The quality of air in China's cities and of water in its major rivers has been bad for many decades, but a recent international review finds little prospect for improvement and many worsening pollution problems. The policy for an increased rate of industrialization emphasized productivity at the expense of efficiency in the use of coal energy and chemical raw materials. As a consequence, wastes per unit of product are far greater than in other economies.Cities grow without sewerage or sewage treatment plants, and municipal wastes contaminated with coal ash pile up along roads. New, largescale factories are likely to have end-of-pipe waste treatment, but continued proper operation and maintenance of both the production and treatment processes prove difficult. The enormous sprawl of some 18-20 million so-called Town and Village Enterprises (TVEs) across China has degraded rural water sup plies and soils. Nonexistent or weak regulations, irrationally low prices for coal and water, and bad siting are bamers to cleanup efforts.These are some of the conclusions of an International Workshop on the Control of Environmental Pollution in China, held in Beijing on February 12-18, 1990. I coordinated the meeting for the co-sponsors, the United Nations Development Programme and China's Sate Science and Technology Commission. Fourteen foreign and 44 Chinese environmental specialists worked together to produce a unique consensus rewrt suggesting ~riorities for action in d the next EGe-y&plan, for 1991-1995.Documentation of the severity of environmental pollution was provided by the Chinese, although the lack of quantitative information was a constant frus-
Views are insightful commentaries on timely environmental topics, representan author S opinion, and do not necessarily represent a position of the society or editors. Contrasting views are invited.
I
Wet cyclones, primitive controls on a coal-Fred hearing plant in Beijingtration. Where data did appear to exist, stream composition or performance of they were often not communicated to pollution abatement equipment (where the Chmese National Environmental such even existed). The data tended to-Protection Agency which might coordi-ward meaningless over-aggregations of nate a program of cleanup and prevengross pollution loadings. As a result, tion. Twenty background papers (trans-6ndings were mostly qualitative obserlated into English) were prepared by vations, although these led to practical the Chinese participants from major recommendations that were mostly for ministries and large cities. Little infor-low-cost changes in management and mation was made available on waste practices.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.