The most heavily-polluting vendors and enterprises in Lanshan District, Linyi City, Shandong Province were forced to stop trading due to environmental protection measures, which aroused public indignation. Local people reported the sweeping measures to central environmental authorities, China Central Television (CCTV) reported.
The report said that the suspended businesses included some restaurants, over 400 building materials enterprises and 25 freight parking lots. The district is the country's largest base of panel manufacturing and trading.
Since the control of air pollution in Linyi City is not effective in recent years, and the city’s air quality index ranks 10th from the bottom among 168 key cities in the country, Linyi government officials have been criticized by the Shandong Provincial Committee and the Shandong Provincial government.
Under these circumstances, officials in Lanshan District are anxious to deal with air pollution as well as burnish local officials’ political performance. Thus, they applied one-size-fits-all measures to sweep away environmental problems. Even many restaurants and enterprises which have already installed proper environmental protection equipment required have been forced to suspend trading.
However, the unilateral action taken influenced the normal life of local residents. In this regard, local people reported the case to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), and on August 29, the MEE organized the team to probe into Lanshan District’s one-size-fits-all measures.
Recently, the MEE criticized Lanshan District government, saying that they were anxious to achieve quick success and get instant benefits.
One-size-fits-all measures applied to local environmental protection only show that local government is just trying show how good it is at environmental protection, wrote Xie Jun, a commentator for the Zhejiang-based Qianjiang Evening News. Instead, the show reveals that the local government used to do too little in environmental protection and rushed to do too much in a wrong way when there was big pressure from above. Lanshan's case is not the only one that happened around the country, Xie said.
While environmental protection measures should be applied in accordance with specific problems, the panel production sector in Lanshan needs upgrading, Xie added.
Old Version
