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Environment
10th NPC & CPPCC, 2007> Environment
UPDATED: January 31, 2007 NO.51 DEC.21, 2006
Action Plan
China translates its awareness of environmental protection into workable laws
By TANG YUANKAI
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For the director of the top prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival for Farewell, My Concubine, Chen Kaige's latest historical blockbuster The Promise has earned him more humiliation than honor. Besides harsh criticisms over its extravagant budget, the only movie to represent the Chinese mainland failed to get a nomination for the Academy Award's Best Foreign Language Film category. Moreover, people cannot forgive Chen for taking the film crew of The Promise to Shangri La of southern Yunnan Province, a paradise rarely known to the outside world. The production team left behind totally defaced scenery around a primitive lake. The destruction aroused national concern and led the Ministry of Construction to impose a fine of 90,000 yuan in August.

In an ironic twist, a three-month campaign that invited the public to name and vote for green heroes, the famous director was nominated a candidate for "Green Chinese of the Year," an annual award for those who have played an active role in environmental protection in China. Those who voted for him said, "We know he cannot get the award but are still nominating him, for the issue of environmental protection wouldn't have got so much attention without him."

The subtle jeering of Chen Kaige ended on December 9 when the list of the eight winners of "Green Chinese of the Year" was released. Of course, he was not on the list. An anonymous organizer of the event, co-sponsored by State Environmental Protection Administration and six other government departments, said Chen's example was a warning to everyone: Whoever ignores environmental protection shall pay a high price.

The public attention to this year's election of green figures was unprecedented. The award committee received a total of 223 calls, nearly 80,000 online comments and 630,000 online votes, showing that ordinary Chinese are concerned about environmental protection.

China's rapid economic growth in recent years has focused attention on the high price that the creation of material wealth has extracted in terms of environmental degradation.

Tang Ying, a green volunteer from Beijing, was one of the online voters for the "Green Chinese of the Year" contest. In a recent speech on environment protection, she said, "Globally, virgin forests are dwindling at the rate of 16 million hectares every year and making the animal and plant species they support extinct. Global warming is increasingly triggering disastrous climate changes, leading to more typhoons, floods and droughts." She raised the alarm that fresh water supplies may not be adequate to satisfy human demands in the near future.

A 16-year-old high school student Han Wen said, "We are paying a heavy price for ignoring environmental protection. Of China's 700 rivers, 46.5 percent are polluted and 360 million farmers have no access to clean drinking water." He said he didn't dare think of how the ecological environment would look when he turned 60, if no measures to check pollution were put in place.

"Environmental pollution has become a major problem of China's development, which has not been properly solved," said Premier Wen Jiabao at a press conference this March. He said during the Tenth Five-year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (2000-2005) China had achieved most of its economic goals but had failed to achieve two major environmental protection goals, namely curtailing emission of sulfur dioxide and chemical oxygen demand. It was stated in the Tenth Five-year Plan that the emission of sulfur dioxide and chemical oxygen demand should both be reduced by 10 percent by 2005 over the levels reached in 2000. In 2005, the emission of sulfur dioxide increased by 27 percent and chemical oxygen demand dropped by only 2 percent.

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