For 89 years the great black furnaces and mills of the Beijing Capital Iron
and Steel Company - commonly known as Shougang - have been churning out
pipes, plates and girders on the edge of the Chinese capital.
For nine decades, as it has transformed trainloads of iron ore into steel for
everything from Peoples' Liberation Army tanks to the new Olympic stadium,
this flagship of Chinese heavy industry has also been blanketing Beijing in
soot, dust and noxious chemicals.
In recent times the chimneys of its huge plant 11 miles (18km) west of
Tiananmen Square have spewed forth 18,000 tonnes of particulate dust a year
- the equivalent of 100 average-sized factories - and equally alarming
quantities of sulphur dioxide, making it Beijing's worst polluter.
Not anymore. This week The Times and other media organisations were
given rare access to the huge plant. An acrid smell still hung over the
infernal tangle of stacks, pipes, sheds, gangways, pylons, tanks, cooling
ponds, roads and railway lines but of the 120,000 workers who laboured in
this great industrial relic during its late 20th-century glory years there
was scarcely a sign.
Blast Furnace No 4, which is as large as the dome of St Paul's and produced 43
million tonnes of steel between 1972 and 2007, stood in eerie silence. In
the echoing vastness of Steel Mill No 3, which would accommodate King's
Cross station two or three times over, poignant banners thanked ghostly
workers for their efforts.
All but one of Shougang's four furnaces have been shut down. Only one of its
three steel mills is open. Production in the third quarter of 2008 will be
only 27 per cent of capacity. Soon Shougang will move steel production to a
new site 140 miles away on Bohai Bay, but it took the Government's promise
to provide a clean environment for the Olympic Games to prise such a big and
powerful company from the capital.
“I'm happy we can do our part to help present a great Olympics,” Zhu Jimin,
the president of Shougang, said.
Moving Shougang's Beijing plant is like moving Heathrow, with all its
attendant noise pollution, to the Essex marshes but it is one small part of
the capital's pre-Olympic effort to reduce its pollution faster and further
than any other city in the world.
It has spent between 70 and 140 billion yuan (£5 billion and £10 billion) on
the attempt, and it helps to have an authoritarian Government.
From tomorrow nearly half of the 3.3 million cars in Beijing will be banned
from the roads each day. In the capital and four surrounding provinces an
estimated 1,100 manufacturers of everything from cement and petrochemicals
to coke and corn starch will suspend production until September, with tens
of thousands of workers laid off on half pay.
Hundreds of the non-Olympic construction sites in the capital are halting work
or have been enveloped in sheeting. Heavy lorries and high-emission vehicles
are barred from the capital. Beijing has retired or refitted 47,000 taxis
and 7,000 old diesel buses, and introduced a fleet of 3,795 natural
gas-powered buses.
It has tightened emission standards for 1,265 petrol stations and 1,026 oil
tankers. It has built three new subway lines and an airport link. It has
converted almost all its 16,300 coal-fired boilers to clean fuels. It has
planted literally millions of trees and created a huge Olympic Green Forest
Park on a mountain 45 miles north of the city to ward off dust storms.
Environmental experts expect these drastic measures to work. “They should be
able to clear the air for the Olympics”, said Alex Wang, senior attorney at
the Natural Resources Defence Council in Beijing. He adds: “This does not
change the fact that China faces some of the greatest environmental
challenges of any country.
“It is crucial that after the Olympics are done and gone, China keeps its eyes
on the prize and invests even more in the environment, not just in Beijing
but across all of China.”
He recalls that the drastic measures Los Angeles took to curb pollution for
the 1984 Olympics were so successful that they prompted the city to make
permanent changes. “If Beijing sees the same dramatic conversion to clear
air and blue skies during the Olympics, our best hope is that it will spur
leaders in China to accelerate the types of long-term changes needed to keep
the air clean here,” he says.
Shougang's move offers at least a hint of encouragement. To replace its
Beijing works it is building a 68 billion yuan state-of-the-art plant
breathtaking in its scale and ambition.
To reach the site you cross miles of desolate land at Caofeidian, on the coast
of Hebei province, that is being reclaimed from the sea by an army of
bulldozers, diggers, pumps and piledrivers. This will soon form a 140sqmile
“park” earmarked for power stations, petrochemical plants and other heavy
industries that will be expected to meet tough environmental standards.
Nearly 40,000 workers began work on the Shougang plant in March last year.
Already an orderly mini-city of vast sheds, office buildings and apartment
blocks, even a port, is rising on what were, until recently, tidal flats.
Steel production will commence in October - only 20 months after
construction started - and by 2010 two giant furnaces, both double the size
of the ones in Beijing, will be helping to produce ten million tonnes of
steel a year for an insatiable Chinese market.
Mr Zhu says of the 60,000 to 70,000 employees still working at Shougang's
Beijing plant, about 19,000 will be transferred to Caofeidian, periodically
commuting back to their families in Beijing, while 24,000 will retire or
take early retirement and 21,000 will be trained for other jobs.
Environmental experts are cautious about the significance of Shougang's move.
“Chinese cities have long had a policy of moving polluting factories outside
the city's environs. Shougang is special only in that it is so large and
complex and because it is moving to an entirely different province,” says
Liz Economy, director of Asia studies at the council on foreign relations in
New York.
But Ma Jun, director of Beijing's Institute of Public and Environmental
Affairs, sees the Shougang move as part of the Government's shift away from
a policy of “almost development at whatever cost” to one of more sustainable
and balanced development, though he cautions that “the real challenge is to
translate this new policy into action”.
Mr Ma notes that the Government has pledged to increase energy efficiency by
20 per cent, and reduce pollution by 10 per cent, within five years. By that
time the old Shougang steelworks in Beijing will have been demolished to
make way, among other things, for an industrial museum.
Something in the air
Madrid, 2012 The city’s Madrid’s bid for the 2012 Olympics failed, in
part, because of protests by environmental groups in 2004. Ecologistas en
Acción claimed that it was the most-polluted city in Europe and not suitable
to host the Games
Athens, 2004 On a scale of 0-4, WWF rated the environment surrounding
the Athens Olympics at “a very disappointing” 0.77. More than 20 per cent of
US athletes suffered breathing difficulties because of the city’s smog
Los Angeles, 1984 Surrounding factories were asked to cut production by
up to 20 per cent to combat the 12,000 tonnes of emissions drifting into the
city every day. Steve Ovett, the British athlete, collapsed with respiratory
problems after the 800m final
Mexico City, 1968 Several teams trained elsewhere in the run-up final
weeks before the to the Olympics because of health concerns about the heavy
pollution. Fumes Pollution from cars alone had reduced visibility from an
average of 16km in the 1930s to less than 4km by 1968
St Louis, 1904 Only 14 of the 32 marathon runners completed the course
through the city’s dusty streets. Eight miles short of the finishing line,
William Garcia, an American runner, collapsed with a gastric haemorrhage
from swallowing dust
London, 1908 Londoners coined the term “smog” in 1905 to describe the
permanent suspended pollution of smoke and sulphur dioxide from coal fires
that hung over the city
France, 1900 The Olympics had such a low profile that swimming and
diving took place in the polluted Seine
Source: Times archives
