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RADIO 4 CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS TO GO GREEN IS GLORIOUS TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED DOCUMENTARY Presenter: Mukul Devichand Producer: Lucy Ash Editor: Hugh Levinson BBC White City 201 Wood Lane London W12 7TS 020 8752 7279 Broadcast Date: 10.04.08 2030-2100 Repeat Date: 13.03.08 2130-2200 CD Number: Duration: 27’ 43” Taking part in order of appearance: Unnamed environmental campaigner, Beijing Jonathan Watts, Beijing correspondent, The Guardian Lo Sze Ping, director of Greenpeace China Zhang Jingjing, environmental lawyer, Beijing Li Bo, environmental campaigner, Beijing Wen Bo, Pacific Environment, Beijing Xiao Wei, singer, Beijing Ma Jun, environmental campaigner, Beijing DEVICHAND: Okay this is a pair of disposable chopsticks in paper you get his is restaurants all over China – you get these in Britain too - tear it and pull them apart – like that You don’t want people to use this kind of chopsticks – what do you use then? UNNAMED CAMPAIGNER: There are so many restaurants that use disposable chopsticks but we refuse it and bring our own. DEVICHAND: You bring your own chopsticks? ANONYMOUS CAMPAIGNER: Very environmental. DEVICHAND: A familiar Chinese scene: budgies chirp and the hotpot bubbles away here in a Beijing restaurant. But my lunch companions are not revolutionary reds or more contemporary true blue capitalists. Instead they’re part of the enigmatic green army here, environmentalists aiming to change this emerging superpower from the inside. Their target today: the forest destroying potential of the humble disposable chopstick. ANONYMOUS CAMPAIGNER: They only provide disposable chopsticks no re usable things – I think it is a very bad thing DEVICHAND: Why aren’t you in manager’s office telling them it is a very bad thing? ANONYMOUS CAMPAIGNER: We will do that. DEVICHAND: Did you just ask for the manager? ANONYMOUS CAMPAIGNER: Yes. I said they should take responsibility of protecting forests and protecting the environment and I asked her to provide non disposable chopsticks DEVICHAND: And what did she say to you? ANONYMOUS CAMPAIGNER: She said she would consider DEVICHAND: It’s a small gesture. But here in the world’s biggest one party state, even a small act can be political, from refusing chopsticks to a Tibetan Buddhist’s prayer. So for Analysis this week, I’ve come to Beijing to try and assess the significance of China’s green movement. The very fact that there’s environmental politics here at all, pitting citizens against officials and companies, intrigues me. I wonder if spells the beginnings of democracy and a potential brake on pollution levels that affect the whole planet. But what I’ve found here is that while environmentalism is subtly altering the political fabric here, China’s green movement is targeting us in the West just as much as their own government. But first, let’s hear from a Westerner living in China to remind us what Chinese environmentalists are up against. WATTS: I have been here 4 and a half years – I have had pneumonia twice, I developed asthma and for the first time in my life I have gone on a puffer. You see it not just inn air quality but water pollution down. In Kunming there is a huge lake there that used to provide water for the whole of the city. It is now sort of bright green colour because of the algae that has formed on the on surface. You see it in Tien Jin, one of China’s many many so-called cancer villages where local people think chemical plants nearby are pouring so much foul toxic gunk into the rivers and is responsible for unusually high levels of cancer in those villages DEVICHAND: Jonathan Watts, Guardian correspondent here in Beijing. He’s writing a book about China’s environment - not just the epic scale of pollution but the beginnings of social unrest. WATTS: One of the biggest stories of last year occurred in Xiamen down in Fujian Province when a largely middle-class community got wind of the fact that a chemical factory was going to be built nearby and they were terrified of the consequences and there was a big campaign against it that ultimately proved very effective and the government there has changed it policy and has said it will try to relocate the factory. So first of all there was an internet campaign that was followed by a march DEVICHAND: A long march? WATTS: Actually not that far- it was around the local neighbourhood but its effects will probably be long-lasting. DEVICHAND: The story of the spontaneous protest at Xiamen stands as an example of grassroots Chinese people doing what was once unthinkable: defying power to protect their own back yards. And at the top of society, more green surprises. That’s according to Lo Sze Ping, director of Greenpeace’s relatively recent China branch, who takes inspiration from a 2005 public address by Chinese premier Wen Jiaobao. LO: He said “let our people have access to clean water, clear sky and safe food.” Personally, I think this is the most radical critique of China’s economic development of the last two and a half decade. Basically he is saying that so what’s the use of all this wealth accumulation if we as a government cannot even guarantee the basic conditions of survival for our population. I mean, even out of a concern of whether there will be increasing social unrest in the society, there are good reasons why the top leaders should be concerned about environmental pollution and do things differently. DEVICHAND: But you’re suggesting the reason they’re being environmental is to head off social unrest; that people really care about this issue out in the streets and they need to check it. Is that what you’re saying? LO: that would be one dimension of the stress that they’re reacting to. On the other hand, Their concern is very much conditioned by the problems that they’re faced with. and you know in this particular moment of history environmental challenges are so prominent, Some top leaders see very clearly that you can’t do business as usual DEVICHAND: But what’s hard to gauge is quite how big a deal this “green” political space really is in China is. Official counts say there are now 2,000 Green NGOs, up from a handful a decade ago; some unofficial counts even say up to 2 million if you include informal groups of students or farmers. But it’s right to be sceptical about the real extent of this new politics – a lot of these are actually organised by the government itself. So I wanted to meet some of the more successful of these activists to work out how effective they can really be. And I began with one of green China’s most intriguing characters. DEVICHAND: You have been called the Erin Brockovich of China? ZHANG: Yes (laughs) some American lawyer friends called me like that but I think here in china we face more difficulties than Erin Brockovich faced in the US, because of the system DEVICHAND: Zhang Jingjing, with her leather jacket and cropped hair, is a new kind of Chinese lawyer.She and her colleague Wang Canfa have scored legal landmarks for pollution victims. Their most famous victory: a class action in 2005 in Fujian Province when they helped 1,721 residents of Xiping Village to sue a Chemical factory for compensation. Local crops were poisoned by chromium – the same chemical exposed by Erin Brockovich in the Hollywood film. So does the law now deliver redress against the powerful? Zhang told me that even when the law supports victims, there are still significant barriers to justice. ZHANG: To enforce the law is very hard for the villager cannot easily file litigation in the courts to protect rights. Not only because money, there are many other reasons to block people’s right to justice – such as the local government always tend to protect the polluters. DEVICHAND: If the law exists how can the local government possibly block it? ZHANG: For a long time my country put economic as our first minority. And polluter can help the local government to raise local GDP. When you go to court you can feel the polluter very powerful. They do what they want, they even criticise the judge! DEVICHAND: So judges don’t act independently? ZHANG: No, no. We have no independent judiciary, this is our problem DEVICHAND: But if judges are compromised, and the rule of law undermined, what’s the point of even having progressive environmental laws on the books? Well, there is a new generation who is using whatever limited room for manoeuvre they have as a kind of creative space to fight for their causes. At the “thinkers café,” in Beijing’s University district, I met US educated Li Bo. Back in his rural home state, Yunnan, he scored a victory using another “green” law, the Environmental Impact Assessment, which says that local people should be consulted before new development is allowed. Li Bo used it to stop a cable car and major tourist resort being developed in a stunningly beautiful world heritage site. LI: The deal was done without participation of local population and so people were concerned, people were angry but most of the people were silent. And we wanted to work with the community to develop a community based eco- tourism site and then we got into the conflict. DEVICHAND: So a coalition of people got together to resist what was happening with the company and join with the villagers? LI: Yes. And also there is another stakeholder I forgot to mention. In this case we had so-called happy ending totally because of the central government’s involvement. They actually ended backing us up and holding the local Environment Impact Assessment processes accountable. On the one hand I feel like central government is much more liberal and much more forward- looking and long-term looking, bringing environment crisis into control. And the local government, on the other hand, even though they are closer to its people, they tend to be more ruthless in terms of sharing of benefit, in terms of business opportunities. DEVICHAND: So the local officials see an opportunity to get rich personally? LI: Yeah. And also they probably want their system to do well financially. There is that motive, which I think it’s somewhat rational. DEVICHAND: Li Bo’s story shed light on the kind of complexity that outsiders rarely glimpse in China. Activists like him are exposing one of the major political fissures in the country – central versus local. Now on one level, blaming local government for all China’s ills is an old tactic that central authorities use to get themselves off the hook. But the alliance between companies and local governments has been the engine driving China’s economic growth – with pollution as the by-product. So the fact that the central Communist Party is allowing, even helping, green campaigners to challenge its own officials in the regions, is in some ways an admission that current political structure just isn’t solving the problem. Jonathan Watts. WATTS: they are more than open to suggestion. They know system as it is struggling to find a solution to environmental problems. They know local officials are in league with business people, they know there is no independent court. So they need the help of civic society, they need the help of the media to get something done about this and as long as those environmental NGOs don’t try and openly say they are threatening the one-party state, they are given a lot more room to work in. And I think that’s the fundamental difference. There are crackdowns on environmental groups, there is occasionally violence against them, they are watched, but the fact that they are allowed to exist and do things shows that there is more leeway in this area. DEVICHAND: What you seem to be saying is that the Communist Party is tolerating something that looks a bit like democracy and the reason they are doing it is because they are trying to outsource thinking on the environment? Watts: I think they realise they need all the help they can get. DEVICHAND: I’d heard this theory from plenty of people – that the regime was experimenting with freeing up civil society simply because it had run out of its own ideas on how to deal with the environmental crisis. And chatting about public participation and media freedom with the upbeat green crowd, I almost forgot that I was in China, a country of authoritarian crackdowns, Tiananmen and now Tibet. And then in the middle of one such meeting, a moment for pause. Remember those chopstick campaigners I met? Here’s what happened when I raised the ‘d’ word over lunch. DEVICHAND: Can I ask you another question? Which is - some people say that the environmental movement will bring more democracy to China do you think that is true? UNNAMED CAMPAIGNER: Sorry I am not quite sure about this – I don’t know how to answer this and regarding the word democracy I think I have no opinion on that. Sorry. DEVICHAND: And this wasn’t the only awkward moment I had on my trip – talk of democracy was greeted with a polite change of subject over cups of jasmine tea all over Beijing. It made me curious: I wanted to understand more about the limits of official tolerance for environmentalism in China. Lo Sze Ping, the young man in a smart jacket who has brought Greenpeace to China, has real experience of adapting his global organisation to these different local conditions. LO: We walk on a thin line, yeah? I mean on the one hand we don’t want the authority to misunderstand us as operating here with any hidden agenda, such as trying to destabilise the authorities. Because some of the Chinese entities, including some government officials, hold the view that NGOs or civil society development could be a threat to the stability of the government. So we need to make ourselves very clear that our only objective is to protect the environment, is to promote a sustainable future for China and for the world, and that in order to achieve this we need to have strong government measures. And it’s not easy to gain trust from the authority and also it’s even more challenging to keep our independence in light of that concern. DEVICHAND: Not just Greenpeace but all the campaigners I met used words no self-respecting radical would use back home. “Compromise,” “Partnership” and appeals to traditional Chinese notions of “consensus.” In his job administering grants for Californian NGO Pacific Environment, Wen Bo meets the full range of China’s eco-activists, he even has a spare bedroom in his chaotic office for campaigners from out of town. So I asked him if the green scene makes Chinese officials nervous? WEN: I don’t think they are scared. They are just lack of confidence. They do not seem to understand the good intention of these environmental groups. That’s because these officials themselves, they become officials because they have some hidden agenda - because they want to get rich, they want to enjoy the power and enjoy economic benefit from it. They cannot understand why people who want to do good things without any personal gains. DEVICHAND: And what does that mean for you? WEN: In general for me, you don’t feel there’s a huge freedom; you feel that always that someone is watching you behind. Sometimes they send people to work as volunteers and try to gain information. DEVICHAND: To infiltrate? WEN: You can say that, you can say to infiltrate. But because of lack of confidence in this organisation, they want to know what’s going on. DEVICHAND: I mean I’m a foreign journalist in Beijing. Do you think they would be aware of this meeting? WEN: I think so. I think they would be very much aware of your trip and who you are going to meet with, etcetera, etcetera. Because we have a huge number of intelligence officers who have nothing to do. (laughs) Actually I very much welcome the encounter with these officers because the more they know about you, the more they know that this is a noble cause. DEVICHAND: The green secret police – now that’s a thought. I was beginning to realise the reason the green movement is successful is precisely because greens don’t grandstand around ideologies like “liberal democracy.” Whatever they believe in private, saving the environment is their only goal in public. So they make sure that potentially radical ideas like public participation don’t challenge the rhetoric of Chinese communism. There are signs this strategy is working. The small but flamboyant State Environmental Protection Agency has just been upgraded to a ministry. But no one from the Ministry was available in these sensitive pre-Olympic times. And it’s still far from certain whether all this adds up to a rethink of the basic dilemma facing China – to get rich, or go green? THE ONION: Turning to world news now, Party Officials in Beijing are celebrating the findings of a UN study which for the first time ever listed China as the world’s number one producer of air pollution. Joining us now from the Chinese Embassy to discuss the study is Ambassador Shu Wan Ning. Thank you for being with us ambassador. Thank you for having me. It is a very proud day for my country. The labour of the people has made the sky black with the smoke of progress. We are overjoyed. DEVICHAND: A spoof from the Onion, America’s finest satirical news source. Jokes aside, this strikes at China’s starkest choice. After over two decades of capitalism, but with 300 million still living on less than a dollar a day, will they chose to move beyond Deng Xiaoping’s 1982 maxim “to get rich is glorious,” the consequences be damned? Well, current party boss Hu Jintao has coined his own maxim – that China should become an “ecological civilization.” But on a host of issues green from carbon emissions to deforestation, China and the West are stuck in a blame game. XIAO: Sings in Mandarin DEVICHAND: In Beijing, I got an unexpected insight into this from a pop star. Xiao Wei’s music inspired several of the thirty-something activists I’d met in their younger days. I thought he’d flaunt his green credentials by rejecting the consumerism, the endless shopping malls and highways of today’s Chinese cities. But I got something pretty different. XIAO: VOICEOVER The Chinese people are not the ones who’ve been using up the world’s resources. We have a huge population here but we only consume a tiny part of the planet’s resources. We’re still developing and everybody has the right to pursue a good life, or to buy a big house or a car if they want to. I don’t think that we are consuming more than the Western countries are right now. The manufacturers that pollute in China are exporting to the rest of the world. What about you? That shirt you’re wearing was probably produced here. The energy wasted to make it was our energy. Your microphone was also probably made in China. You got the mic but the plastics and the waste stayed in China. DEVICHAND: He wasn’t alone in making this point. Take any type of environmental damage and Chinese greens will tell you a great proportion of it is caused by companies manufacturing products for the West. They call it the “exporting of harm” and it’s a deep source of ill will – this is a country where a quarter of the drinking water is contaminated. Ma Jun is known internationally for his work saving rivers and lakes from harmful waste. But he thinks Western consumers can do as much as the Chinese green movement to stop it. MA: You know when you sit there in a Western country blaming China every day - you know the Chinese Government, Chinese court - blaming them every day for this and that, the result will be very very limited. Legal responsibility is on our side but it’s also in the meantime, you know people in the Western countries enjoy cheaper clothing products from China. Why? Probably you know the cost is on our rivers. You know the rivers have been turning to you know black, yellow and all kinds of colours sometimes several times a day. I think you know we got to recognise you know the cheaper products have its own impact. We recognise there are gaps in our governance, in our enforcement structure and we try to improve that. But in the meantime, do we all want to allow this multinational companies to take advantage of the loophole? DEVICHAND: But companies are driven by profit and it’s not much of an excuse for China to say you know we haven’t managed to get anywhere with our reform of our own factories and legal system, but you know you should sort it out. MA: No, we don’t stop our work. We’re working on our side, but we say that it will be better if the other side could join the efforts. DEVICHAND: Critics might say always the market pushes for cheaper prices. That’s the nature of the market. It’s only a national government that can use its strength as the state to regulate things like this. MA: We push for that. We push for the legislation, we’ve pushed for strengthen the enforcement, we push for the use of market incentives to deal with our problems, but in the meantime I think all the citizens who care about the environmental issues should also think about what we can do to deal with this problem. Otherwise when China has strengthened its enforcement, these companies when they sit across this table, they literally say we’re going to move to Vietnam if you keep doing this. DEVICHAND: So these companies, you, you push them on their environment and they say look we’re out of here, we’ll go somewhere else where they won’t stop us? MA: Yeah, they say that you know what you have been doing will add about 10% of our cost and probably we should move to Vietnam. I said, “Why Vietnam?” He said, “We can discharge more freely there. DEVICHAND: He’s talking here about a zero-sum game for Chinese lawmakers; If they do tighten up on environmental laws then corporations will simply take jobs to South East Asia, or Africa. In a country which still suffers abject poverty, that would even more unpopular than British or American resentment of jobs going to China. The green activists themselves constantly face the barb that they are economic elitists, putting trees and nature above the needs of the poor. Li Bo – the eco-warrior of Yunnan province – again. LI: That’s exactly the kind of blame environmental groups got in China. Like dams. Pro-dam scientists would say environmentalists are a lofty group of people, elite, they don’t understand how suffering local people are. In fact just last week there was this argument among ourselves, how to make sense of a governor of Yunnan Province, who said environmentalists are very unsympathetic, unrealistic, so many people are almost naked and how could they be so cruel not to think of those people? DEVICHAND: How do you respond to it? LI: I think among people I know who can be categorised as environmentalists, very few of them actually saying stopping development, stop growth, it’s not a solution at all. But how to be intelligent in designing low-carbon economic model – do whatever we can using technologies that are available to us. Try to be efficient, try to use alternative energy and also design a society that is much more aware and self-reflecting of the harms we put on the earth, is very helpful. DEVICHAND: Ah, carbon – I’d almost forgotten about carbon. That’s because despite the panic in the West created by China’s escalating CO2 emissions, carbon is pretty low down the priority list for Chinese environmentalists. They point out the West has been emitting far longer, and even now when the average American generates six times as much CO2 as the average Chinese person. What’s more, when the air is filthy and lots of drinking water is carcinogenic, the melting ice caps seem less important. Yet Greenpeace’s Lo Sze Ping sees cause for hope through the despair. He thinks China will find a technological solution to carbon dependency, precisely because China’s ecologists have their backs against the wall on economic growth. LO: Yes, with this rapid increase of electricity demand, China is facing a huge problem of whether we want to burn more coal and get us more locked in with the fossil fuel dependency. That’s a real question. But, on the other hand, if you look at the growth of the renewable energy market in China, it’s phenomenal. In the last four or five years, the expansion of installed capacity of wind power grow more than 100% every year and that’s one of the most fastest growing market of the world. And China, imagine if China can produce solar panels just like China is producing DVD players now for the world. It would genuinely kick-start an energy revolution not just in China but for the world. DEVICHAND: So does China’s green movement really add up to a revolution – technical, social or political? Having seen their struggle from the inside, it was clear to me as I left that the green movement isn’t yet about democracy as we know it. But then again, nor are they striving for it. Instead China’s environmentalists are looking for much more basic mechanisms of transparency and accountability – things like planning permission for factories, and laws which bring polluters to book. It’s possible these could fit into the rhetoric of the Communist System just as extreme capitalism manages to sit along Marxism. What’s more worrying is the scale of the pollution problem. China has stunned the world once with its rapid economic growth. If they’re serious about now finding a green growth model, the whole world needs a repeat performance.