By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY
BEIJING - Armed with long bamboo poles, masked workers continued to
haul dead hogs from a river in the Shanghai suburbs Thursday, where the
pig body count now exceeds 6,600, according to the municipal government.
City
officials repeated reassurances to a nervous public that the drinking
water in China's financial capital, which draws on the affected Huangpu
River, remains safe, and carried out checks on pork in Shanghai's shops
and markets.
The tide of dead pigs, first discovered last
week, swept in from upriver in east China's Jiaxing city, a center of
pig breeding where local media said farmers had resorted to river
dumping after a government crackdown on selling meat from sick pigs.
From
ear tags, investigators have already identified one Jiaxing farmer who
has admitted dumping dead pigs and may face criminal charges. Local
officials have denied an epidemic was responsible, and suggested a
combination of illness and bad weather killed the animals.
For many Chinese, this bizarre incident, complete with graphic pictures
and video of pig carcasses bobbing in garbage-choked waterways, deepens
their worries about the appalling state of China's rivers, lakes and
underground water, and its wider environment, after decades of breakneck
economic growth and industrialization. And dead pigs should be the
least of their worries, say environmentalists.
At the ongoing
annual meeting of China's rubber-stamp congress, which confirmed
Communist Party leader Xi Jinping in the largely ceremonial role of
state president on Thursday, officials have renewed government promises
to slow the destruction of China's environment.
At the same time,
the public grows frustrated by the government's lack of transparency
over the extent and impact of pollution, as highlighted by the
environmental protection ministry's recent refusal to release a
four-year study on soil pollution.
The pig deaths have also
renewed concerns about poor food safety in China, one of the most
widespread public worries. On Wednesday, 46 people were jailed for
selling meat from sick pigs in Wenling, in Zhejiang province where
Jiaxing is also located. In a cabinet reshuffle this week, Beijing
announced that China's food safety watchdog would be upgraded into a
full ministry, although without better rule of law and independent
media, the move's impact may prove limited.
The tide of pigs has
inspired much black humor online. Some Chinese Internet users changed
the movie poster "Life of Pi" to "Life of Pigs", showing a boat and sea
full of dead pigs. Many jokes referred to Shanghai residents now
enjoying free pork chop soup from their taps, while one popular
microblog post mentioned the way Portland, Ore., drained an 8
million-gallon reservoir in 2011 after a man was filmed urinating there.
"American people's mental quality is so weak, there are over 6,000 dead
pigs floating in the Huangpu River, but that counts as nothing (for
Chinese people)," it read.
The fear of water pollution is no laughing matter for Ma Rui, 29, a clerk in a Shanghai bank.
"At
first, when I saw the pig news on Weibo (microblogs), I was very angry
about the farmers who threw the pigs into the river, and worried whether
the pigs have swine fever," he said. "I keep watching every day, but I
found there is less and less news about it."
Ma said he has long worried about water, soil and air quality.
"Shanghai is surrounded by chemical plants, and now dead pigs became
another pollutant," he said. "In recent years, the most popular year-end
bonus or during festivals from my company is organic food. This New
Year, we got organic tomatoes, cabbages and some other organic food."
China's government admits that most of its rivers are polluted,
many seriously, and new waterways under construction face the same
problem. One vast project to divert water from the Yangtze River to
parched north China faces major pollution battles. Along its central
route, officials have closed 900 polluting factories, at an annual cost
in lost income of $241 million, Nanyang Mayor Mu Weimin told the China Daily newspaper.
The environmental advocacy group Greenpeace warns of other dangers affecting drinking water supply.
"The
pig incident is just an incident that doesn't happen every day, but
(water) pollution caused by chemical fertilizer and pesticide is like
the elephant in the room, it's already there and getting worse and worse
every day," said Pan Wenjing, assistant manager of Greenpeace's
agriculture campaign.
"Most farmers have realized that
massive use of pesticides and fertilizer harm the environment, but it's
easier to use them than the labor-intensive and technology-intensive
ecological farming method," she said. "Farmers don't get enough
technical and financial support on how to use less agrichemicals but
ensure their yield."
At the National People's Congress in
Beijing, China's President Xi Jinping appears aware of public concerns,
as he told one meeting that Chinese Internet users judge lake water
quality on whether the mayor dares swim there.
The imperative of
economic growth has long trumped green worries here, but many citizens
now demand action to repair their ravaged environment. At a top,
foreign-funded hospital in Beijing, Dr. Lin Zhonghui, an ear, nose and
throat specialist, has this month sent pictures to local newspapers of
city workers burning garbage in open areas even on days when the air
pollution level is "beyond index" and emergency measures are supposed to
kick in to reduce air pollutants.
Lin reports fast-rising
patient numbers in the past two months of choking air pollution, while
some patients plan to leave the Chinese capital for good.
"It's the worst I've experienced in 14 years here. You feel terrible just breathing the said," he said.
The smog is good for business at a World Health Store in central
Beijing where expensive, imported face masks have been selling briskly,
said saleswoman Sunny Han, who uses one on her long commute to work. The
current political meetings "will talk about pollution but won't have
any measures to deal with it," she said. "In China, economic development
comes first."