The Last Empire: China's Pollution Problem Goes Global

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Given the tenfold difference between U.S. and Chinese incomes per capita and the presence of some 800 million impoverished Chinese, even the idea of asking the two nations to sacrifice equally for the global environment is presumptuous, and the Chinese know it. Consider Pan Yue, the outspoken deputy minister of China's environmental protection agency. Three years ago, Pan declared that the Chinese economic miracle will end soon "because the environment can no longer keep pace." Yet asked for his view of studies showing that mercury from Chinese power plants is settling in American lakes and rivers, Pan focused his criticism on the United States. "As for China's impact on surrounding countries, I'm first to admit the problem," he said. "But let's talk about this in the context of international fairness. Whose development model are we emulating? Who has been shifting all of its pollution-heavy factories to China? And who bears an even greater international responsibility than China—but has yet to shoulder it—on matters like greenhouse gas emissions?"

The United States passed up the opportunity it had at the beginning of China's economic transformation to guide it toward sustainability, and the loss is already incalculable. All that is left is the one option that would have served Americans (and the world) best all along, which is to model environmental sanity. Stop buying products made from illegally cut wood. Stop building coal-fired power plants. Instead of subsidizing oil companies, invest government funds in research on sustainable-energy technologies. Build effective mass-transit systems in every city. Cut greenhouse gas emissions. Show China the benefits of responsible behavior.

As it happens, many of the best ideas for moving toward sustainability are already getting a tryout in China: It threatens to surpass the United States even in fostering environmentally beneficial practices. Many have been developed by some of the 2,000 or more environmental groups, domestic and international, that have established outposts in China. The groups have addressed a vast range of environmental issues, from developing energy-efficiency programs for appliances to providing legal assistance for pollution victims to promoting fish circulation by removing some of the thousands of sluice gates blocking flows between lakes and rivers. Yet as smartly conceived as many of these efforts are, virtually all are pilot projects still overwhelmed by the immensity of the problems they take on.

THE TAO OF ZHANG

for the last leg of our Dark Places tour, Mr. Zhang planned to drive back to Beijing, some 200 miles, while traversing the industrial excrescence outside the capital that is both backdrop and counterpoint to the Beijing "miracle." First we passed through a countryside "greenbelt" where the government has planted trees in U shapes in a dubious attempt to corral Mongolian dust before it reaches Beijing. Then we drove by a dozen or so recently installed windmills, their giant propellers so out of proportion to their hilly surroundings that they looked like catastrophically aberrant insects. By the time we dropped into the lowlands, the sky had turned from slate blue to white to a sinister, sunless gray, and coal announced its presence with mid-20th-century Pittsburghian vigor.

Mr. Zhang said he'd suffered long bouts of depression as he contemplated the coming ecological calamity and wrestled with his growing conviction that millions of people will suffer and die. Feeling guilty for using increasingly scarce water, he said he once even skipped bathing for a month and a half. Apparently unimpressed by this gesture, Ms. Lei asked if his wife approved. "Not completely," he said, "but she has no choice."

I could see beyond Mr. Zhang's stubbornness now, to the earnestness and passion in his tormented embrace of environmentalism. He loves gadgets, yet he deplores consumerism. He believes that China's tenure as the world's manufacturer will be short, but blames the West for its predicament.

"China could have said no," I said.

Not so, he answered—the glittery West has held China in its thrall from the beginning of its encroachment on the country a couple of centuries ago, and now its influence is too pervasive.

But environmental degradation has occurred throughout Chinese history, I said—it's not just a Western creation. The Taoists who venerated nature were always outmanned by the social-order Confucianists.

Confucius may reign on the surface, Mr. Zhang replied, but Taoism is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture. In fact, only the two greatest civilizations of the world—China's and India's—can save humanity now, he said.

We passed mile after mile of bedimmed ground, lots filled with blue-black coal awaiting sorting and shipment, populated by spectral-looking workers with blackened faces and blackened clothes; coal-fired power plants whose smoldering towers suggested witches' vats; and, in the cities, forests of chimneys poised to combat the looming winter by belching coal smoke high into the curdled atmosphere.

Forty miles from Beijing, we took a detour to inspect a newly formed 200-acre sand dune—the closest dune to the capital, and a powerful warning of encroaching desert. We also drove around the nearby Guanting Dam and up to the lip of its reservoir. The reservoir has been nearly empty since the 1990s, and even before that its water was too polluted to drink. "When this reservoir dries up completely," Mr. Zhang said, "it will probably become the source of dust that floats over the United States."

Yet as Beijing loomed, Mr. Zhang's spirits rose. He talked jauntily on his cell phone while negotiating the expressway's most dangerous stretch, then once inside the city dueled taxis for every inch of open road, and finally skirted an impasse by driving down a sidewalk. He barely avoided hitting a small car and sang out, "My luck is always good!" We ended up reaching the city center early enough to give Ms. Lei a chance of tucking her boy in. Mr. Zhang's determination had seen us through the trip.

Our final destination was my hotel, where water flowed without constraint, bed linens were changed daily, and rooms were air-conditioned to a fault. Not least of the hotel's attractions for its international business clientele, in addition to its swank lobby and 40-meter indoor swimming pool, was its maintenance of the illusion that nothing stands in the way of making money. We stopped under the hotel's canopied entrance, where I gratefully shook Mr. Zhang's hand. Surrounded by luxury sedans, his Mongolian-dust-and-coal-soot-encrusted car looked like an intruder, unwelcome but impossible to ignore.

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Photography: James Whitlow Delano

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