Chinese Politicians, Dissidents Attack Govt Over Flooding
8/28/98
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Title: Chinese Politicians, Dissidents Attack Govt Over Flooding
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 28, 1998
Byline: Charles Hutzler
Dissidents and legislators alike are blaming the severity of China's
disastrous floods on misguided government policies that promote high-
speed growth at the expense of the environment.
The government says 3,004 people are dead and millions more homeless
in the worst flooding in decades on the Yangtze River and in
northeast China.
In the largest petition since the military crushed the Tiananmen
Square democracy movement nine years ago, 309 dissidents urged the
government to abandon environmentally disastrous policies, a human
rights group said Friday.
"For so many years, by blindly following the concept that `man can
conquer nature,' we have built up vast, evil debts to the Yangtze
River,'' said the petition released by the New York-based Human
Rights in China.
"We are now swallowing the bitter fruit of nature's revenge and
payback,'' said the petition, signed by dissidents from 19 provinces
and major cities, from scientists to labor rights campaigners and
democratic reformers.
The dissidents catalogued environmental ills that the flooding has
made plain, and some government officials already have acknowledged.
Principal among the ills is clear-cutting, which has reduced forest
cover in the Yangtze basin by half in four decades, causing an
upsurge in soil erosion. Silty runoff raises river beds and causes
flooding.
"Finally the long-term strain has pushed the ailing Mother River to
the breaking point, and it has gone crazy,'' the petition said.
A vice director of the State Forestry Administration, Li Yucai,
admitted Friday that deforestation on the upper reaches of major
rivers was one reason for the floods.
The government will spend $380 million on infrastructure and extend
another $380 million in loans and other funds to protect forests,
Xinhua reported. It did not say when the money would be available.
Flooding nationwide has destroyed more than 5 million houses and
caused economic losses of more than $20.2 billion, the government
estimates. In the Yangtze basin and in the northeast, tens of
millions of acres of fertile farmland lie under muddy water.
Recent heavy rains on the upper reaches of the Yangtze have
caused flooding on the river's upstream tributaries, the Xinhua News
Agency reported Friday. High levels upstream signal more trouble
ahead for already weakened and waterlogged downstream dikes.
Heavy rains and winds whipped up waves on swollen Dongting Lake along
the Yangtze, lashing soggy, flimsy dikes. In the northeast, a swollen
tributary of the Songhua River crumbled 650 feet of dike outside
Jiamusi city, the People's Daily reported.
Members of the tightly controlled legislature were unusually sharp
with criticisms, decryinng the environmental ruin, low investment in
flood control projects and the corruption and indifference of some
officials, state media reported.
Wang Xuan, a member of the legislature's executive committee, said
some officials who inspected the flooding asked to be housed in air-
conditioned rooms and requested such delicacies as soft-shelled
turtles, the China Daily reported.
One legislator noted that a belated ban on logging along the upper
Yangtze did not cover the depleted forests of the northeast.
The dissidents' appeal was bolder and broader, demanding Chinese
leaders keep development from depleting natural resources, halt land
reclamation projects and draft stringent rules to protect the
environment.