China: Smog as a Political

Analogy

by Chang Ping
Each and every part (of the petroleum industry) is basically a monopoly.
Under a monopoly there can be no innovation.
Outsiders cant break into it at all.
It is the one and only child. The toys are all his. He plays with them anyway he wants,
and he throws them around.
(March 5, 2015, Berlin, Sri Lanka Guardian) On camera, one after another, Chinese
policy-making officials and environmental administrators indicted the China National
Petroleum Corporation, a SOE that has contributed a great deal to air pollution in
China according to Chai Jings documentary Under the Dome. One quickly realizes
that it is also a pretty accurate assessment of the Communist Party regime itself and
Chinas political landscape.
Its not that Im afraid to die; its that I dont want to live this way. Chai Jings selfreflection has now become an internet meme, but it is not the intention of the former
CCTV investigative reporter to make her film a political analogy. On the contrary, some
of her critics believe it actually helps weaken the demand for government
accountability. Those who have been persecuted for taking part in the environmental
movement or those who made similar documentaries but were harshly banned raised
their doubts about how Chai Jing is able to successfully make the documentary and
disseminate it.
Under the Doom: Watch here

Object 1

Many environmental professionals jointed the discussion, providing the public with
expert analyses and recommendations. But such expertise, taken from research and
experiences in the developed countries, has long been published, and its hard to
imagine the Chinese government has not acquired them with its mighty purchasing
power. Its been at least 10 years since the Party, under environmental pressure,
proclaimed its scientific outlook for development, and the public has bought into the
preaching that it will change given time. But a decade on, the smog has gotten worse.
The short answer is, Chinas political smog is the greater cause of its environmental
smog.
Chai Jing corrects some misinformation such as the bodys adaptability to bad air. But
think about it, the propaganda juggernaut works overtime to convince people that
China has a special cultural tradition, Chinese like to be dominated and long for a
political strongman, and they will not adjust to a democratic political system. In short,
China needs dictatorship.
In fact, it is not that people have adapted to dictatorship, but that dictatorship has
been damaging peoples independent thinking. I dont think there is any information
that suggests that exposing your child to air pollution is going to help them to adapt,
Professor Edward Lawrence Avol at the University of Southern California told Chai
Jing. If you expose them on day one, they lose some function. If you expose them on
day two, they dont lose the same amount, but thats not because they have adapted,
but because they have already lost that function.
Smog was already very serious ten years ago, but it did not make people so uneasy as it

does today. As Chai Jing points out, thats because we didnt call it smog; we called it
fog, a lovely thing for Chinese whose literature is imbued with poetic descriptions of
fogginess. But Chai Jing avoided telling her audience that the concept of PM2.5 was
brought to the Chinese public by the U. S. Embassy. It monitored Beijings air quality
and publicized the data every day, and thats how the Chinese public learned the truth
about the air. In Chai Jings film, Chinas environmental officials are portrayed very
positively, but back then, they protested repeatedly, accusing the American embassy of
violating diplomatic protocols. Meanwhile, the state media fanned patriotism, saying
our air quality data cannot be dictated by others. Thanks to the American embassys
violation, we know we have smog, not fog.
One Party Dictatorship Leads to Disasters Everywhere was the title of an editorial of
Xinhua Daily, the communist partys mouthpiece, in 1946, and the one-party
dictatorship referred to the Nationalist Party rule. Today, the communist party cannot
deny the existence of poisonous milk powder, poisonous pork, poisonous rice, polluted
air, soil and water. But despite these environmental disasters, they insist that China
must unwaveringly maintain the partys leadership. When defending the industrys
monopoly, Cao Xianghong, the director of Chinas National Petroleum Standard
Committee and former chief engineer of CNPC, said, Petroleum is a security issue,
and it could easily cause big problems. Politically, many Chinese have accepted the
same threat that democracy will lead to turmoil, and dictatorship brings safety.
Monopoly inevitably leads to corruption. The documentary told us that among the 36
heavy industries in China, 22 are suffering from serious overcapacity. But instead of
being eliminated by the free market, the state is propping them up with large
subsidies. In the film, Liu Shiyu, the deputy head of the PBC, Chinas central bank,
described them as zombie companies. They consume a large amount of financial
resources, they bring unpredictable risk to our real economy, but they are still
expanding. Alas, this is also a good portrait of the regime.
Chai Jing calls to dismantle the monopolies of CNPC and Sinopec, but as long as the
political monopoly remains, fair competition is unlikely, and the environmental
industry will become the new field for monopoly and exploitation by the power
players. Thats why many netizens seconded the assessment that it will only get worse
if the market is opened up.
In tackling pollution, the most important lessons China can learn from the developed
countries are the publics right to know through a free press, civic participation
through freedom of association, and environmental litigation through an independent
judiciary. But Xi Jinpings government has been strangling the media and the internet
through harsher censorship, and they have made it clear that governing the country
according to the law must be led by the Party. As for civic movements, including
NGOs, we have been witnessing a steady elimination of some of the most inspirational

organizations of civil society through the persecution of the New Citizens Movement,
Transition Institute, Liren Library, Yirenping, and independent candidates for peoples
representatives. Breaking up a monopoly in a certain industry will not drive away the
smog. To bring back the blue skies over China, the political monopoly must be lifted
too.
Ching Ping () is a veteran Chinese journalist and commentator of current affairs.
He lives in Germany now.
Related:
Amidst the Smog, I Hear the Bugle Call for a National Environmental Movement, by
Wu Qiang, February 22, 2014.
(Translated by China Change)
Posted by Thavam