Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
few and far between in Beijing. During the lead-up to the Olympics in
2008, industrial operations and the driving of private automobiles
were severely restricted long enough to give Beijing a brief respite of
reasonably clean air for the games. Some Olympic athletes were so
concerned about Beijing's air quality that they flew in just before their
events and flew out again as soon as they were over. Right after the
Olympic torch had been extinguished in Beijing, the city was back to
its old polluting ways, and air quality is now once again as bad as it
ever was, if not worsening.
In 2007 China surpassed the United States as the world's top emitter
of greenhouse gasses, and acid rain created by the emissions from Chi-
na's iron foundries and coking plants now spreads all over the rest of
East Asia. Most of the air pollution in China is due to bounding
increases in coal burning and motorization. China currently accounts
for about one-third of the earth's coal combustion, and this is increas-
ing by 10 percent per year. The demand for coal in China is so great
that some business interests and government officials look the other
way as unregulated and unsafe coal mines operate in China, and every
year hundreds of Chinese workers perish in mining accidents. The sit-
uation in Shanxi province, the heart of China's coal mining and coal
industry operations, is especially serious. An early 2009 report in the
New York Times relates the essentials and contours of the persistent
mining safety problem in China:
In January, Zhao Tiechui, a senior official in charge of coal mine supervi-
sion, told Xinhua about problems regulating the industry. The
government has said that 80 percent of the 16,000 mines operating in
China are illegal.
“Coal mines often experience the most serious accidents because so
many of them are operating illegally,” he said. “The industry also sees
the most frequent covering-up of accidents.”
But mining is lucrative for those at the top. The owners of large min-
ing companies are among China's wealthiest people.
(Wong 2009)
The most polluted city in the world is Shanxi province's Linfen, a
city of over four million people. There, the air quality is so bad that res-
idents quite literally choke on coal dust, and as a result there are rising
rates of lung cancer, pneumonia, and bronchitis. “Don't bother hang-
ing your laundry” in Linfen, advised Time magazine in 2007. “It'll turn
black before it dries.” Canadian journalist Geoffrey York limned the
environmental tragedy of Linfen in black, smudgy hues in a 2009
article on the city for Toronto's Globe and Mail:
