Measured Insights
The latest blog posts from our research projects.
Jinan's Famed Baotu Springs
While in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, we went to one of the three most famous tourist attractions in the town: a 3,500 year storied natural spring, called Baotu Spring. I wasn’t really sure why my assistant Mia was so excited about what she referred to as a “fountain.” I was imagining a concrete fountain with lots of fiberoptic lights (see: this), but instead the “fountain” happened to be a natural spring that is mentioned in most primary school textbooks because a famous writer, Lao She (老舍）wrote about it. His writings are known for teaching children all throughout China about sentence structure and parallelism. One of the most famous lines Lao She wrote was, “If we didn’t have this spring, Jinan will lose half of its beauty” (假如没有这泉，济南定会丢失一半的美). Apparently, these Chinese men wanted to soak up some of Jinan’s beauty and decided to all swim in the canals outside of Baotu’s park.
Jinan's Bus Rapid Transport
While in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province and only 1.5 hours from Beijing by high-speed rail, I ran across their Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system. I didn’t even realize that Jinan had BRT (but let’s be honest, I didn’t even know or think about going to Jinan before this trip), and wanted to try it out. There are 46 BRT stations in Jinan (you can take a look at a map of the stations here) and it only costs 1 yuan (about 16 cents) to ride. It has its own dedicated lane, which I quickly found out in Jinan is necessary because there are 1-way roads, something I haven’t experienced very frequently in China at all, which usually has traffic going both ways regardless. Unfortunately, the BRT didn’t happen to be going my way when I wanted to take it. Instead, I ended up taking a regular bus that felt like a microwave inside, due to lack of air-conditioning and 97 degree F temperatures that day. Apparently, for air-conditioned buses, you have to pay 1 RMB extra and look for the letter ‘k’ (for kong tiao, the Chinese word for air conditioning).
"The heaviest rain in six decades"
On Saturday, we were stranded in Xi’an due to “the heaviest rain in six decades” to hit Beijing. In some places, rain was as high as 4 meters, and 37 people were killed. It is extremely fortuitous that I made a last-minute decision to cancel our overnight train tickets for plane tickets instead. Our flight was canceled after waiting at the airport for a few hours in Xi’an, which meant we were grounded for the night and avoided the crowd of 80,000 people stranded at Beijing airport and lack of transportation into the city. This was my first time experiencing a flight cancellation in China, so it was interesting to experience how they handled the situation. Many customers were really unhappy with the canceled flights, as you can see from the chaotic mass of people standing in front of the ticket counter. I only caught the last bit of people protesting, “Guo hang! 国航！” for Air China. For those wondering in case they find themselves in a similar situation, Air China booked us in a hotel in Xianyang, an hour south of the airport in the middle of nowhere. It was actually pretty nice, and they provided transportation to and from the hotel to the airport, as well as breakfast in the morning. Although at first they told us there were no available flights until July 24, we managed to get on a flight yesterday via standby (候补, a relatively uncommon concept in China, as most people make their flights) and came back to a wonderfully hot, blue-sky Beijing. All in all, it could have been worse, and I feel quite lucky I wasn’t stranded under water somewhere in Beijing on Saturday.
Xi'an: Mantras for Environmental Monitoring
Yesterday, I met with the Xi’an Environmental Monitoring Center in Shaanxi Province. My interview strategy has generally been to reach out to the provincial Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs) as well as to the Environmental Monitoring Centers (EMCs) to better understand environmental data monitoring, reporting and verification challenges. Without giving away too many of the details, it seems that the provincial EMCs are trying to collect quality data, but really are at the mercy of local-level monitoring centers to collect good data. Provincial EMCs don’t really have the power or capacity to enforce strict data controls – they have to accept whatever the lower levels provide them. I was struck by the 16 words that serve as their mantras posted in the entrance of their office:
Rational Agency (布局合理）
Reliable data (数据可靠）
Sensitive transmission (传导灵敏）
Effective monitoring and management (监管有效）
Bonfire dancing to avoid swarming, flying beetles
The Inner Mongolian EPB took us out to see a 草原（grassland), for which the province is well-known for. They took us to 四子王旗 2A Tourist Attraction grassland (yes, tourist attractions in China are rated with a star-rating (星级）according to how quality it is. For some reason, swarming, flying beetles came out to join the evening bonfire dancing and entertainment. Although some tourists were good sports and were trying to have a good time, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were dancing because they were into the music, or if they were simply trying to avoid the bugs.
Updates on the China Environmental Performance Index project
My first stop when I came back to Beijing was to meet with our partners at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, who we collaborated with on the “Towards a China Environmental Performance Index” project. I was excited to hear about all of the progress they’ve made in trying to move Chinese environmental policymaking on a more data-driven path. You can read about their updates here.
In summary, they are making progress on these fronts:
– Efforts to increase government environmental performance assessments.
The Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection is proposing a China Environmental Performance Assessment System for implementation of the“12th Five-Year Plan,” which establishes policy goals and governs development programs for China from 2011-2015, and plans to increase the number and diversity of environmental health indicators measured at the provincial level.
– Efforts to monitor the impact of Chinese corporations on the environment.
Chinese researchers, in cooperation with the government of Sweden, are developing a corporate environmental performance assessment indicator system, which will soon focus on 100 listed firms for a pilot study.
– Efforts to track and improve the quality of life in China’s large cities.
The Chinese government is cooperating with the United Nations Environment Program to develop a China Pollution Reduction Performance Assessment research program, which will soon evaluate the pollution reduction performance of four pilot Chinese cities. There are, additionally, growing civil society and quasi-governmental programs seeking to assess the environmental quality of China’s cities, including the Asian Development Bank’s “China Environmental Livable Index of Cities,” the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)’s Asian Green Cities Index, and The People’s Republic of China Urban Knowledge Hub.
No water or power = street protests
Outside my apartment in Beijing, residents of a neighboring building have taken to the streets to protest the management’s decision to shut off power and hot water for the day. Apparently there was a disagreement between the previous and current management that resulted in unpaid, leftover bills from the previous management. So the current management decided to retaliate by shutting off the power and hot water for today, and people are rightly upset. A few police cars have also blocked off the street. So far the protest seems relatively peaceful – no loud noise and mainly just people hanging out in the street.
The danger of 'unqualified environmental protection indexes'?
The above quote is from an article in the Global Times regarding the recent environmental protests against a heavy-metals refinery in Shifang, which is located in Sichuan province. Thousands of Chinese citizens have taken to the streets to protest, and it’s resulted in the government’s use of riot gear to contain the crowds (read The Economist’s summary here). It’s interesting that the newspaper cited ‘unqualified environmental protection indexes’ as a reason for confrontation between the government and citizens. I wonder what the author meant by ‘unqualified environmental protection indexes’ – does this mean that citizens or non-government entities were creating their own indexes and then determining that the metal refineries were hazardous? Will this have an impact on any independent efforts to produce indices that attempt to measure or quantify environmental harm or performance?
Friends of Nature's Li Bo talks about Civil Environmental Litigation in China
Last Saturday evening, I attended my first Beijing Community Dinner, which featured Li Bo, the outgoing director of Beijing’s oldest NGO, Friends of Nature. He spoke about the the first non-victim public interest environmental lawsuit Friends of Nature and other NGOs within China are currently trying to litigate to stop polluters in Yunnan. He painted a bleak picture overall in terms of the ability of NGOs and citizens in China to successfully win such lawsuits, in particular because the burden falls on the plaintiffs to provide evidence that the companies are emitting dangerous amounts of chromium and it is negatively impacting the environment and health of the neighboring villages. In many cases, plaintiffs are ordinary citizens who lack capacity and expertise to collect data and evidence to support their cases. Although China’s laws on the books allow for these public interest lawsuits to be brought to court, in reality, it is very difficult for plaintiffs to win because of the inconsistent implementation and procedures for such cases. It seems that the challenge is really in the rule of law, and not the laws themselves.
Beijing starts new bike-sharing program
Great news – Beijing finally has a bike-sharing program! Now I don’t have to worry when the next time my bike is stolen (notice I said *when and not *if), where I’ll be able to easily get a set of wheels to help navigating Beijing’s extremely congested streets. So far, I’ve seen bike-share pods near subway entrances and near popular attractions (such as Sanlitun’s mixed-use retail, restaurant, and office spaces). Originally when I read about the new bike sharing program, I was disheartened to learn that only Beijing residents with a “北京市二代居民身份证“ or second-generation Beijing registration could use the system, but foreign friends tell me that foreigners may be able to use it by paying a 200 RMB deposit. I’ve seen a few Chinese people around Sanlitun use the bikes, but some of my Chinese friends doubt that it will really take off. The reasons may be 1) most Chinese who bike already own a bike, as they are relatively cheap to purchase in Beijing; 2) more and more Chinese are owning cars; 3) Depending on the distribution of bike pods (I still haven’t seen a map with all of the stations), it may not be worth it to some people to use. I certainly would have signed up in a heartbeat for this service when I was living here in 2010-2011. I had two bikes at that time – one downtown and one at school because Tsinghua’s campus is so expansive. It would have been nice to use the bike-share system so that I wouldn’t have had to buy a second bike just for getting around campus. What do you think, will bike sharing take off in Beijing?
