China: Come on in, the water is toxic
Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY 10:43 a.m. EST February 21, 2013
(Photo: Getty Images)
BEIJING – Swim for a half-hour in a river in east China's Cangnan county and win $48,000.
Sound like easy money? Take a look at the river.
Chinese angry about their toxic and trash-choked rivers have made online offers of cash rewards
to the chiefs of their local government's environmental protection bureaus to take a swim in the
waterways they are in charge of protecting.
One Internet posting offers $32,000 if an official will spend 20 minutes in a river in Rui'an or
$16,000 for a 10-minute river dip in Dongguan down south.
None of the Internet users expects the officials to take the bait. The social media campaign
against water pollution that inspired these rewards leads some analysts to hope authorities will
take action after the relative success of a public movement to increase government transparency
over the abysmal air quality in many Chinese cities.
China's water and air quality has long been sacrificed by the government to China's thirst for
industrial growth in recent decades. Even the government releases grim statistics: 64% of
groundwater in 118 Chinese cities is "severely polluted," state news agency Xinhua reports.
To provide examples, Chinese journalist and activist Deng Fei, whose Twitter-like micro-blog
has almost 3 million followers, asked people last week to post pictures of rivers in their
hometowns as they traveled there for the recent Lunar New Year celebrations.
The strong response, by thousands of Chinese Internet users, "shows more Chinese pay close
attention to pollution, and now they have the tools to express their opinions," Deng said.
Although China's citizens still lack formal channels, such as democratic elections, to influence
their government, this social-media-driven campaign "has become a large-scale discussion topic
that shows the will of the people," so China's "parliament," the National People's Congress
(NPC), and ministries must take notice, he said.
Two delegates to next month's annual session of the NPC — when the ruling Communist Party's
new leader, Xi Jinping, will be appointed president — promised to raise the issue of water
pollution, Deng said.
The rewards for hazardous swimming started Saturday when eyeglass entrepreneur Jin Zengmin
posted photos online of a filthy river in Rui'an in Zhejiang province, with his $32,000 bet for the
area's environmental protection director. Jin reminisced about swimming in the river as a child
and watching his mother washing clothes there.
"Even animals don't dare swim in these rivers, much less officials," Deng said.
The offering of money "is an expression of anger and frustration over the dereliction of duty by
local environmental officials and their failure to enforce the rules," said Ma Jun, director of the
Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Beijing-based non-profit group.
Middle-aged Chinese "remember their rivers used to be cleaner, drinkable, swimmable and
touchable, but no longer."
This social media push has the potential to grow into something similar to the air quality
campaign, given that the problem of water pollution is as bad or even worse, Ma said.
"The local government still puts GDP (gross domestic product) rate ahead of environmental
protection. We need the public to change that," he said.
The chief environmental official in Rui'an, Bao Zhenmin, blamed river pollution on rubbish
discarded by residents and migrant workers, not shoe factories, as Jin alleged. Bao promised
steps to reduce the problem, chinanews.com reported.
Deng said the answer is for the government to share more information with the public about
water discharges, increase legal penalties against illegal discharges and ease restrictions on
people filing lawsuits in environmental cases.
He said environmental offices should be controlled by Beijing, not the local governments often
responsible for pollution.
Contributing: Sunny Yang