Tibetans in anguish as Chinese mines pollute their sacred grasslands

By Simon Denyer

Landscape along the road from Xining to Yushu in Qinghai Province, on May 29.

JIAJIKA, CHINA — High in western China’s Sichuan province, in the shadow of holy mountains, the Liqi River flows through a lush, grassy valley, dotted with grazing yaks, small Tibetan villages and a Buddhist temple. 

But there’s poison here.
A large lithium mine not only desecrates the sacred grasslands, villagers say, but spawns deadly pollution. 

This river used to be full of fish. 

Today, there are hardly any. 

Hundreds of yaks, the villagers say, have died in the past few years after drinking river water.
China’s thirst for mineral resources — and its desire to exploit the rich deposits under the Tibetan plateau — have spread environmental pollution and anguish for many of the herders whose ancestors lived here for thousands of years.
The land they worship is under assault, and their way of life is threatened without their consent, the herders say.
“Old people, we see the mines and we cry,” a 67-year-old yak herder said, requesting anonymity for fear of retribution. 

“What are the future generations going to do? How are they going to survive?”

A local environmentalist, who also declined to be named to prevent backlash from the authorities, said he had done an oral survey of local opinion and found that Tibetans would oppose mining projects even if companies promised to share profits with local communities, to fill in mines after they were exhausted, and to return sites to their natural state.
“God is in the mountains and the rivers, these are the places that spirits live,” he said. 

“When mining comes and the grassland is dug up, people believe worse disasters will come. It destroys the mountain god.”

Salt deposits at the Jiajika lithium mine in Tagong township in China’s western Sichuan province, seen on August 9, 2016. Local Tibetan herders have protested at least twice against the mine, saying it has polluted the Liqi river and killed fish and yaks downstream.

It was in 2009 that toxic chemicals from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine first leaked into the river, locals say, killing their livestock and poisoning their fish.
“The whole river stank, and it was full of dead yaks and dead fish,” said one man in the downstream village of Balang, who declined to be named for fear of retribution. 

Another pollution outbreak and a protest by villagers in 2013 forced the government to order production temporarily stopped, locals said.
“Then, during the past few months, officials came to the village to try to persuade people,” the man said. 

“They said we have to have the mine, but promised they would take time to fix the pollution problem before reopening it.”
But in April, just after mining restarted, fish began dying again, locals said. 

“That’s when we just knew they had lied,” the man said.

Dead fish are seen in May, 2016. A Free Tibet protest against the Jiajika lithium mine in Dartsedo County in May, 2016.

In May, residents gathered to stage a second protest, scattering dead fish on a road in the nearby town of Tagong, only to be surrounded by dozens of baton-wielding riot police. 

Again the government stepped in, issuing a statement to “solemnly” promise that the plant would not reopen until the “environmental issues” are solved.
But the problem at the Jiajika mine is not an isolated one. 

Across Tibetan parts of China, protests regularly erupt against mineral extraction, according to a 2015 report by Tibet Watch.
China is focused on copper and gold extraction from Tibet, but is also exploiting a whole range of minerals “with increasing intensity,” including chromium, iron, lithium, iron, mercury, uranium and zinc — as well as fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, the report said.
Although China boasts of its development work in western regions where Tibetans live, the report argued that much of the transport and other infrastructure in the region is aimed at extracting minerals rather than benefiting residents. 

Projects usually import workers from other parts of China, seldom employing Tibetans in significant numbers.
When protests break out, China’s response has generally been heavy handed, with authorities seeking to politicize the protests.
Understanding those risks, Tibetan communities sometimes use creative ways to get their message across.
In August 2013, hundreds of people gathered in Zadoi county in Qinghai province to protest against mining on what they considered to be a holy mountain; they flew Chinese flags to demonstrate their loyalty to the state, and erected posters and placards quoting Xi Jinping’s words on the need to balance economic growth and environmental protection.
It didn’t help. 

Police and paramilitary forces arrived in large numbers, firing bullets above the crowd, arresting eight people and injuring many more.

A camp at a lead and zinc mine in the high altitude village of Xingniangda, southern part of Qinghai province, where only Han Chinese work.

The entrance of a lead and zinc mine in the high altitude village of Xingniangda, southern part of Qinghai province, where only Han Chinese work.

In the villages outside Xiaosumang township in Qinghai, residents blame a lead and zinc mine for the deterioration of the grasslands for miles around, and even for falling harvests of caterpillar fungus, a highly prized health cure that is the backbone of the local economy.
Contaminated water from the mine, residents said in a joint letter to the authorities in 2010, not only killed their livestock but alsocaused people who drank it to die of cancer, they said.

“Over the years, many herders would sigh and say: ‘Life can’t go on like this anymore. Even drinking has become a big issue for people living on the grasslands,’ ” the letter said.
A May 2009 protest in Xizha village prompted a severe crackdown, the letter said, with guns and tear gas used, seven women severely beaten, and 12 men blindfolded, detained and tortured.
Authorities threatened to cancel poverty-alleviation grants, including income and housing subsidies, if anyone in the region brought up the issue of environmental protection again, the letter said, adding that the crackdown “caused great fear to spread in our hearts.”
Whether the mine is truly the culprit for all the grasslands’ ills is another matter – climate change, for example, is probably an important factor. 

But that doesn’t soothe local anger.
“When I was young, there was more grass, more flowers, it was really beautiful here,” said one 27-year-old man in a valley downstream from the lead and zinc mine. 

“Now you see it’s less beautiful every year. People see all this and they are not really sure what happened, so they think it must be the mine.”

A woman washes clothes near the Jiajika lithium mine in Tagong township in China’s western Sichuan province on August 9, 2016. Local Tibetan herders have protested at least twice against the mine, saying it has polluted the Liqi river and killed fish and yaks downstream.

In Jiajika, 300 miles to the southeast, the commercial pressure to reopen the lithium mine is mounting. 

The element is a vital component in rechargeable batteries used in cars, smartphones, laptops and other electronic and electrical items, and demand — and prices — are skyrocketing.
In January, Youngy Co. Ltd., the parent company of Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium, promised investors that the local government would step up efforts to reopen the mine in March.
That same month, an article in the local Ganzi Daily newspaper outlined the authorities’ dream of making the area “China’s lithium capital,” calling Jiajika the biggest lithium mine in the world with proven reserves of 1.89 million metric tons and even greater potential. 

Three companies, including Rongda, will invest 3.4 billion yuan ($510 million) in the site by 2020, the article said.
He Chengkun, Youngy’s media officer, said an official investigation had established that the plant was not responsible for killing fish in 2013 or this year.
“The local government has made it clear it is nothing to do with our company,” he said. 

“They are looking into it, and have already zoomed in on some suspects.”
He said the plant has been closed since late 2013 because of problems relating to land acquisition, and denied that it had restarted operations in April as locals claimed.
Nevertheless, across the Tibetan plateau, resource extraction, land grabs and environmental destruction remain flashpoints for conflict between Tibetans and the authorities, said Free Tibet director Eleanor Byrne-Rosengren, reflecting both local grievances and the wider problem that Tibetans do not have the right to decide what happens to Tibet and its resources.
“Those resources feed the demands of Chinese industry instead of the needs of the Tibetan people,” she said. 

“That is why their environment is put at risk and their rights are trampled upon, and why we can expect to see this conflict played out repeatedly in the future.”

Sick men of Asia

Study: China's sperm is getting worse
By Yuan Yang and Hudson Lockett

Beijing’s efforts to reinvigorate China’s birth rate, one of the lowest in the world, face a serious obstacle as semen quality plummets among young male donors, research suggests.
Last year fewer than a fifth of young men who donated sperm in the inland province of Hunan had sufficiently healthy semen to qualify as a donor, according to a 15-year study of more than 30,000 applicants. 

In 2001 more than half qualified.
Local media reports indicate Hunan is not the only province suffering a shortage in qualified donors. State broadcaster China Radio International recently reported that a sperm bank in Henan province had dropped minimum height and education requirements for donors and was offering to store their semen free of charge for three decades in an effort to make up its own deficit.
“Growing evidence seems to suggest that male infertility is increasingly becoming a serious concern in the entire country,” said Huang Yanzhong, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. 

If shown to reflect a broader trend, such findings would further complicate China’s mounting demographic problems.
China’s fertility rate — the number of children a woman is expected to have during her child-bearing years — was 1.05 last year, according to data from the Chinese government’s annual “1 per cent” population survey, which polls about 17m citizens each year.
The bottom territories in a World Bank 2014 survey — South Korea, Portugal, Hong Kong and Macau — had fertility rates of 1.2, against a global average of 2.5. 

That survey estimated China’s fertility at 1.6, still far below the 2.1 births per woman needed to keep a country’s population from shrinking.
China is ageing rapidly, leading to a shortage of young workers and warnings of a pensions crisis, but its fertility rate has long been in decline. 

From a peak of 6.4 births per woman in 1965 it had fallen to 2.8 by 1979, the year the notorious one-child policy was introduced amid fears of runaway population growth. 

That regime led to widespread sex-selective abortion, resulting in a significantly skewed sex ratio.
The blanket policy was scrapped late last year for a two-child policy. 

But previous loosening of the old policy has fallen short of policymakers’ hopes in raising the country’s birth rate, with many Chinese couples apparently unwilling to take advantage of the chance to have a second child.
“The situation is probably worse than expected,” said Mr Huang, noting that the results of a government-commissioned national study on infertility in China that had been scheduled to end in 2011 had still not been made public. 

Some researchers also say previous census results have been manipulated by family planning officials in regions with a pro-birth policy, who inflate birth rates in order to make their policies look more effective.
The researchers in the Hunan semen study, published online in the journal Fertility and Sterility, say there is no clear explanation for why donors’ reproductive health declined so rapidly. 

But they point to “increased environmental pollution, including pollution of water, air and food”, as a possible explanation.
However, World Health Organisation spokesperson Tarik Jašarević said the WHO could not yet determine with certainty which factors had caused deterioration in certain or multiple countries, as studies often employed different methodologies to analyse semen. 

He also cautioned that semen quality did not necessarily correlate directly with male fertility.
“It should be noted that male reproductive health can be affected by many complex factors,” including lifestyle, the environment and concomitant diseases, he said. 

“More research is needed to enable sound guidance or policy advice concerning deteriorating semen quality.”

Poisoning the World

Contaminated food from China now entering the U.S. under the 'organic' label
By J. D. Heyes

The Chinese food production industry is the world's least-regulated and most corrupt, as has repeatedly been proven time and again. 

Now, it appears, there is no trusting anything that comes from China marked "organic."
Natural Health 365 reports that several foods within the country are so contaminated that Chinese citizens don't trust them. 

What's more, the countries that import these tainted foods are putting their citizens at risk.
U.S. Customs personnel often turn away food shipments from China because they contain unsavory additives and drug residues, are mislabeled, or are just generally filthy. 

Some Chinese food exporters have responded by labeling their products "organic," though they are far from it.
There are several factors at play which make Chinese claims of organic unreliable. 

First, environmental pollution from unrestrained and unregulated industrial growth has so polluted soil and waterways with toxic heavy metals that nothing grown in them is safe, much less organic. Also, there is so much fraudulent labeling and rampant corruption within the government and manufacturing sectors that it's not smart to trust what is put on packaging.
In fact, farmers in China use water that is replete with heavy metals, Natural Health 365 noted in a separate report. 

In addition, water used for irrigation also contains organic and inorganic substances and pollutants. Chinese "organic" food is so contaminated that a person could get ill just by handling some of it.
'Dirty water' is all there is
The report noted further: "This is reality – all of China's grains, vegetables and fruits are irrigated with untreated industrial wastewater. The Yellow River, which is considered unusable, supports major food producing areas in the northeast provinces."
Chinese farmers won't even eat the food they produce.

That's because it's clear that China's water pollution issues are so pronounced that it threatens the country's entire food supply.
Chinese farmers have said there is no available water for crops except "dirty water." 

As part of the country's industrial prowess, it is also one of the largest producers (and consumers) of fertilizers and pesticides, Water Politics reported.
The site noted further that as China's industrial might grows, so too does the level of contaminants in the country's water supply. 

Lakes, rivers, streams and falling water tables are becoming more polluted by the year.
In addition to man-made pollutants, animals produce about 90 percent of the organic pollutants and half of the nitrogen in China's water, say experts at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning. 

There are times when water is so polluted it turns black – yet it is still used to irrigate crops, and of course, that affects so-called organic farming operations as well.
These nine foods are particularly vulnerable to becoming tainted, Natural Health 365 noted:

1. Fish: Some 80 percent of the tilapia sold in the U.S. come from fish farms in China, as well as half the cod. Water pollution in China is a horrible problem, so any fish grown there are suspect.
2. Chicken: Poultry produced in China is very often plagued with illnesses like avian flu.
3. Apples and apple juice: Only recently has the U.S. moved to allow the importation of Chinese apples, though American producers grow plenty for the country and the world.
4. Rice: Though this is a staple in China and much of the rice in the U.S. comes from there, some of it has been found to be made of plastic, resin and potato.
5. Mushrooms: Some 34 percent of processed mushrooms come from China.
6. Salt: Some salt produced in China for industrial uses has made its way to American dinner tables.
7. Black pepper: One Chinese vendor was trying to pass off mud flakes as pepper.
8. Green peas: Phony peas have been found in China made of soy, green dye and other questionable substances.
9. Garlic: About one-third of all garlic in the U.S. comes from China.

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