 London ~~ July 2 2007
750,000 a year killed by Chinese pollution
By Richard McGregor in Beijing
Beijing engineered the removal of nearly a third of a World Bank report on pollution in China because of concerns that findings on premature deaths could provoke “social unrest”.
The report, produced in co-operation with Chinese government ministries over several years, found about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year, mainly from air pollution in large cities.
China’s State Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and health ministry asked the World Bank to cut the calculations of premature deaths from the report when a draft was finished last year, according to Bank advisers and Chinese officials.
Advisers to the research team said ministries told them this information, including a detailed map showing which parts of the country suffered the most deaths, was too sensitive.
“The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest,” one adviser to the study told the Financial Times.
Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, according to previous World Bank research.
Guo Xiaomin, a retired Sepa official who co-ordinated the Chinese research team, said some material was omitted from the pollution report because of concerns that the methodology was unreliable. But he also said such information on premature deaths “could cause misunderstanding”.
“We did not announce these figures. We did not want to make this report too thick,” he said in an interview.
The pared-down report, “Cost of Pollution in China”, has yet to be officially launched but a version, which can be downloaded from the internet was released at a conference in Beijing in March.
Missing from this report are the research project’s findings that high air-pollution levels in Chinese cities is leading to the premature deaths of 350,000-400,000 people each year. A further 300,000 people die prematurely each year from exposure to poor air indoors, according to advisers, but little discussion of this issue survived in the report because it was outside the ambit of the Chinese ministries which sponsored the research.
Another 60,000-odd premature deaths were attributable to poor-quality water, largely in the countryside, from severe diarrhoea, and stomach, liver and bladder cancers.
The mortality information was “reluctantly” excised by the World Bank from the published report, according to advisers to the research project.
Sepa and the health ministry declined to comment. The World Bank said that the findings of the report were still being discussed with the government.
A spokesperson said: “The conference version of the report did not include some of the issues still under discussion.” She said the findings of the report were due to be released as a series of papers soon.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  July 04, 2007
DEATHS, WHAT DEATHS?
China 'Forced World Bank' to Doctor Pollution ReportChina forced the World Bank to remove damning statistics from a pollution report, the Financial Times has revealed. Among the information cut was the figure that around 750,000 people die in China each year because of pollution.
Cyclists pass through thick pollution from a factory in Yutian in China's northwest Hebei province. The Chinese government has forced the World Bank to remove embarrassing information about pollution deaths from a report, according to the Financial Times (AFP).
Every government would sometimes prefer to sweep certain embarrassing information under the carpet. Fortunately this is hard to do when international organizations like the World Bank are involved. Except, it appears, if the government in question is China's.
According to a report in Tuesday's edition of the Financial Times, the Chinese government put pressure on the World Bank to take potentially damaging statistics out of a report on pollution in China.
Among the alleged cuts made were the report's finding that around 750,000 people in China are dying prematurely every year due to high levels of air pollution and poor water quality. Another deletion was a particularly damning map of China showing which parts of the country suffered from the most pollution-related deaths.
Chinese government officials asked the World Bank to cut the information when a draft was finished last year, the Financial Times reported. "The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest," one advisor to the study told the newspaper. Advisors said the World Bank "reluctantly" agreed to cut the information.
The report, titled "The Cost of Pollution in China," has not yet been officially published but a version which had been given at a conference in Beijing in March was available on the Internet.
The World Bank reacted to the newspaper story by saying Tuesday that the report had not been finalized. "This is a joint research project with the government and the findings on the economic costs of pollution are still under review," the bank's Beijing office said in a statement. "The final report, due out soon, will be a series of papers arising from all the research on the issue."
The Financial Times was scathing of the Chinese government's behavior in an editorial published in its Wednesday edition. "Even in a China that is more capitalist than ever, the instinctive official response to bad news is to suppress it with all the force available to the nominally communist state," the newspaper wrote.
"Beijing needs to accept that in 2007 this kind of reaction is as futile and dangerous as it was in 2003, when the authorities kept secret the spread of the deadly SARS virus. It is futile because the truth will out and dangerous because secrecy delays the necessary remedial action."
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