A World Bank report on pollution in China may soon become scrap as Beijing has already removed as large as one third of the entire report fearing a social unrest after its publication. There is sensational news of premature death of about 750,000 people in China every year due to air and other pollutions. A Financial Times article revealed recently.
China’s State Environment Protection Administration (SEPA) and health ministry asked the World Bank to cut down the death toll detailed statistics from their report, a bank official confirmed. The editing is performed before it could be officially published. The draft was submitted to Chinese government last year and they have decided to reduce the statistical burden from the report, thus suppressing the actual data, and even endangering the lives of the people living in the most dangerous localities.
In his words,
The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest
This is not the first time, the previous World Bank report confirmed that sixteen out of twenty most polluted cities are in China only. This year the report holds some partcularly disturbing data. It says around 350,000 to 400,000 people die every year prematurely due to high air pollution in Chinese cities. A further 300,000 people die every year due to poor air conditions. Another 60,000 death tolls reported mainly in country sides due to polluted water resulting to severe diarrhoea, and stomach, liver, and bladder cancers.
Though tremendously alarming and disturbing statistics, Chinese government have decided to remove those statistics from the report before it is officially published. The World Bank could not refuse their instruction as Chinese government sponsored the entire project and have reluctantly excised the mortality report from the original one.
Sepa and health ministry declined to comment on this particular matter. The World bank said that some issues are in discussion with the ministry for their inclusion. So in the mean time the topics under discussion has not been published. They will be made public in terms of several papers after the discussion is over.
Guo Xiaomin, a retired sepa official said some materials were omitted from the publication because they suspected the methodology was unreliable. But in another interview he said that 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.
Whatever be the reason a question will always arise whether it is the right way to tackle a problem by not facing it, and even by suppressing reports of this kind and finally leading the entire nation towards premature death. Looks like a serious wake up call is being ignored. Will they have a second chance?
Source: Financial Times Limited
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