When Will China Get off Coal?
As China looks to meet its energy demands, there has been a rush for coal, with prices hitting record highs in October. Despite pledges by Beijing to pull back from fossil fuels, the power crisis has exposed shortfalls in the country’s ability to...
China Is Fueling a New ‘Resource Curse’ — and Riots around the World
During the past 15 years, China’s demand for primary commodities has triggered a dramatic increase in natural resource extraction in the developing world.
Hong Kong Cleans Up 93 Tons of Palm Oil; Beaches Smothered By Spill
Hong Kong stepped up efforts on Wednesday to clean up a massive palm oil spill, with authorities scooping up more than 90 tonnes of foul—smelling, styrofoam—like clumps in one of the worst environmental disasters to blight the territory’s...
China Replaces Anti-Pollution Charges with Beefed Up ‘Green’ Tax
China will start collecting environment protection taxes in 2018 to strengthen enforcement that authorities said local governments had interfered with
Going Green in China, Where Climate Change Isn’t Considered a Hoax
Chinese leaders want to improve the quality of life in their nation's cities
China is Outsourcing Its Pollution
Beijing's diplomacy is increasingly green, but its international trade is getting ever more coal-black
Through Climate Change Denial, We’re Ceding Global Leadership to China
Remember when China was the climate change outcast? What a difference a few years — and an election — can make
Despite Climate Change Vow, China Pushes to Dig More Coal
Desperate to deliver coal before power stations run out, China mobilizes trains and half-mile lines of trucks
China Risks Wasting $490 Billion on New Coal Plant, Say Campaigners
Carbon Tracker says many plants running at overcapacity but China reluctant to wean itself off coal, fearing unemployment and unrest
Will China Take the Lead on Climate Change?
Smog May be Easing, but in Parts of China Water Quality Worsens
Despite commitments to crack down on polluters, the quality of water in China's rivers, lakes and reservoirs in several regions has deteriorated significantly
China Tops WHO List for Deadly Outdoor Air Pollution
More than 1 million people died from dirty air in one year
China’s Coal Towns Are Literally Sinking
Hundreds of thousands are being moved from regions made unsafe from coal companies.
How China’s 13th Five-Year Plan Addresses Energy and the Environment
For the first time ever, a senior Chinese leader announced in his work report to the National...
China, Both Major Cause of and Potential Solution to Illegal Logging
from chinadialogueChina is now the world’s largest importer and consumer of wood-based products. Its booming domestic market is the main driver of growth in imports, though the country is also now the world’s most important timber-processing hub. In 2013, China’s...
Petrochemical Plant Explosion Vaporizes Government Safety Assurances
from chinadialogueOpposing the construction of petrochemical plants making Paraxyline (PX), a key ingredient in plastic bottles and polyester...
China’s Polluted Soil and Water Will Drive up World Food Prices
from chinadialogueChina’s push for more intense farming has kept its city dwellers well-fed and helped lift millions of rural workers out of poverty. But it has come at a cost. Ecosystems in what should be one of the country’s most fertile regions have already...
Under the Dome
from Sinica PodcastUnder the Dome, Chai Jing's breakout documentary on China's catastrophic air pollution problem, finally hit insurmountable political opposition last Friday after seven days in which the video racked up over 200 million views. The eventual...
Is Chinese Corporate Behavior Improving in Africa?
The list of grievances against Chinese companies operating in Africa is long and varied, from violations of labor...
Parched Beijing’s Olympics Bid Based on Fake Snow
from chinadialogueWhere better for a Winter Olympic Games than famously arid north China?
Drought and a fast growing economy have created water shortages so severe that China’s government has spent more than a decade, and up to U.S.$80 billion, constructing...
Environmental Filmmakers Have Rare Impact in China
One clip shows a girl swatting flies from a younger child among piles of trash. Another has children blowing up used medical gloves like balloons. The footage is on the computer screen of Wang Jiuliang as he edits his second film about waste...
A Catastrophe for Nicaragua’s Great Lake
from ConfidencialEighty years old, with more than a dozen books on national geography and natural resources to his name, he is the most authoritative voice in the country on environmental issues. Jaime Incer Barquero, former Minister of the Environment and...
Indian Critics of Tibet’s First Dam ‘Exaggerating’ Dangers
from chinadialogueTibet’s first major dam, the Zangmu hydropower station, started generating electricity at the end of November. This prompted complaints from Indian media that Chinese dam building on the Yarlung Zangbo River could reduce water flow and cause...
It’s Time to Cooperate on the Yarlung Tsangpo
from chinadialogueThis is part of a special series of articles produced by thethirdpole.net on the future of the Yarlung Tsangpo river—one of the world’s great transboundary...
Chinese Drivers Pollute Without Guilt
Chinese demand for private transportation soars while air-quality plummets.
Is the Shark-Fin Trade Facing Extinction?
China’s embrace of conspicuous consumption has manifested itself at the dinner table. One item, more than any other, has possessed the power to confer face and status upon the host: shark fin soup.
China’s Abandoned Steel Mills Are a Threat to Public Health
from chinadialogueChina’s steel industry has been in trouble since 2011, with numerous bankruptcies nationwide. The city of Tangshan in Hebei province has been no...
China's Bad Earth
Industrialization has turned much of the Chinese countryside into an environmental disaster zone, threatening not only the food supply but the legitimacy of the regime itself.
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Comment: Polluters Shouldn’t Be the Judge of Other Polluters
from chinadialogueIf the law sets a criminal to catch other criminals what do you think those criminals will think? My colleagues have...
Government-Backed NGO Under Pressure to Act Against China’s Largest Coal Miner
from chinadialogueThe All-China Environmental Federation (ACEF), a government-backed NGO, is being urged to take legal action against the Shenhua group, one of China’s largest energy companies and also a member of the ACEF.
A subsidiary of the Shenhua group...
Thirsty Coal 2: Shenhua’s Water Grab
This investigation report is a follow-up to the 2012 Greenpeace and the China Academy of Sciences joint study: “Thirsty Coal: A Water Crisis Exacerbated By China’s New Mega Coal Bases.” In this report, we focus on the most controversial part of...
Local Officials in North China Quit Smoking to Fight Air Pollution
from chinadialogueIf you are planning to quit smoking, here is another reason to do so—it can fight air pollution, at least according to local officials in China’s northern Hebei Province.
Officials in Cangzhou city, Hebei vowed to quit smoking in front of...
The Long Battle Over “White Pollution”
In the past weeks, Chinese citizens have learned that the styrofoam boxes from which they eat their lunches will soon be legal. On February 16, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s highest economic policy-making body,...
Public Fury After Chinese Environment Minister Keeps Job
from chinadialogueIn his eight years as China’s environmental protection minister, Zhou Shengxian has failed to keep almost a single promise. I say “almost”: he has kept his word at least when it comes to his own career—as promised, he has not quit.
When...
Climate Change, Not Grazing, Destroying the Tibetan Plateau
from chinadialogueSanjiangyuan—which literally translates as the “three river source area”—feeds China’s mightiest rivers. The 300,000-square kilometer region, high on western China’s Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, provides a quarter of the Yangtze’s water, almost half...
We’re Winning the Air Pollution Data Battle—So What Next?
from chinadialogueLast year, China made a breakthrough in the publication of air quality data, as more than sixty cities started to monitor and publish levels of the dangerous air pollutant PM2.5. But the figures themselves were depressing. With PM2.5—fine...
China’s New “Middle Class” Environmental Protests
from chinadialogueChina’s urban residents (or the new “middle class”) protest on the streets only very rarely. Discontent is expressed almost exclusively online, via angry typing. But this has changed over the last five years—protests have come offline and on to...
PM 2.5 Kills Thousands, Researchers Say
An estimated 8,572 premature deaths occurred in four major Chinese cities this year due to high levels of pollution.
In Dialogue with chinadialogue
from Sinica PodcastChina’s Boom: The Dark Side in Photos
from New York Review of BooksI have seen some woeful scenes of industrial apocalypse and pollution in my travels throughout China, but there are very few images that remain vividly in my mind. This is why the photographs of Lu Guang are so important. A fearless documentary...
China’s Assault on the Environment
from New York Review of BooksIn 1956 Chairman Mao wrote the poem “Swimming,” about a dam to be built across the Yangtze River. This is its second stanza:
A magnificent project is formed. The Bridge, it flies! Spanning
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North and South, and a