The Diplomat
China’s State Council has released a ground-breaking draft proposal of a grain law that establishes legislation restricting research, field trials, production, sale, import and export of genetically engineered grain seeds. The draft stipulates that no organization or person can employ unauthorized GE technology in any major food product in China.
“This is actually a world-first initiative that deals with GE food legislation at state law level,” according to my colleague, Fang Lifeng, a food and agriculture campaigner with Greenpeace.
“There are currently too many loopholes and weak control over GE food and technology in China. This law needs to clarify what ‘relevant laws and regulations’ can be applied to regulate GE crops. We urge legislators to accelerate the legislation of Genetically Engineered Organisms Bio-safety Law, and also to enhance the supervision of GE food and other products. Otherwise, this law will only be paying lip service,” Fang warned.
The grain law will likely have significant ramifications for China’s rice, the country’s most important staple food. The origins of rice cultivation can be traced to the valleys of the Yangtze River, with some estimates suggesting cultivation began over 7,000 years ago. It dictates the lives of millions of farmers in the Chinese countryside and feeds over a billion Chinese citizens each year. And using experimental GE technology to meddle with such a widely eaten crop could spell disaster – ecologically, financially and for human health.
This latest announcement comes after a highly successful and complex seven year campaign by activists to keep GE rice out of the country’s food market.
In 2004, Greenpeace activists were in Yunnan, visiting farmers who employed traditional Chinese farming methods such as when they got wind that Chinese scientists had applied to commercialize four varieties of Chinese GE rice. While the announcement didn’t mean any immediate commercialization of GE rice – the rice would still have to pass many more stages of approval – it was a major step towards commercialization. “I was totally shocked,” said Sze Pang Cheung, now Campaign Director of Greenpeace.
Cheung and his team set about unraveling the complex web of players involved in the push to commercialize. “For a scientist to have a high level of credibility they need to be separated from approval bodies and industry,” Cheung says. “But in China, GE scientists are such a close knit gang that the people sitting on approval boards for research money, biosafety boards that approve product safety, the scientists at public research institutes, and those at biotech companies who plan to produce and profit from GE rice are either one and the same, or closely connected.”
Cheung says he also sent a team undercover to Wuhan, Hubei’s provincial capital, where they had heard rumors that GE rice was already being illegally farmed. The activists would ask around for any new strains of pest-resistant rice, buy a few bags of these, and test the samples back in their hotel rooms. The quick-testers came up positive. Farmers in the region were already unwittingly buying and growing these seeds, which meant GE rice was already being sold in China – completely illegally.
China is a country where money talks, nationalism is rampant and people take their food seriously. And it would be multi-national companies – not Chinese farmers – who would stand to profit from GE rice from technology and patents. Never before had a country’s staple food gone GE. Monsanto had tried and failed to commercialize GE wheat in Canada, and there were fears they were hoping China would become the first guinea pig, opening the gate to genetic experiments with staple crops.
All of these concerns – the tangled web of scientists with conflicting interests, the government’s proven inability to control GE from “infecting” the market, and the viable threat of national food security – were getting airplay in the Chinese media. Despite this, and the concerns of the public, by the end of 2009 it was looking all but inevitable that China’s rice would go GE. The government, long after the fact, announced that a secret multi-ministerial meeting had passed two GE rice lines even though they had not received biosafety certificates at the time.
With no time to lose, the campaign team stepped up its anti-GE message and received help from the most unlikely of sources: Chinese state magazine Outlook Weekly published a front-page GE-rice debate issue. Then Chinese politicians began raising GE doubts, followed by a string of Chinese celebrities including Mao Zedong’s daughter and the father of China’s hybrid rice, Yuan Longping. Several Chinese scholars signed a petition urging caution on GE rice and submitted it to the annual parliament meeting.
A media storm soon broke out: TV, magazines, newspapers, online media were all joining the debate. Greenpeace also exposed Wal-Mart for allegedly selling GE rice and filed a legal case against them. The team beamed a GE shopper’s guide to half a million Chinese consumers through mobile and Internet services. Chinese consumers joined the campaign, ringing up companies and demanding they go non-GE. Two huge corporations, Cofco and Yihai Kerry, made non-GE pledges and a string of supermarkets also pledged not to use GE ingredients in their own brands and with their fresh unpacked fruits, vegetables and grains.
The tide towards GE rice had made a remarkable reversal. In September 2011, China’s major financial weekly, the Economic Observer, quoted an information source close to the Agriculture Ministry saying that for the next 5 to 10 years, China had suspended the commercialization of GE rice. This latest announcement puts further restrictions on the growth of GE rice in the nation.
“China’s money must be spent on supporting food that is safe for human consumption and the production of which has taken into account environmental impacts,” Fang says. “And GE technology has clearly failed to do either.”
The Diplomat, February 2012.
Image © Greenpeace
The Diplomat
The week leading up to Chinese New Year is a period during which many Chinese are focused on their preparations to return home for the holidays. But unbeknownst to the citizens of the Southern Chinese city of Hechi, industrial waste discharge, containing high levels of cadmium, was also leeching into a 100-kilometer stretch of the Longjiang and Liujiang rivers in Guangxi Province.
Although cadmium contamination was reportedly detected in Hechi as early as January 15, the only specific information made public by Hechi officials was an official media release on January 19. The lack of concrete, reliable and very importantly detailed information impeded disaster relief efforts by city officials further down the river and also led to a panic induced rush by concerned citizens who packed out supermarkets in order to buy bottled water.
The reaction from local officials in downstream Liuzhou was considerably better: on January 23 they began releasing data on cadmium levels in the Liujiang River almost on an hourly basis, disseminating this information using social media. But the fact remains that at the pollution source, an inadequate system of monitoring and inspection of local industry impeded the ability to identify who the actual source of the pollution was.
“Knowledge is power,” and in this case, as with many environmental concerns in China, to have knowledge we first need data.
In 2010, Greenpeace began to suspect that factories along the Yangtze River and Pearl River Delta were releasing hazardous chemicals into China’s waterways. A team of investigators, including toxics campaigner Zhang Kai, were sent in to unearth the extent of the pollution and the culprits at hand. “Our investigators had to work undercover and conceal their identity. For example we had some workers pretend to apply for work at the factory so they could take photos of the plant secretly, and others gathered information by just chatting to factory workers,” Zhang Kai says.
Time and time again, the lack of data proved to be the biggest hurdle when it came to pinpointing the true state of China’s pollution.
“The most challenging parts were the investigations into the production process and the supply chain. This included investigating the effluent from the suppliers’ sewage pipes and the precise relationship between the brands and the suppliers. In Mainland China, factories don’t clearly mark their effluent pipes, so we needed to confirm which pipe belonged to which factory and then we needed to make at least five sampling trips for each factory pipe.”
“This was one of Greenpeace’s most complex investigations because the relationship between textile plants and the big brands was often opaque and it was vital that we established the relationship clearly.”
Previously, Greenpeace East Asia published a feature titled “Ten dirty tricks that factories play in China” that reveals just how sophisticated polluters are at concealing how much and how toxic their effluent is.
Despite the complexity of the investigation, Greenpeace were able to come to an extensive set of concrete conclusions that would eventually comprise two reports: “Dirty Laundry: Unraveling the corporate connections to toxic water pollution in China,” and “Dirty Laundry 2: Unraveling the toxic trail from pipes to products.”
Only then could a global campaign be rolled out involving thousands of concerned citizens and Greenpeace activists, both Chinese and overseas. The campaign would put pressure on some of the world’s biggest retail brands to phase out all hazardous chemicals by 2020. The brands that eventually came on board included heavyweights like Adidas, Puma, Nike, H&M and China’s own Li-Ning. Labels with another market share and pull to transform an entire textiles industry.
Head of toxics at Greenpeace East Asia, Ma Tianjie, is adamant that China’s public has an important role to play in improving environmental standards in their country. And key to this is information disclosure. An inventory of basic information covering who is discharging what, and by how much, will allow government and non-government agencies to trace the pollution back to polluters as well as public pressure on companies and their supply chain to improve their performance.
Ma Tianjie gives an example of the positive impacts stemming from transparency in China: “In August 2011, the ministry made an unprecedented move by releasing detailed pollution information on more than 1,900 lead-acid battery facilities across the country. It was the first time that information on an entire industry’s environmental performance was made public.”
“Reactions to the initiative were overwhelmingly positive. A close scrutiny of the data by the media, environmental NGOs and the public resulted in corrections and a dataset of improved quality, which would only help the ministry to better supervise the listed facilities,” Ma added. “Updated data were released again to the public in November. But no panic followed. Instead, what we got were improved data and an empowered public.”
The Diplomat, February 2012.
Image © Lu Guang / Greenpeace
Jetstar Magazine
We go in search of Sydney’s secret tastes of China.
Sydney is set to explode with firecrackering frivolity when, on 20 January, the Chinese New Year celebrations get under way. For two weeks the city will be alive with lion dances, night markets, acrobatic performances, dragon boat races, a twilight parade and more. Chinese New Year aside, in the city that boasts Australia’s largest Chinese population, one can find an array of Chinese experiences all year round.
Our morning of discovery begins at the Chinatown branch of International Wing Chun Academy. Wing Chun-style kung fu became world renowned after one of its students, Bruce Lee, made it big in the US. Instructor Jeffrey Macris first gives me a short history lesson.
“Wing Chun was developed over 300 years ago by a Buddhist nun called Ng Mui, in the Southern Shaolin temple. She named it after one of her best students, a girl called Yim Wing Chun who legend has it escaped an unwanted marriage betrothal by defeating her suitor in a martial arts fight.” He explains that Wing Chun emphasises economy of movement over brute force; when strategy is key the best fighter isn’t necessarily the strongest, or even the quickest, of the bunch.
At 10am, a bell rings and the class gives a respectful bow to three photos hanging on the wall depicting a long lineage of teachers. Jeffrey leads us with a graceful warm up of tai chi-like moves, before teaching several punches and kicks. I’m paired up with cute little 12-year-old Julia Lu who tells me she took up the art because, “It was something different. I really like it now!” Julia is half my height so I’m unconcerned; until, that is, she starts landing punches that take my breath away.
Kung fu is rewarded with lunch at Golden Century Seafood Restaurant. Nestled in the heart of Chinatown, the restaurant features a wall of tanks in which swim over a hundred prawns, lobsters, crabs, abalone, fish and other underwater delights all hinting at the dining experience on offer ’til as late as 4am.
I order signature dishes like the fleshy pippies in their fan-shells, doused with homemade XO sauce. The barbecue pork is a lovely, dark pink colour, finished with a sticky glaze. I also try a steamed scallop sitting royally in the centre of a gorgeous, purple shell. Then lick my fingers through the salt and pepper deep-fried mud crab.
A spot of culture is in order, so it’s off to the White Rabbit Gallery near Central Station. The gallery’s four floors house the private collection of contemporary Chinese art enthusiast Judith Neilson. It’s so large the gallery only shows a fraction at any one time, and has been rehung twice a year since opening in 2009. There’s an impressive mixture of paintings, sculptures and digital media works, by everyone from the young to more established artists such as the famed Ai Wei Wei, whose oily black puddles of porcelain grace the second floor.
Next stop is Bourke Street’s intimate Zensation Tea House. Their tea appreciation menu begins with a hibiscus blossom tea that’s served slightly chilled — perfect to cleanse the palette. The Silver Needle, a feminine and elegant pale tea, follows. Raymond Leung, the teahouse owner, opens up a tea leaf for me, revealing a bud and two springy leaves with faint, silver fur. Much like wine, Chinese tea can run up to thousands of dollars, depending on their label and season.
For the Milky Oolong, Leung invites me to a tea ceremony. I quietly watch him wash the cups and pour the tea with much flourish. He implores me to “flip” my male “yang” cup, pouring the tea into the rounder, female, “yin” cup. As I sip, a milky taste with hints of coconut fills my mouth.
Evening sets and Mah Jong Room beckons. The décor is modern with borrowed elements from the past: Chinese antique-style furniture, private dining rooms with kitsch 60s-style wallpaper and furnishings, black- and-white photos of Beijing’s iconic hutong (alleyways) and a dash of old-school Shanghai glamour for good measure.
While the food and cocktail menu is similarly sophisticated, the restaurant’s draw card is the chance to play mah jong, a Chinese favourite. A regular, Mike Smith, says: “It’s a great afternoon learning how to play. I lived in Asia for years and would hear the clacking of the tiles on my way home from work each night. I can’t believe it took me so long to learn!”
TAKE ME THERE
- GOLDEN CENTURY SEAFOOD RESTAURANT 393–399 Sussex St, Sydney, tel: +61 (2) 9212 3901
- INTERNATIONAL WING CHUN ACADEMY 1st Floor, 355 Sussex St, Sydney, tel: +61 (2) 9264 2712
- MAH JONG ROOM 312 Crown St, Surry Hills, tel: +61 (2) 9361 3985
- WHITE RABBIT GALLERY 30 Balfour St, Chippendale, tel: +61 (2) 8399 2867
- ZENSATION TEA HOUSE 656 Bourke St, Redfern, tel: +61 (2) 9319 2788
Jetstar Magazine, January 2012.
Image (cc) eddy_
ninemsn
It’s time to whip out the hunting hat, a pair of binoculars and a healthy lack of skepticism as we trot across the globe in search of some of the fabled creatures rumoured to grace our lands. Cynical, logic-loving non-believers may throw debunkings and “scientific fact” in your face, but we ask who doesn’t want to the indulge in the little piece of magic these places are offering?
Persephone Magazine
Blinging out the beloved bike, Christmas 2011.
A couple of years ago I had a bicycle accident that left me on the ground with my foot cut open like a knife had sliced right through it. I started screaming at the sight of my pink muscle peeking through and yellow skin curling at the edges. I had the accident because at the time, I couldn’t ride a bicycle but had tried anyway, and consequently ended up having a little ‘disagreement’ with a huge semi-trailer hurtling down the highway.
