"Justice" with Chinese Characteristics -- In China, a lake's champion
imperils himself

In China, a lake's champion imperils himself

http://img.iht.com/images/2007/10/15/iht14china2.550.jpg
Fishermen tried to remove some of the pond scum on Lake Tai in May. Even
though Yangtze River water was diverted into the lake, most of the algal
bloom lingered into late summer. (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)

By Joseph Kahn

Saturday, October 13, 2007

ZHOUTIE, China: Lake Tai, the center of China's ancient "land of fish
and rice," succumbed this year to floods of industrial and agricultural
waste.

Toxic cyanobacteria, commonly referred to as pond scum, turned the big
lake fluorescent green. The stench of decay choked anyone who came
within a mile of its shores. At least two million people who live amid
the canals, rice paddies and chemical plants around the lake had to stop
drinking or cooking with their main source of water.

The outbreak confirmed the claims of a crusading peasant, Wu Lihong, who
protested for more than a decade that the region's thriving chemical
industry, and its powerful friends in the local government, were
destroying one of China's ecological treasures.

Wu, however, bore silent witness. Shortly before the algae crisis
erupted in May, the authorities here in his hometown arrested him. In
mid-August, with a fetid smell still wafting off the lake, a local court
sentenced him to three years on an alchemy of charges that smacked of
official retribution.

Pollution has reached epidemic proportions in China, in part because the
ruling Communist Party still treats environmental advocates as bigger
threats than the degradation of air, water and soil that prompts them to
speak out.

Senior officials have tried to address environmental woes mostly through
pulling the traditional levers of China's authoritarian system: issuing
command quotas on energy efficiency and emissions reduction; punishing
corrupt officials who shield polluters; planting billions of trees
across the country to hold back deserts and absorb carbon dioxide.

But they do not dare to unleash individuals who want to make China
cleaner. Grass-roots environmentalists arguably do more to expose abuses
than any edict emanating from Beijing. But they face a political climate
that varies from lukewarm tolerance to icy suppression.

Fixing the environment is, in other words, a political problem. Central
party officials say they need people to report polluters and hold local
governments to account. They granted legal status to private citizens'
groups in 1994 and have allowed environmentalism to emerge as an
incipient social force.

But local officials in China get ahead mainly by generating high rates
of economic growth and ensuring social order. They have wide latitude to
achieve those goals, including nearly complete control over the police
and the courts in their domains. They have little enthusiasm for
environmentalists who appeal over their heads to higher-ups in the capital.

Wu, a jaunty, 40-year-old former factory salesman, pioneered a style of
intrepid, media-savvy environmental work that made Lake Tai, and the
hundreds of chemical factories on its shores, the focus of intense
regulatory scrutiny.

In 2005 he was named an "Environmental Warrior" by China's National
People's Congress. His address book contained cellphone numbers for
officials in Beijing and the provincial capital of Nanjing who outranked
the party bosses where he lived.

But Wu was far from untouchable. He lost his job. His wife lost hers.
Police summoned, detained and interrogated him. The local government and
factory owners also tried for years to bring him into the fold with
contracts, gifts and jobs. When party officials offered him a chance to
profit handsomely from a pollution cleanup contract, a friend warned him
not to accept. Wu, who needed the money, said yes.

Lake of Plenty

The country's third largest freshwater body, Lake Tai, or Taihu in
Chinese, has long provided the people of the lower Yangtze River Delta
with both their wealth and their conception of natural beauty.

It nurtured a bounty of the "three whites," white shrimp, whitebait and
whitefish, and a freshwater crustacean delicacy called the hairy crab.
Natural and man-made streams irrigated rice paddies, and a network of
canals ferried that produce far and wide.

Along the lake's northern reaches, near the city of Wuxi, placid waters
and misty hills captured the imagination of Chinese for hundreds of
years. The wealthy built gardens that featured the lake's wrinkled,
water-scarred limestone rocks set in groves of bamboo and chrysanthemum.

Since the 1950s, however, Lake Tai has been under assault. The
authorities constructed dams and weirs to improve irrigation and control
floods, disrupting the cleansing circulation of fresh water. Phosphates
and other pollution-borne nutrients made the lake eutrophic, sucking out
oxygen that fish need to survive.

Even in its degraded state, Lake Tai made an ideal habitat for China's
chemical industry, which expanded prolifically in the 1980s. Chemical
factories consume and discharge large quantities of water, which the
lake provided and absorbed. Its canals made it easy to ship goods to the
big industrial port city of Shanghai, downstream.

With strong local government support, the northern arc of Lake Tai
became home to 2,800 chemical plants, most of them small cinder-block
factories that took over rice paddies beside canals.

Wu's hometown alone had 300 such plants. His narrow village road was
reinforced with concrete to withstand the weight of cargo trucks.
Factories here made food additives, solvents and adhesives.

The industry transformed the economy. By the mid-1990s, taxes on
chemical industry profits accounted for four-fifths of local government
revenue, according to a report from the city of Yixing, which oversees
Zhoutie.

Wu benefited as well. In his early 20s, he got a salaried job as
salesman for a factory that made soundproofing material. It allowed him
to travel around the country, and paid nice commissions on his sales.
His wife, Xu Jiehua, made dyes.

Wu took long walks after dinner. The acrid tinge in the cool night air
was the smell of prosperity to some locals. But it nauseated him, Wu
recalled in later interviews.

In streams where he and Xu played as children, teeming whitefish used to
tickle their legs. By the early 1990s, there were no fish in the
streams, which ran black and red. "Rivers of blood," Xu quoted him as
saying.

Wu is small and pudgy. Xu calls him "little fatty." He also has a short
temper, and pollution sparked it.

"In the beginning I didn't understand it myself," he recalled years
later in an interview with Farmers' Daily. "It was my personality that
decided all of this. I felt the burden getting bigger."

He began by snapping photos of factories dumping untreated effluent into
canals. He mailed them, anonymously at first, to environmental
protection agencies.

When that produced few results, he signed the letters and included his
phone number, volunteering to help inspectors see the problem for
themselves.

Local regulators ignored him. But fish kills, declining rice yields and
slumping tourism to the once pristine area made Lake Tai's ecology a
broader concern. Higher-ranking officials in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu
Province, got in touch.

One evening, Wu brought provincial inspectors to see concealed pipes
running from a factory near his home to a stream that flowed into the
lake. The factory, Feida Chemical, got slapped with a fine, and Wu got
his start.

Friends and Enemies

Wu's farmhouse filled up with the evidence he amassed, a bit
haphazardly, of a looming environmental disaster. He used his pantry to
store plastic bottles containing muddy water samples from streams and
canals. Near his queen-size bed he kept stacks of newspaper clippings
and photographs, letters and petitions.

One letter from local farmers described how a nearby factory making
8-hydroxyquinoline, used as a deodorant and antiseptic, emitted noxious
fumes that "make our days and nights impassable." Another writer
referred to a local factory as "a new Unit 731," after the Japanese team
that conducted chemical warfare experiments in World War II. Members of
another group said they did not dare tend their rice paddies without
wearing gloves and galoshes because irrigation water caused their skin
to peel off.

Wu answered many such calls for help. Between 1998 and 2006, the
environmental protection agency of Jiangsu Province recorded receiving
200 reports of pollution incidents and regulatory violations from Wu.

Many of those he helped became allies. But Wu was making as many enemies
as friends.

"Our society lacks the right atmosphere for environmental protection,"
he told one local newspaper. "Even in areas where pollution is most
severe, I still have a hard time winning people's support."

Some residents feared for their jobs, with good reason. The
soundproofing factory fired Wu in 1999. His notice of dismissal, which
he saved among his other papers, cited his failure to attend a meeting.

His family lived off his wife's salary at the dye factory for a time.
Then one day Xu mentioned to Wu how the stream near her factory changed
colors depending on which dye they made that day. Wu brought a
television crew to film the rainbow-colored stream. Xu soon lost her job
as well.

"He did not always have our family's happiness at heart," Xu recalled.
"He probably should have investigated someone else's factory."

Such pressure, though, made him confront local authorities more directly.

In 2001, Wen Jiabao, then a vice premier, now China's prime minister,
came to investigate reports of Lake Tai's deterioration. Like most
Communist Party inspection tours, word of this one reached local
officials in advance. When Wen asked to see a typical dye plant, one was
made ready, according to several people who witnessed the preparations.

The factory got a fresh coat of paint. The canal that ran beside it was
drained, dredged and refilled with fresh water. Shortly before Wen's
motorcade arrived, workers dumped thousands of carp into the canal.
Farmers were positioned along the banks holding fishing rods.

Wen spent 20 minutes there. A picture of him shaking hands with the
factory boss hangs in its lobby.

Wu fired off an angry letter to Beijing recounting the ruse and warning
the vice premier that he had been "deceived." Wu circulated copies among
his friends. Local officials saw it, too. Several villagers said they
were warned then that they should keep a distance from Wu.

Words From Above

One summer afternoon in 2002, Wu went out on an errand and saw a banner
stretched across the main road downtown. It read: "Warmly welcome the
police to arrest Wu Lihong for committing blackmail in the name of
environmentalism."

Wu told friends he initially suspected the banner was hung by local
factory bosses to intimidate him. But when he went to the police to
complain, he found a stack of placards with the same exhortation there
in the police station. The police had erected the banner themselves, and
they detained him on the spot.

His family received a detention notice accusing Wu of inciting farmers
to stage a public protest about pollution a few weeks earlier. The
notice did not mention blackmail, as the banner had, and the police
never pressed charges. He was released within two weeks.

That episode appeared to be part of an inconsistent, somewhat bumbling
effort to keep Wu boxed up and harmless.

There were carrots as well as sticks. Zhang Aiguo, the chief
environmental regulator in the city of Yixing, struck up a dialogue with
Wu, several friends said.

Hang Yaobin, a truck driver and sundry shop owner in Zhoutie who has
also pressed for better environmental controls, said Zhang told Wu that
they could improve the environment together. But Wu should expose
problems in other jurisdictions and should stop damaging Yixing's
reputation.

"Zhang Aiguo told him, 'Don't make me stink, or I'll lose my job. Then
we'll accomplish nothing,'" Hang said.

In a telephone interview, Zhang declined to discuss his dealings with Wu
in detail. But he acknowledged that the two talked regularly before he
was assigned to another position in the Yixing government.

In 2003, Zhang offered Wu a business opportunity. A steel plant in
Zhoutie had been ordered by environmental authorities to buy new
dust-control equipment. Wu could find a vendor for the equipment and
earn a handsome commission, several people told about the arrangement said.

Zhang confirmed that he told Wu of the opportunity.

Wu debated whether to accept. Hang said he advised his friend against
it. "If you're engaged in a confrontation with officials you can't
gamble, or visit prostitutes, or have any other vice," Han said. "They
are always looking for ways to get you."

But this contract involved an environmental cleanup. And with both Wu
and his wife out of work, they needed money. Wu agreed to contact a
vendor recommended by Zhang.

It was not a rewarding endeavor. He brokered a contract. But the
dust-control company gave him only a token advance on his promised
commission. The steel plant boss, who had befriended Wu, eventually
withheld part of what he owed the dust-control company to compensate Wu,
according to Xu, his wife.

That was one of several muddled interactions with local officials and
businessmen that did not satisfy either side. Wu remained cash-strapped.
He did not stop contacting Nanjing and Beijing about pollution problems.

In 2005, he heard that the local government would be the host of a big
delegation of Chinese reporters as part of the China Environmental
Century Tour. He got in touch with China Central Television, the
country's leading national broadcaster, and promised to reveal the story
behind the story.

He arranged covertly for the reporters to inspect a section of the
Caoqiao River that he learned the government planned to show them on the
coming tour. He revealed hidden pipes that discharged black effluent
from local factories into the river, which flows into Lake Tai.

The China Central Television crew later joined the Potemkin official
tour. They aired a special report on "the river that goes from black to
clear overnight."

Wu was the star of that report, an environmental celebrity. Later the
same year, the National People's Congress, China's party-run Parliament,
named him an "Environmental Warrior."

Model City

With President Hu Jintao and Wen demanding tougher action on pollution,
local officials in 2006 came under new pressure to clean up Lake Tai.
Despite repeated pledges and campaigns to protect the once scenic lake,
it was still rated Grade V by the State Environmental Protection
Administration, the lowest level on its scale.

Yixing ordered a new crackdown on small chemical factories. It claimed
to have reduced the total number by half from the peak of 2,800 in the
late 1990s. The city said the industry, which once accounted for as much
as 85 percent of the area's industrial output, constituted just 40
percent in 2006.

But local officials put at least as much emphasis on fighting the
perception that they had a pollution problem. They lobbied heavily for
the State Environmental Protection Administration to declare it a "Model
City for Environmental Protection."

Around the same time, Wu Xijun, the Communist Party boss of Zhoutie,
called Wu to his office. The two Wus, who are not related, had a
"face-to-face talk" about the damage Wu Lihong's environmental protests
were doing to the area's reputation. The party secretary then made him
an offer, according to friends of Wu and an official court document that
confirmed the meeting.

In March, 2006, the township party committee paid Wu to promote tourism
on the condition that he stop "nonfactual reporting" of pollution
problems. The payments totaled about $5,000, the court document confirmed.

Wu may have toned down his protests for a time, friends said. But early
this year, he learned that Yixing had won the environmental
administration's designation as a "Model City for Environmental
Protection." Enraged, he began his most assertive effort to date to
embarrass local officials.

He spent weeks traveling throughout the area on his motorcycle,
collecting water samples and photographing rivers and canals. He
gathered data he hoped could prove that factories released most of their
polluted water at night in quantities that the currents could wash away
by dawn.

In April, he prepared to bring the water samples and photographic
evidence to Beijing. He told friends he intended to file a lawsuit there
against SEPA, the environmental administration, for its decision to
honor Yixing. He never made the trip.

On the night of April 13, several dozen police and state security
officers raided his farmhouse. Climbing ladders, they pried open the
windows to his second-floor bedroom, arresting him and seizing documents
and a computer.

Prosecutors quickly indicted Wu on two charges of blackmail. The first
charge claimed that after he "gained knowledge" of a contract between
the steel company and the dust-control company in 2003, he threatened to
use his connections to undermine it unless the dust-control company paid
him to keep quiet.

The second charge claimed that Wu extorted money from the Communist
Party Committee of Zhoutie by threatening to report pollution problems.

Prosecutors revised the indictment twice in the following weeks. They
dropped the charge of blackmailing the Communist Party, offering no
explanation. Then they added a new charge, this one for "fraud." It
claimed that Wu had illegally aided the steel company boss in preparing
false documentation to account for the money the steel company paid Wu
in 2003.

The three indictments each claimed that Wu confessed to the various
charges. The last week of May, with Wu in custody, Lake Tai cried for
help. Nitrogen and phosphorous, the untreated residue of chemical
processing, fertilizer, and sewage, built up to record levels, while
rainfall fell short.

Lake Tai's Revenge

Lake Tai had algal blooms before. This time, according to an analysis by
the State Environmental Protection Administration, cyanobacteria
"exploded" at rates that had not been seen in the past. Much of the lake
was covered with a deep, foul-smelling canopy that left most of the 2.3
million people in Wuxi, the biggest city on the northern part of the
lake, without drinking water for many days.

Local officials initially called the outbreak a "natural disaster." But
state media rushed to the scene, and some showed pictures of chemical
factories dumping waste into the lake even as residents formed long
lines at supermarkets to buy bottled water.

Neighboring cities shut sluice gates and canal locks to prevent
contamination, creating a monumental maritime traffic jam and further
reducing circulation around Lake Tai. The problem did not ease until
central authorities ordered Yangtze River water diverted into the lake.
Even then, the bloom lingered into late summer.

Wen convened a meeting of the State Council to discuss the matter. "The
pollution of Lake Tai has sounded the alarm for us," state media quoted
him as saying. "The problem has never been tackled at its root."

Five party and government officials in Yixing and Zhoutie, including
three involved in environmental work, were dismissed or demoted. Li
Yuanchao, the party boss of Jiangsu Province, vowed to clean up Lake Tai
even if it meant taking a 15 percent cut to the province's economic
output. Authorities pledged to shut down hundreds of the most egregious
polluters in their most sweeping crackdown to date.

Xu, Wu's wife, said she hoped the authorities would conclude that it
would be improper, or at least inconvenient, to prosecute Wu under such
conditions. His trial, initially scheduled for June, was delayed,
prompting speculation that someone at a higher level had intervened.

But although Wu's arrest generated attention in both the domestic and
international media, there is no indication that central government
officials objected to his prosecution. On a Friday afternoon in August,
the road in front of Yixing's courthouse filled with Volkswagen
Santanas, the standard-issue sedans of China's police and security
services. In a park nearby, officials hung a banner advertising the
city's new status as a "Model City for Environmental Protection."

The evidence against Wu consisted mainly of written testimony and his
own confession. The judges rejected a request by Wu's lawyer to summon
prosecution witnesses for cross-examination.

Wu told the judges in open court that the police had deprived him of
food and forced him to stay awake for five days and five nights in
succession, relenting only when he signed a written confession. He said
the confession was coerced and that he was innocent. The judges ruled
that since Wu could not prove that he had been tortured, his confession
remained valid.

Wu lost his temper. "Since I was a child I have never broken the law. If
I could right now I would like to split you in two," he shouted,
according to relatives who attended. He was sentenced to serve three years.

Shortly after the trial, Hang, the sundry shop owner and colleague of
Wu, handed a reporter photos, clippings and documents collected over a
decade of environmental work. He said he had no use for them now.
Environmental work had become too risky.

He said he had recently seen some little fish darting around in the
milky green water of a canal nearby. He took it as a good sign. "Once
the white shrimp come back, that would be good," he said. The white
shrimp had not come back just yet.