China's Conflict on Environmental Compliance

By Marc Castro

Apr 01, 2013 08:15 AM EDT

One story goes, as the decision to move Zijin Mining Group headquarters to a distance of 270 kilometers from its current location in Shanghang, a local government official went to see the chairman of the company, Chen Jinghe.

The official said, "If you want to move, you'll have to move the Zijin Mountain to to Xiamen as well." This refers to the vast mine in the mountain that booseted the company to become the top gold producer and copper miner in all of China. It is also a microcosm of the anxiety felt by regional governments in the face of changes to comply with environmental regulations. 

This is also a stage set for the conflict between the Beijing central government, curretnly pressured to improve environmental conditons and the provincial or even local bureaucracies andt state owned companies that protect one another, even in the face of clear pollutant devastation in the region. 

In Shanghang province just recently when a tailings dam burst contaminating the Ting river with 9,100 cubic meters of toxic sludge, the death of 4 million fish needed to be highlighted before any admission of any problem had occurred. This prompted allegations of cover-ups by mining officials and local executives to prevent the company from being shut down. Should this happen, the local economy would certainly die too.

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