China Reform Monitor: No. 1162

April 28:

China has lost at least 1,000 lakes since the 1950s, the official Shenzhen Daily reports. The total area of lakes in Inner Mongolia has dropped 30.3 percent over the past thirty years mainly due to irrigation and coal exploitation, according to a survey by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The study, which combined remote sensing image interpretation and field surveys, showed that the lake area dropped from 4,160 sq. km in 1987 to 2,901 sq. km in 2010. Of the 427 lakes larger than 1 sq. km that existed in 1987, 145 were gone by 2010. In Nanchang, Jiangxi more than half of the fifty plus lakes that existed in the 1980s have contracted or disappeared. In the 1950s, Hubei had 1,332 lakes over 0.07 sq. km, of which 322 lakes were larger than 3.33 sq. km. By 2012, however, the number of 0.07 sq. km lakes dropped 56.9 percent to 574, an annual loss of 15 lakes due to farmland reclamation, property development, and garbage dumping.

April 30:

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) has sanctioned 63 agencies and 22 assessors under the supervision of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) for malpractice. The agencies, which carried out environmental risk assessments on development projects, were owned by relatives and friends of ministry officials who "intervened" in reviews, the South China Morning Post reports. Other kin profited by running environmental risk-assessment agencies, which helped developers secure MEP approvals. The CCDI urged the MEP to reform its environmental impact review system, which had "increased pollution risks." CCDI said MEP oversight ignored project developers' poor compliance. So far 450 MEP officials and their families have been investigated for links to environmental risk-assessment agencies. Following the inspection, Chen Jining, China's new environmental minister, pledged that by the end of 2016, all assessment agencies would be independent. Some fear the new climate could prompt experienced staff to leave, others argue that the MEP has failed to tackle the real problem: a lack of transparency in environmental assessments.

[Editor's Note: Last week Premier Li Keqiang called for faster approvals for development projects. "Although some of these assessments are necessary, some local government departments do not have enough staff to carry them out swiftly and efficiently. Some authorities have ended up outsourcing the tasks to agencies that pocket money from the deals."]

May 1:

At a meeting chaired by party general secretary Xi Jinping, the Politburo approved a blueprint to develop a new megalopolis integrating Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. The Politburo approved short, medium and long-term development goals for the new "Jing-Jin-Ji region," which includes over 216,000 sq. km and more than 100 million residents; making it larger than Uruguay and more populous than Germany. The region has a combined GDP of more than 6 trillion yuan, making it China's third largest economic engine after the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas. The short-term goal is to "relieve Beijing's non-core functions by 2017, shifting some of them to Tianjin and Hebei." By 2020, the plan will cap Beijing's population at 23 million and "alleviate major strains on the capital’s operations" including traffic, environmental protection and industrial development. The goal is to complete "regional integration by 2030 so that the massive urban cluster could become a globally competitive and influential area," the South China Morning Post reports.

May 4:

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom reports that there were "unprecedented violations" against Christians, Buddhists and Muslims in China last year. The bipartisan U.S. federal government body urged the U.S. Department of State to re-designate China as a top-tier violator, along with 16 other countries, including Myanmar, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Since 1999, the State Department has listed China as a "country of particular concern." The commission said Beijing is responsible for "severe" and "systematic" violations of religious freedom. The atheist CPC recognizes only a handful of state-approved religions - Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism and Protestantism - whose followers must worship under the watch of patriotic religious associations, Reuters reports.

May 5:

China will reverse its policy of price controls over a list of essential medicines beginning June 1. Medicine prices will again be decided by the market, said the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in an online notice promoting price reforms. Public health departments must boost supervision on medical institutions and check improper medicine and medical equipment use, as well as excessive checkups and treatment, it said. Only narcotics and psychotropic drugs will remain under government control and retain a ceiling over retail prices. "The central government has relaxed its grip on low cost medicines [and] vowed to further relax price controls," the official China Daily reports.

[Editor's Note: The prescription drug program, introduced in 2009 as a cornerstone of China's health care reform, was intended to bring down medical bills. To reduce the price, provincial governments identified a list of "essential" drugs, invited companies to bid to provide the medicines and prevented public medical institutions from imposing surcharges on them. For drugs not on the list, by contrast, hospitals could impose a 15 percent surcharge. The result has been a short supply of essential drugs due to little motivation from manufacturers to make the low-profit medicines. "We have received many complaints that listed drugs that are cheap, low-profit and not in mass demand could not find a bidder or supplier," said Zheng Hong, director of medical policy and the essential medicine system in 2011.]