Pollution Control High on U.S.-China Agenda

With a spectacular natural backdrop of jutting peaks and the Li River, President Clinton today underscored in this tourist city a key new priority in the U.S.-China relationship: protecting the environment.

On his eight-hour stop here on the way to Hong Kong, the final leg of his nine-day China visit, Clinton announced a series of modest pollution control agreements and discussed China’s environmental problems with Chinese experts.

Although it rarely gets the spotlight, a nascent but growing cooperation between China and the United States on environmental protection and pollution control is one of the most important fruits of improved Sino-U.S. ties.

Indeed, for all the controversy over the transfer of satellite technology and the political focus on human rights and nuclear nonproliferation, the one issue likely to affect most directly the lives of America’s coming generations is the ability of the United States and China to develop a genuine partnership in the fight against pollution.

“A new sense of cooperation is building between the people of China and the people of the United States,” Clinton told a gathering of civic leaders at a ceremony in the city. “A big part of the cooperation must rest on the common understanding that we live on the same planet, breathe the same air and share the same oceans.”

David Sandalow, a White House specialist on global environmental issues, added: “Engagement is good for the environment. The U.S. and China must cooperate to protect the Earth we share.”

The reason for this is easy to understand: The United States and China are today the undisputed pollution superpowers. Although America is now the world’s largest emitter of “greenhouse gases”--blamed by experts as being the single main cause of global warming--it will be overtaken by China in two decades if present energy use patterns continue.

In recent months, Clinton has pushed cooperation on the environment from a worthy but second-tier issue to a major priority on the U.S.-China agenda.

Presidential aides said environmental issues were discussed “very prominently” at Clinton’s summit Saturday with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and were a highlight of his speech Monday to students and faculty at Beijing University.

Departing from his prepared remarks, Clinton appealed directly to his audience at the nation’s premier educational institution, filled with many of China’s future leaders, saying of the environment: “This is a huge challenge for you, for the American people and the future of the world. Your generation must do more about this. . . . You and the university communities in China, the United States and throughout the world will have to lead the way.”

A Sense of Urgency on Global Warming

Aides said the summit had brought a new sense of urgency to U.S.-Chinese discussions about global warming. During his brief visit here, Clinton announced a series of modest environment-linked agreements, including:

* A $50-million loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank to promote clean-energy projects in China;

* A $4-million contract by China’s State Environment Protection Administration with Dasibi Environmental Corp. of Glendale to provide air-quality monitoring equipment;

* A letter of intent between China’s environment agency and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, pledging that the two will cooperate broadly on China’s recently implemented national air-quality monitoring system.

In Shanghai on Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Bill Daley announced that China had awarded a $70-million contract to Los Angeles-based Arco Corp. to explore a methane coal bed. The project will capture methane, a damaging greenhouse gas and a coal-mining byproduct, for use as an energy source. Experts described the project as a win-win idea.

U.S. officials cast the accords as the beginning of a larger cooperative effort. “It’s a tough issue to work but one we have to address for our children and our grandchildren,” Sandalow said. “The world can’t do it without us.”

There is much work to do.

Under terms of the global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases reached in October, developing countries--including China--are not required to immediately commit to emission reductions.

While the United States reluctantly went along with the protocol agreed to in Kyoto, Japan, the Clinton administration has said it will not submit the pact for Senate ratification until countries such as China are ready to share some of the burden to cut greenhouse gases.

Meaningful cooperation between the United States and China on environmental protection began only 15 months ago when Vice President Al Gore initiated the U.S.-China Environment and Development Forum on his Beijing visit.

The forum since has become the main way for the two countries to discuss issues such as sustainable development, clean energy, water pollution and purification, and environment-linked science and technology..

At the Sino-U.S. summit in Washington in October, Clinton and Jiang agreed to focus on energy-related environmental issues, working to develop cooperation on clean-energy projects. “We’re seeing the first fruits of this at the current summit,” Sandalow said.

Heavy, Gray Smog and Muddy Rain

In the years since China began to take off as an economic power, pollution has steadily worsened. As a partial cost of its rapid development, China is saddled now with five of the world’s 10 most polluted cities, the World Bank reports. In Beijing, the capital, a heavy, gray smog now hangs permanently over the city and is blamed for health problems--from eye irritation to asthma to other major illnesses that can cause death. Residents recall that the pollution got so bad earlier this year that during one storm, it rained mud.

U.S. officials say their message to China on pollution control and global warming issues is straightforward: Engagement is in everyone’s self-interest, especially for China, a nation whose long coastline and struggle to maintain food self-sufficiency make it vulnerable to global warming and other climatic change.

Chinese authorities have been reluctant to shut down obsolete, polluting factories. That’s because they fear exacerbating the simmering social discontent that has resulted from the privatizing of state industries, a move that has helped boost this nation’s growing army of the unemployed--an estimated 20 to 30 million Chinese.

But a decision earlier this year by Beijing and almost 40 other city governments to publish regular air-quality reports has generated public pressure on authorities to tackle the problem--an outcry that offers authorities a convenient cover to cast unpopular factory closings as a public health issue.

Such developments leave some in China convinced that the government’s tentative efforts at pollution control are really only the first step in a campaign that will eventually conquer the problem. “I’m optimistic,” the editor of a leading Beijing newspaper told an American colleague recently. “It’s the only area where we’re on exactly the same level as our leaders: We breathe the same air.”

To hear Times correspondents’ audio reports from China, updated daily on The Times’ Web site, go to: https://www.latimes.com/china.

* FIRST LADY’S FOCUS: Hillary Clinton discusses women’s rights and China’s forced-abortion policy. A16

* RELATED COVERAGE: A16-17

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Ancient Landscape

President Clinton’s itinerary takes him to one of the most famous landscapes on the planet: the so-called karst topography of the Guangxi region around Guilin.

The eerie knobs and spires of the area have inspired landscape painters for centuries.

The geology of a karst

A karst is a region made up of porous limestone containing deep fissures and sinkholes. While they exist elsewhere--such as near Orlando, Fla., Guilin’s sister city--none rivals Guangxi’s. Over the eons, the area has been submerged and raised from the sea at least twice by tectonic activity.

(1) Monsoon rains: Several factors are believed responsible for the unique geologic formations around Guilin. They include a very old (360 million years) and thick (nearly two miles) layer of hard, compact limestone; strong tectonic uplift; and matching monsoon rains and heat.

(2) Limestone is dissolved: Water from monsoon rains drains through surface holes and fissures to a labyrinth of underground channels. As the water drains, it also dissolves the limestone, leaving huge gaps in the surface. The rapid runoff contributes to drought conditions, despite annual precipitation of 40 to 80 inches.

(3) Gaps widen over time: As the limestone layer continues to dissolve over time, gaps become huge ravines. The rock is further sculpted by wind until what remains is a series of spire-like rock formations, some as tall as a 30-story building.

The Guilin karst encompasses hundred of square miles.

Sources: NASA; Yuan Daoxian, Institute of Karst Geology

Researched by SCOTT J. WILSON, JOHN TYRRELL and VICKY McCARGAR / Los Angeles Times