeth and bones—have been traced to locally dug coal, which contains a particularly nasty combination of toxins. Nationwide, the sharp rise in lung cancer cases over the past ten years is attributed as much to the use of coal heating in badly ventilated homes as to cigarettes.

21.
But when they find out, they are furious, as the spate of riots connected to the lead poisoning of thousands of children in Shaanxi and Hunan showed in 2009 (Jonathan Watts, “Further Anti-Pollution Riots Break Out in China,”
Guardian,
September 2, 2009).

22.
Mark Elvin, “The Environmental Legacy of Imperial China,” in Richard Louis Edmonds (ed.),
Managing the Chinese Environment
(Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 112.

23.
Ibid., p. 441.

24.
China has 14 percent of the world’s known coal reserves, the third-largest share by country.

25.
Water is also a factor in the dry north as old gasification and electricity-generating technology used water as a coolant (Neville Mars and Adrian Hornsby [eds.],
The Chinese Dream: A Society Under Construction
[010 Publishers, 2008]). But in recent years, the development of fan-cooled technology has made this less of a bottleneck.

26.
Smil,
Global Catastrophes and Trends,
p. 218.

27.
The estimated cost was 1.7 trillion yuan in 2007(Mao Yusi et al., “True Cost of Coal”).

28.
As Premier Wen noted: “This kind of huge consumption of energy, especially nonrenewable fossil fuel, will not be sustainable” (Bruce Alberts, “Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Sees Science as a Key to Development,”
Science,
November 2008).

29.
Zhao and Creedy, “Economically, Socially and Environmentally Sustainable Coal Mining Sector in China.” They argue that demand management alone is not enough. Without sustainable mining practices, they believe, the environmental fabric of China will be “irreparably damaged.”

30.
As at the end of 2007, China had commissioned 226 large supercritical units and nine of the very modern and efficient ultra-supercritical units. These supercritical units operate at higher pressures and temperatures than the normal pulverized fuel coal plants which are in standard use elsewhere in the world, including the U.S. and Europe. Relatively few supercritical units are operating outside China, despite the fact the technology was developed in the advanced countries (Dave Feickert,
China Coal and Energy Update 2009: Cleaner Coal
[Interfax, 2009]).

31.
The groundbreaking Chinese firm ENN had a demonstration center outside Beijing in which captured carbon was being fed to algae. The room full of huge pipes of bright green gunk resembled the set of a science-fiction film (Jonathan Watts, “China Recruits Algae to Combat Climate Change,”
Guardian,
June 29, 2009).

1.
Ma Jun,
China’s Water Crisis
(Eastbridge, 2004).

2.
China has 1.67 million square kilometers of deserts and desertified land. More than a third is desert, a third is gravel gobi, the rest is mostly Aeolian desertified land (interview with Wang Tao, director of the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute).

3.
Elvin notes that the temperature during the golden age of the Tang dynasty was about 1°C higher than today, while the economic and demographic expansion of the Qing dynasty in the eighteenth century came as the planet emerged from the “little Ice Age” (Mark Elvin, “The Environmental Legacy of Imperial China,” in Richard Louis Edmonds [ed.],
Managing the Chinese Environment
, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 9).

4.
Chinese scholars estimate that the sections of wall left standing are now around 2,400 kilometers long, down from a high of 6,400 kilometers during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).

5.
William Lindesay,
Alone on the Great Wall
(Fulcrum, 1991), p. 64.

6.
Guo and Wei received no financial assistance for relocation, but the authorities gave them 4 mu (2,700 square meters) of former wasteland and piped water from the Yellow River at 2.42 jiao per cubic meter (1 yuan = 10 jiao). They grew wheat and other vegetables and had twenty sheep that they often took up to their old land—10 kilometers away—to feed. Now that life was “better,” their nine descendants could earn on average 6,000 yuan per year—about $2.00 per day.

7.
Between 1.6 billion and 3.9 billion tons of sediment are discharged into the river every year.

8.
With each breach of its banks, the river can also change course. Few waterways have twisted quite so dramatically across continents. Though it now empties into the Bohai Sea, the Yellow previously had its estuary hundreds of miles south and discharged into the Yellow Sea.

9.
Dikes had to rise higher and higher to cope with the sediment. In some places, this has created an elevated river, as high as 10 meters above ground level in Henan Province’s Kaifeng City. The Yellow’s main environmental claim to fame is now that it is the only river in the world that flows high above the heads of tens of millions of people.

10.
Several floods have killed more than a million people, most recently in 1931.

11.
In 1956, Soviet engineers adapted a Japanese military blueprint for Sanmenxia, the first megadam on the Yellow River and almost exactly halfway along its curling length. Wide tracts of land were flooded, forcing the resettlement of 280,000 farmers. They were told their sacrifice would be worth it to ensure flood controls and hydroelectric power for millions of others. But the dam silted up within ten years, making the turbines redundant.

12.
For a more detailed description of the philosophy behind Sanmenxia and other efforts to tame the Yellow, see Rob Gifford,
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power
(Random House, 2007).

13.
Agriculture is by far the biggest drain on the river, accounting for 90 percent of the diverted water (interview with Yellow River Conservancy officials), some of which is taken hundreds of kilometers into the desert.

14.
In 2008, four billion tons of industrial waste and sewage were discharged into the river system, leaving 83 percent of the water too contaminated to drink without treatment. In 2007, the authorities revealed that a third of the 150 fish species that once swam the murky waters are now extinct and fishermen’s catches are down by 60 percent.

15.
The spectrum of pollution was most vividly seen in October 2006, when a half-mile stretch of river in Gansu ran pink after the Lanzhou Tanjianzi No. 2 Steam Heating Station flushed 2,000 liters of tainted liquid from a broken boiler into the river. To the company’s credit, they had added the dye to prevent the water being mistaken for drinking water, but it was not supposed to have found its way into the Yellow. Other firms have no doubt done worse, but not made half the splash because their deeds were colorless.

16.
Alarmingly, the definition of this water quality grade (level five) does not say it is too dirty to use for irrigation.

17.
Jim Yardley, “Rules Ignored, Toxic Sludge Sinks Chinese Village,”
New York Times,
September 4, 2006.

18.
Ibid.

19.
A raised cement floor heated by burning coal underneath.

20.
The government provided a special stipend of 55 yuan for each mu of land affected. Yang’s area covered 12 mu.

21.
Jonathan Watts, “Silk Road That’s Paved with Gold,”
Observer,
August 3, 2008.

22.
Tom Scocca, “The People’s Weather: Officials Are Betting Weather Modification Can Keep the Sun Shining on the Olympics,”
Plenty,
April 17, 2008.

23.
Ibid.

24.
The immensity of China’s weather modification forces were evident during the Beijing Olympics, when the sky was assaulted as never before to ensure rain did not put a damper on director Zhang Yimou’s elaborately choreographed opening ceremony. As storm clouds approached, the rings of anti-rain defenses around the city were ordered into action. Over eight hours, they fired 1,104 dispersal rockets in what was described by the domestic media as a “successful interception” of the rain belt heading for the stadium. With stratospheric rivals out of the way, Olympic organizers frazzled the sky with a 30,000-rocket pyrotechnic display.

25.
The city expected a downpour of more than 100 millimeters but, after interception, had to make do with less than 30 millimeters (Jonathan Watts, “Cities Fall Out Over Cloud,”
Guardian,
July 15, 2004).

26.
He estimates the losses at 54 billion yuan per year.

27.
The former director Zhu Zenda was influential in persuading the government to adopt this policy. Wang considers him a mentor.

1.
This quote is from a speech that Lord Stern gave at Renmin University on September 11, 2009.

2.
Interviews with Yao Tandong, glaciologist at the China Academy of Sciences, and Shi Yafeng, a member of the team. At least six of the locations were in Gansu, according to Shi.

3.
Interview with Shi Yafeng.

4.
Jasper Becker,
Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine
(Holt, 1998), p. 77.

5.
The first measurements of Urumqi Number One were taken by explorers in 1953, but it was not until after 1959 that systematic studies of the glacier were undertaken, according to Yao Tandong.

6.
I was not alone in my ignorance. One newly arrived colleague from another newspaper admitted that he had never before heard of the Uighurs—the region’s ethnic majority—whose name he initially assumed was from a Monty Python sketch.

7.
The strategic concerns of empire clearly outweighed the Christian piety of the Victorians. Britain armed and financed a failed Muslim uprising in 1862 led by Yakub Beg, a notorious tyrant. For Younghusband, see
Ch. 2
.

8.
5.8 billion cubic meters (Ma Jun,
China’s Water Crisis
[Eastbridge, 2004], p. 205).

9.
Together, they cover 60,000 square kilometers and account for 15 percent of the planet’s ice.

10.
Jonathan Watts, “Highest Ice Fields Will Not Last 100 Years, Study Finds,”
Guardian,
September 24, 2004.

11.
Ma,
China’s Water Crisis
.

12.
Rob Gifford,
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power
(Random House, 2007), p. 240.

13.
Mongolia, the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

14.
The unidealized version of the story is told by the journalist and blogger Huang Zhangjin, who was born in Xinjiang: “When the first group of female soldiers arrived, it was as if there was a whole pack of wolves fighting over scraps of meat. The middle and lower level officers didn’t see so much as
the shadow of a woman, and this made them even more desperate than before. So, there was a large assembly, during which a high-level officer—a new groom himself—made a grand promise: Mao will make good on his word, you can be sure of that. Everyone will certainly be distributed a wife!” Translated by
China Digital Times
as “The Tale of Eight Thousand Hunan Maidens Going Up Tian Mountain.”

15.
Judith Shapiro,
Mao’s War Against Nature
(Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 160.

16.
Ibid., p. 140.

17.
Xinjiang came to produce a third of China’s cotton.

18.
Nicholas Bequelin, “Xinjiang in the Nineties,”
China Journal
44 (2000): 65–90.

19.
Richard B. Harris,
Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China’s Wild West
(East Gate, 2008), p. 136.