Video 'Under the Dome' Sounds Environmental Alarm Bell

With national deputies and members of China's top political advisory and legislative bodies gathering for their annual meetings in Beijing, Chai Jing, a former China Central Television news anchor, has helped set agenda of discussions for them in the next two weeks with her self-funded video Under the Dome, which investigates China's appalling smog and pollution.

Chai talked to scientists and researchers and concluded that the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, are to blame for the country's severe smog. She also explored the consequences of the air pollution and ways to address it.

The 100-minute video, which has been widely circulated online has provoked much comment, with some saying it has helped raise the awareness of ordinary Chinese and mobilized them to live simply to help reduce the air pollution.

Chai has hooked the audiences not only by the topic, which is related to everybody's daily life, but also by her own experiences. Immediately after she gave birth to her daughter, before she even have a chance to look at her, the baby had to undergo an operation for a tumor.

In an interview, Chai said: "If I am alone, I have life of decades. But I have a daughter and this is about life continuity." This sense of continuity and responsibility encouraged her to produce the investigation piece.

The environmental problems Chai examines in the video have already put the end to high-speed growth of China. For decades, China's economy expanded at sizzling two-digit rates. But even before Premier Li Keqiang announces his government's 2015 GDP target when he kicks off this year's session of the National People's Congress, the media has already speculated on the possibility that the number will be less than the 7.4 percent realized last year. The leadership have said that the country has changed gears and this slower growth is the "new normal".

People in China can easily see for themselves the environmental pressures behind this gearchange. But in the West, while commentators point accusing fingers at China's environmental pollution, they worry about the impact its slower growth will have on the global economy. They are prone to look at economic growth and the environmental issues as separate, even though as early as the 1970s people in the West were already warning that the finite resources, industrial pollution and increase of population could not sustain the economic growth.

In fact, with an economic output in 2014 of more than $10 trillion, twice as large as that of Japan, though still behind the US, China's growth rate of 7.4 percent is more or less equal to 10 percent growth in the past.

More importantly, the quality of growth matters to China. A better and improved environment, fresh air and clean water are essential for people's well-being and sustainable growth in the future. In this regard, China is now at the tipping point. If there is no progress in the coming five years, the consequences are likely to irreversible, which is the stark warning Chai has given the top political advisory and legislative bodies ahead of their sessions.

(Source: China Daily)