Conversation
02.06.13
Airpocalypse Now: China’s Tipping Point?
The recent run of air pollution in China, we now know, has been worse than the air quality in airport smoking lounges. At its worst, Beijing air quality has approached levels only seen in the United States during wildfires.All of the comparisons to...
ChinaFile Recommends
02.05.13Worse Than Poisoned Water: Dwindling Water, in China’s North
New York Times
When 39 tons of the toxic chemical aniline spilled from a factory in Changzhi in China’s Shanxi province at the end of December, polluting drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people downstream along the Zhuozhang River and dangerously...
Infographics
02.03.13
Where Does Beijing’s Pollution Come From?
from Sohu
In January alone, a stifling and noxious haze twice enveloped the Chinese capital of Beijing, pushing air quality indexes literally off the charts and inciting widespread outrage both on-line and off. Pollution—and the outcry surrounding it—has...
ChinaFile Recommends
02.01.13Five Predictions for China’s Auto Industry in the Year of the Snake
Wall Street Journal
In 2012, Chinese accounted for more than three out of four Buicks sold globally. And many of the design elements of the current Buick lineup originated in China.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.31.13China Says 14 Protestors Plead Guilty to Encouraging Mass Riot Against Polluting Project
Associated Press
Fourteen people pleaded guilty to encouraging a riot in eastern China last year where scores of police were hurt and the local Communist Party chief was stripped half-naked in a mass protest that ultimately forced the scrapping of a wastewater...
Media
01.30.13
Chinese Web Erupts With Widespread Calls for Change as Beijing Endures Airpocalypse 2.0
Beijingers are choking on their air—again. Just seventeen days after Chinese cyberspace erupted with complaints about air so bad that it was “beyond index,” denizens of the Chinese capital awoke once again to a city blanketed with smog. Over the...
ChinaFile Recommends
01.30.13China Burns Half of Coal Consuption Worldwide, US Figures Show
Guardian
US government figures shows that China overtook the US as the world's biggest carbon emitter in 2007 and became world's largest energy consumer in 2010
ChinaFile Recommends
01.20.13In China, Discontent Among the Communist Party Faithful
New York Times
Some Chinese say that they are starting to realize that a secure life is dependent on the defense of certain principles, perhaps most crucially freedom of expression.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.14.13Exposing the ‘Hazardous’ Pollution of Beijing
Al Jazeera
Cityscapes are part of a daily collection of photos of seven cities, four in China and three in the United States published on the website China Air Daily.
Environment
01.08.13Officials Failing to Stop Textile Factories Dumping Waste in Qiantong River
from chinadialogue
The Qiantang River is the most important river in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, one of the country’s most developed regions. On its banks, textiles plants work to supply fashion labels around the world. But they are polluting the environment in...
ChinaFile Recommends
01.07.13Chemical Spill Pollutes Shanxi Politics
Wall Street Journal
After a chemical spill polluted north China waterways–and delays in reporting it raised the specter of an earlier cover-up–the problem is seeping into the political system.
Environment
01.02.13
China’s New “Middle Class” Environmental Protests
from chinadialogue
China’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 the...
Video
12.20.12
Stars in the Haze
Flying kites is the quintessential Chinese pastime. But “wind zithers” or “paper sparrow hawks,” as they are known in Chinese, also have a long history as tools. Over millennia, Chinese have used them for measuring the wind, gauging distances, and...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.18.12PM 2.5 Kills Thousands, Researchers Say
China Daily
An estimated 8,572 premature deaths occurred in four major Chinese cities this year due to high levels of pollution.
Caixin Media
12.03.12
Toxic Effects and Environmental Nondisclosure
High-profile talk emphasizing environmental action at the Communist Party’s 18th national congress attracted a lot of attention. News from the November proceedings spurred industry demands for more information and pushed stock prices higher for...
Environment
10.19.12
Overfishing Pushes 80% of Chinese Fishermen Towards Bankruptcy
from chinadialogue
In mid-September, the fishing season got under way as usual in Ningbo, on China’s east coast, after the three-month season when fishing is forbidden. Over 2,000 steel-hulled boats headed out to sea. But, on board, there was little cause for optimism...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.21.12Environmental Activism Gains a Foothold in China
Guardian
The demonstrators gathered at dawn in Qidong, a small coastal town north of Shanghai. By noon, the local government headquarters were occupied and files were being thrown out of the windows. In the heat of the moment the party secretary's shirt...
Caixin Media
08.13.12
We Make It Pour, Declare Cloud-Seeders
Will it be clear or gray skies today? Increasingly, the answer in China may be decided by the government.The Chinese have been seeding clouds for decades. Airplanes equipped with rocket-launchers and chemicals for inducing rainfall are based in...
Environment
08.09.12
Data Gaps Hobble Carbon Trading
from chinadialogue
Late last October, China’s top economic planning body—the National Development and Reform Commission—instructed the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen, plus Hubei and Guangdong provinces, to get ready to run carbon-trading...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.02.12China in Europe: Buying Clean Tech
chinadialogue
Since Hanenergy announced that it was buying a subsidiary of German solar firm Q-cells, the Chinese company’s senior vice president Jason Chow has been fielding calls about further possible purchases. “Before they thought we weren’t serious, but now...
Environment
08.01.12
Protests Show Chinese Kids’ Fears
from chinadialogue
The decision to cancel the metal refinery project in Shifang last month after protesters clashed with the police has been widely reported in the Chinese and global media. This is not the first time a project has been shelved due to public...
Environment
07.18.12
Shifang: A Crisis of Local Rule
from chinadialogue
China has been engrossed in the mass protests in Shifang, Sichuan province, where on the morning of July 2, locals and police clashed during demonstrations against a planned molybdenum and copper refinery. The next day, the government announced a...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.17.12China's Unsafe Drinking Water
Hurtling beneath the ground, there are sturdy new subways coursing through every major urban center of China like an electric current of modernity. The country's rapid urbanization in a matter of mere decades has produced engineering marvels...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.13.12Inner Mongolia: Mining the Grasslands
Economist
LOCAL legend has it that the beauty of the grasslands in Xilin Gol, a prefecture in eastern Inner Mongolia, so captivated the 13th-century warrior Genghis Khan that he planned to settle down there once his battles were over. He might be less...
Caixin Media
07.06.12
Fighting the Filth
Has the division of spoils from China’s rapid economic growth become a one-sided affair? The answer is less abstract when one considers the state of the nation’s environment.Waterways are barricaded by garbage, mountains gouged with dusty pits, and...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.05.12Bolder Protests Against Pollution Win Project’s Defeat in China
New York Times
China has long been known as a place where the world’s dirtiest mines and factories can operate with impunity. Those days may not be over, but a growing environmental movement is beginning to make the most polluting projects much harder to build and...
Environment
07.04.12Dirty Truth about China’s Incinerators
from chinadialogue
Xie Yong could be called a pioneer. He is one of very few to date to sue a Chinese government agency over its unlawful refusal of requested data. His crusade for change has little to do with civic altruism, however. Xie’s struggle is personal in...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.03.12Sichuan City Suspends Factory Construction Following Protests
New York Times
A municipal government in southwestern China has suspended at least temporarily the construction of a metals factory after bloody street protests on Monday, in the latest sign of the growing strength of the country’s environmental movement.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.26.12Review of Judith Shapiro’s “China’s Environmental Challenges”
Consolations at the End of the World
China’s environmental story is full of contradictions. What does one make of a country where the government severely limits the freedom of NGOs, yet has some of the most thorough environmental laws and most sustainably-minded leadership in the world...
Environment
06.14.12Rio and China’s Global Future
from chinadialogue
We have a common predicament, and solving it requires humanity to work together. But state actors are, to a large degree, controlled by the confrontational logic of international politics. The dualities and contradictions common in sustainable...
Viewpoint
06.11.12
Dirty Air and Succession Jitters Clouding Beijing’s Judgment
Last week the Chinese government accused the U.S. Embassy and consulates of illegally interfering in China’s domestic affairs by publishing online hourly air-quality information collected from their own monitoring equipment. (While the critiques...
Environment
06.07.12
What’s Coming Out of China’s Taps
from chinadialogue
China’s urbanites use a lot of water. Every day, more than 4,000 water-treatment plants supply 60 million tons of water to 400 million people living in Chinese cities. Despite the impressive figures, the water industry is grappling with widespread...
Environment
06.05.12
Hot Air?
It has been a busy season for U.S. diplomatic activity in China. Given the tensions aroused by U.S. involvement in the Bo Xilai scandal and the flight of the blind activist Chen Guangcheng, perhaps it should come as no surprise that even relatively...
Video
03.29.12
A Story of Invisible Water
A Story of Invisible Water examines the problem of water pollution and drought in the northeastern Chinese province of Hebei. Farmers in Xizhang village claim that for more than twenty years, local factories have polluted the groundwater they use...
Environment
01.02.12
Chinese Demand Stokes U.S. Coal Battle
TRINIDAD, Colorado—When the New Elk mine reopened amid windblown prairies last winter, it attracted little attention. But the mine—a long shaft boring through some of the world’s most valuable coal—strikes at the heart of a growing debate about the...
Environment
01.01.12
China’s Rising Consumer Class Sparks Climate Change Fears
TUOJIA VILLAGE, China—When you think about China’s growing greenhouse gas emissions, you probably don’t think of people like Zhang Chao or his father Zhang Dejun. Zhang Chao, a thirty-five-year-old middle school teacher living in small city in...
Environment
11.14.11
China’s Rise Creates Clouds of U.S. Pollution
At more than 9,000 feet along the crest of Oregon’s Cascade mountain range, the top of this snow-covered peak normally enjoys some of America’s cleanest air. So when sensitive scientific instruments picked up ozone—the chief component of smog—at...
Reports
06.01.11
“My Children Have Been Poisoned”: A Public Health Crisis in Four Chinese Provinces
Human Rights Watch
Over the past decade, numerous mass lead poisoning incidents have been reported across China. In response, Environmental Protection Ministry officials have become more outspoken, directing local officials to increase supervision of factories and...
Reports
06.30.10
Breaking the Ice on Environmental Open Information
Natural Resources Defense Council
On May 1, 2008, the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information and the Ministry of Environmental Protection Measures on Open Environmental Information (trial) entered into effect. These regulations stand...
Reports
06.01.10
Game-Changing China: Lessons from China about Disruptive Low Carbon Innovation
Nesta
Big hydro, big solar photovoltaic, and big wind—these are the usual focus of accounts of low-carbon technologies in China. But a very different type of innovation—ranging from a farm cooperative in Yunnan, to woodchip and corn pellets in rural...
Reports
10.01.09
Identifying Near-Term Opportunities for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in China
Sara Segal-Williams
Natural Resources Defense Council
To avoid the worst consequences of global warming, the world must limit average temperature increases by significantly reducing carbon emissions by 2050. Achieving the urgently needed emission reductions will require efforts beyond first-resort...
Reports
01.31.09
Strengthening US-China Climate Change and Energy Engagement
Sara Segal-Williams
Natural Resources Defense Council
The United States of America and the People's Republic of China are both key players in international efforts to address global warming and global energy security. Indeed, they are by far the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.14.07Choking on Growth
New York Times
A series of articles and multimedia examining China’s pollution crisis.
Reports
04.01.07
NRDC Partners With China on Energy Efficiency
Natural Resources Defense Council
China has launched the most aggressive energy efficiency program in the world to reduce pollution and protect people's health. NRDC is working with key partners at the central and provincial level to help China achieve its ambitious energy...
Reports
02.01.07
Coal in a Changing Climate
Barbara A. Finamore
Natural Resources Defense Council
The current coal fuel cycle is among the most destructive activities on earth, placing an unacceptable burden on public health and the environment. There is no such thing as “clean coal.” As the two largest coal consumers, the United States and...
- « first
- ‹ previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4