Sunday June 28, 2009
‘Green cats’ the bane of green policy
By YOU NUO
A CAT has nine lives. Fat cats may have more, and each of these lives has a different colour.
During Chairman Mao’s days, anyone who joined the radical factions could persecute other people. It was fashionable to be “red cats” then.
In the days of economic reform, some individuals quickly learned how to become fat. They doctored their accounts and hid their assets in many industrial-restructuring projects. They were the world’s fastest growing economy’s “golden fat cats”.
Now when the country’s environmental regime is being built in a hurry, a new species has been born: “green fat cats”.
Officials of various environmental protection agencies have landed on the defendant’s stand in the People’s Court, mostly for taking bribes to give the green chit to dirty projects.
Let’s call it green corruption. Such corruption undermines China’s environmental protection and threatens to tarnish its genuine green measures. It is the worst kind of corruption, for it endangers the life of the entire population.
China must police its environmental protection mechanism effectively to earn the due respect from the international community. Otherwise, it will find it hard to convince the critics at the Copenhagen climate change conference in December about its credibility to meets its goals and promises.
China is already one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world, so the international community is watching its environmental policy and implementation closely.
Since the government has been allocating huge amounts of public funds for environmental protection and, as Vice-Premier Li Keqiang recently said, trying to make it the new focus of economic growth, a concerted effort to fight corruption makes great economic sense.
A trial for green corruption last week revealed the official in charge of the Liangshui River environmental protection project in southeastern Beijing might have embezzled more than 14 million yuan (RM7.25mil) of the 21 million yuan (RM10.87mil) budget, or more than 66% of the total.
What makes this more shameful is that the project’s new investment zone hosts global giants such as Nokia, Daimler-Benz and Coca-Cola.
That the official could defraud such a huge amount shows there are more problems with the system than just his dishonesty and loss of public funds. Either the quality of the river project is seriously questionable, or its budget was hugely inflated.
Local people’s congress lawmakers have to look into the entire decision-making and management process of the project to find out why and how so much money was allocated, how the project could be completed – as it apparently has been – even after more than 66% of its budget was embezzled, and whether the project is meant to only protect the environment without bringing any benefit to the people and companies in the area.
Alarm bells should ring within the central government, too, because the case is by no means isolated. Environmental officials have been found guilty of corruption in at least five key cities of Zhejiang province – Hangzhou, Huzhou, Wenzhou, Taizhou and Cixi.
Last week, criminal investigation began into the case of Dai Beijun, a former director of the provincial environmental protection bureau, who allegedly took millions of yuan in bribe to award government contracts to a company owned by his mistress.
The number of environmental officials facing corruption charges or investigation may have exceeded 100 by now, and some have already been sentenced to seven or more years in prison.
Former heads of environment protection agencies in Qingzhen in Guizhou province, Jiangyan in Sichuan province, Shenzhen in Guangdong province, Xiaoyi in Shanxi province, Shijiazhuang in Hebei province and Luohe in Henan province have been sentenced to different jail terms for corruption.
This is good news, but to properly safeguard its precious tax revenue and the quality of its people’s life, China has to do a better job of hunting down the green thieves. — China Daily/ANN
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