More power for local officials
August 12th, 2008 by Adam
Researchers and residents have given a guarded welcome to a government regulation to curb pollution of the Songhua River, which took effect on Friday.
It gives Jilin provincial and city authorities the power to suspend the production of polluting factories.
They also face fines of between 100,000 (US$14,600) and 200,000 yuan for failure to meet environmental protection requirements.
“Sheer punishment is not enough. Factories need to be made aware of the harmful effects of pollution. Education is one way,” Bing Zheng, president of Jilin provincial academy of social sciences, said (Chinagate)
Actually, I would have said that it is the other way around. Education is not enough and factories need to be punished more oftena nd more severely. Anyway, good news that local governments are getting more power to solve environmental problems. Whether they will or not is another matter.
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April 7th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
In China, few organization do this kind of things, and most of them focus on making money now. Maybe after ten or twenty years, well-educated people become the mainstream, they will take their responsibility for the society.