China cracks down on polluting plants

Here in one of the world’s most polluted cities, where coal dust blackens apples still on the branch, something new is in the air.

And it’s not the brown smoke chugging out of coke plants and iron smelters day and night. It’s the talk of an ultimatum for polluters.

Three years after China first cited Linfen for the nation’s worst air quality, local officials have begun shutting factories that for years had fouled the environment with impunity. More than 100 other plants in the city face a deadline: Adopt environmental protection equipment by the end of March or be shut down.

Vows to crack down on polluters are not new in China and have brought little improvement. But what makes this case intriguing is that local officials are closing factories, saying they have been warned that their political careers hinge on successfully curbing pollution.

“We are under strong pressure” from the central government, said Yang Zhaofeng, deputy director of the Linfen environmental protection bureau.

Stricter enforcement in Linfen suggests that pronouncements in the capital are filtering into the provinces. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledged this month that the nation had failed to meet its goal of cutting emissions 2% last year. He said economic growth must be restrained to curb further environmental damage.

But slowing China’s economic locomotive is a risky move. The Communist Party retains public support in part by boosting living standards and limiting unemployment. But unbridled growth has helped give China the largest pollution problem in the world. Chinese leaders confront a puzzle: how to clean up the environment without hobbling the economy and putting millions of workers on the street.

How China strikes that balance in a place such as Linfen could shape the future of its ecological crisis and its contribution to global climate change.

Two decades after China embarked on its epic rise, more than 400 million city dwellers are breathing polluted air, the government says, with effects far beyond the country’s borders. By 2009, the country is on pace to overtake the U.S. as the world’s top producer of carbon dioxide.

There is perhaps no place more symbolic of those problems than Linfen, a city of more than 4 million that encompasses villages, coal mines and factories in the inland province of Shanxi, west of Beijing.

Once among the poorest places in China, the province is flush with new cars and houses, thanks to the coal mines.

But the air carries the unmistakable costs: Billboards are so darkened by coal dust that they are illegible in the sunless midday gloom. Clothes turn a Dickensian gray.

“Two-thirds have respiratory illnesses,” Dr. Zhou Huozun said of his patients at a Linfen street clinic. “It’s very serious, much worse than before.

“The people have protested against this, but it is no use,” he added. “They tried to stop the [coal] trucks from passing, but it didn’t work.”

China first ranked Linfen as having the nation’s worst air quality in 2004, and again in 2005. By comparison, Beijing was ranked 28th, and the Asian Development Bank has found it to be the most polluted capital in Asia, with 142 micrograms of pollutants per cubic meter of air -- six times the level in London.

On a recent afternoon, villagers in Linfen were cutting down apple trees that had become all but worthless. They had tried putting plastic bags on the fruit to guard against filthy air, but the apples’ declining quality made them only one-third as profitable as a few years ago, villager Chai Wenhong said.

“You wake up coughing black stuff,” Chai, 36, said. “But we don’t have much money, so unless it leaves you unable to get out of bed, then you don’t bother to see a doctor.”

Conditions like those have compelled leaders in recent years to take action, though the effects are hard to measure. Shanxi province reported that it had closed 4,800 illegal mines -- nearly half of those estimated to operate in the province -- in 2005 and punished 60 officials for allowing them to operate.

In other cases, officials blunt efforts to protect the environment because they profit, politically or monetarily, from unbridled growth. Two years ago, the central government ordered 30 hydroelectric projects shut down but were ignored by local officials who enjoy broad autonomy.

But local officials face noticeably greater pressure. Earlier this month, the Chinese premier vowed to close “backward” iron and steel plants and inefficient coal-fired power plants. Three days later, environmental protection officials in the Xiangfen section of Linfen announced that seven factories would close by month’s end. Citywide, another 104 plants will have to show that they are using pollution-control equipment or face closure.

Officials said in interviews that city- and county-level chiefs, who traditionally had been measured only by their success at building the economy regardless of the environmental cost, had been told they will be ousted if they don’t curb pollution.

“If they fail to meet the [pollution] goals in the first year, their superiors will raise the topic. In the second year, they will receive a formal warning. In the third year, they will be removed from the post,” Yang said.

James Brock, an independent energy analyst in Beijing, has seen a recent drive for greater enforcement elsewhere as well.

“The message that I’m getting in the last two months,” he said, “whether it’s chemical plants or steel mills or power, is that you are going to meet these goals or heads are going to roll.”

But a local party boss who closes factories and puts thousands out of work must carefully calibrate those moves to prevent public protests. So far, as factories close in Linfen, things have been relatively quiet, residents say, but the numbers of those affected are growing.

“A thousand workers equals 1,000 families,” said Qiao Jiyuan, 60, who was laid off in January.

Lu Jingxian contributed to this report.