By XU YING & HAO XUE

MA’ANSHAN, dubbed “City of Iron,” is on the south bank of the Yangtze River in eastern Anhui Province, bordering Jiangsu Province. One of the city’s most impressive features is its clean environment. “We do not allow pollution-generating projects in our city, no matter how profitable they might be,” says Ding Haizhong, municipal CPC secretary of Ma’anshan. Environmental protection is the number-one priority in Ma’anshan city.

Development and Environment Equally Important

The central government designated Ma’anshan an iron and steel production base in the 1950s. In the past four decades, it has become the industrial city with a difference – its beautiful environment has made it known as a “garden-like city.”

As in many other cities in China, rapid industrial development caused environmental and ecological degradation at Ma’anshan’s early stages of development. However, the city’s leaders soon realized the problem, and decided to focus on low natural resource consumption, high-tech industries that generate high profits – with minimal environmental pollution. At the turn of the millennium, the municipal government further adjusted its industrial structure, replacing obsolete machinery and technology, and investing over 3 billion yuan in eliminating sources of pollution. Ma’anshan has thus successfully developed its economy while protecting the environment.

In 2004, Ma’anshan city chalked up GDP of 26.1 billion yuan, with per capita GDP surpassing 20,000 yuan. Fiscal revenue last year totaled 4.58 billion yuan. Farmers earned average net incomes of 3,910 yuan, and the average disposable income for urban residents topped 10,000 yuan. In terms of economic growth, Ma’anshan has led the pack among Anhui cities since the mid-1980s. And with GDP growing at over 10 percent in recent years, the local government has been able to keep the environment clean. In 2004, Ma’anshan’s air quality saw great improvements, with green coverage of 9 square meters and 43 percent per capita green space. Such excellent conditions have earned Ma’anshan several national and international accolades, including “State Sanitary Model City”, “National Garden-like City”, “Excellent Tourism City”, “China Residential Environment Model Award” and the United Nations’ “Dubai International Award for Best Practices to Improve The Living Environment (DIABP).” For an industrial city that churns out some 8 million tons of steel every year, maintaining such a pleasant environment is no mean feat.

A Model of Environmental Protection

Since the beginning of the millennium, Ma’anshan has speeded up its reform and development, and the local government has paid even more attention to environmental protection. In June 2001 it set itself the goal of becoming a national model city for environmental protection. Over the past three years, Ma’anshan’s residents and local government organizations have worked hard to realize this goal. The municipal government has seized the opportunity to help the people by removing noise and dust from their living environment, and giving them fresh air to breath. Environmental protection tasks at both county and district levels are assessed on an annual basis. Special environmental supervision teams have been put together to monitor the situation, and to punish polluters. The three main sources of pollution are industrial factories, automobile exhaust and coal-fuelled stoves. The municipal government has issued three papers on bringing these sources of pollution under control and minimizing their harmful effects on the environment. Meanwhile, local environmental protection departments have introduced 24-hour telephone hotlines to deal with complaints from the public and to tackle these problems. In 2004, the municipal government cleaned up the 1-square-kilometer Yushan Lake, at a cost of 180 million yuan, by diverting water from the Yangtze River and Nanhu Lake to Yushan Lake in a 6.9-kilometer-long channel. Another 110 million yuan was spent on a project to clear silt deposits from the Yushan Lake area, and the newly constructed 150 million yuan Second Sewage Treatment Plant has passed a trial operation, bringing the city’s sewage treatment capacity to more than 60 percent. While tackling old pollution sources, the municipal government has also strictly examined new projects. Since 2001, 145 project proposals have been rejected, on grounds that they cause pollution, environmental degradation or are against national industrial policy. In 2004, a questionnaire on environmental protection was distributed among People’s Congress deputies and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference members in Ma’anshan. The results showed that 96.9 percent of them considered the municipal government paid enough attention to environmental protection, 94 percent were satisfied with the city’s environmental situation, and 95 percent were content with the work carried out by local environmental protection departments.

Ecological City the New Aim

“A city with a poor ecological environment cannot achieve sustainable development, cannot improve its standard of living, or keep pace with the current modernization trend,” says Ma’anshan mayor Yao Yuzhou, who has always placed environmental protection at the top of his agenda, “The iron and steel industry is the pillar industry of our city, and ecological construction is our winning card.”
Ma’anshan’s solid economic, social and environmental foundation led Anhui Province to designate the city one of its first “demonstration bases in ecological construction.” To coordinate with the provincial government’s work, Ma’anshan’s municipal government has set up an ecological working committee. The committee formulated the Ma’anshan Ecologically Friendly City Construction Plan to adjust its industrial structures and promote more environmentally friendly industries, enterprises and communities in the city. Meanwhile, it also encouraged the surrounding villages to revamp according to the Ma’anshan ecological construction program. According to its development plan, Ma’anshan will be transformed into a fully modernized city within 10 to 15 years, with an urban area of more than 100 square kilometers and a population of over 1 million. Ma’anshan municipal government says it is determined to boost the economy and improve its people’s living standard, while sticking to environmentally-friendly policies on its road to prosperity and sustainable development.