China's mines blight rural lives

Cancer rates have soared in the last decade

By the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Beijing

Every morning, Zhu Tianzu walks the short distance to the well behind her house. It is a scene from any village in rural China.

Except that the water Mrs Zhu draws from her well is poison, dosed with deadly heavy metals.

When I was young no one died of cancer here. But then the mines came. Now so many people are sick.

Cancer victim

Last month it killed her husband. He died of stomach cancer.

He was only 55.

"I want to get out of here," she tells me, her face creased with grief.

"But I can't leave, I'm too poor. If I had money maybe I could have got treatment for my husband, maybe he wouldn't have died so soon. If you're poor here there's no future."

'Toxic waste cocktail'

Mrs Zhu's home in the small village of Shangba - in southern Guangdong province - lies at the foot of Big Treasure mountain, a trove of precious metal ores, copper, zinc, cadmium.

Most victims develop stomach or liver cancer

From valleys high on the mountain, mines spew a cocktail of toxic waste straight in to the rivers, turning the water a bright orange.

Ten miles downstream in Shangba village, the fields are turning red as the toxins leach their way in to the soil.

In the last decade, the cancer rate in the village has soared. More than 200 have died, mostly from stomach and liver cancer.

He Yongbao, 66, is the latest victim.

He is dying of cancer of the oesophagus. He can no longer eat solid food.

I've tried everything, I've been to the government, to the media, everyone, but no-one cares about us

Local official

Too weak to work in the fields, he sits at home huddled over a small coal brazier trying to keep himself warm.

Mr He is very clear about who he thinks is responsible.

"It's the mines", he tells me . "When I was young no one died of cancer here. But then the mines came. Now so many people are sick. They should stop the pollution."

Powerless but angry

But nothing is being done to stop the pollution that is slowly killing Shangba village. The mines on Big Treasure mountain are protected by the state - a state that brooks no complaints, and no opposition.

In China, one-party control and breakneck economic growth are unleashing an epidemic of pollution.

Every year 30 billion tonnes of untreated sewage are dumped in its rivers.

Victims of poisoning have no recourse

More than half its population - 700 million people - now depend on water that is unfit for human consumption.

In Shangba village, even the local Communist Party secretary has had enough.

"To clean up the pollution they would have to close down the mines. But there's no way they will do that", he says.

"I've tried everything, I've been to the government, to the media, everyone, but no-one cares about us"

And so the residents of Shanba village wait, afraid to drink the water or eat their own crops, knowing they are being slowly poisoned.

On a nearby hillside Mrs Zhu and her daughter are making the weekly trek to her husband's grave.

Tears stream down their faces as they pray for his comfort in the afterlife.

In China's countryside anger and discontent are growing as more people like Mr Zhu find themselves the victims of a system in which they are powerless, in which they have absolutely no recourse.