Eye on China: A chemical leak highlights two facts

The news of the recent petrochemical disaster at China's Jilin city in Jilin province has raised interesting issues.

First, it confirms what environmentalists have long been predicting, that China is indeed ripe for environmental disasters.

What happened just 320km from the densely populated city of Harbin, was the stuff of disaster movies. Having your water supplies wiped out through chemical contamination from the region's largest factory is surely the stuff of nightmares.

Second, the accident reflects the problems of control in China. The bureaucratic rank of the general manager of the plant was higher than that of the city mayor's.

What does this mean? Well, the plant manager and the city mayor have the same boss, the central Government back in Beijing.

The city mayor can hardly enforce health, safety and regulatory standards on the plant's manager, not just because he's outranked but also because the company's operations in the city account for half the city's gross domestic product.

You are not going to mess with the entity that provides your constituents with jobs, schools and hospital care. At least, not in a sector like the northeast which is going through painful economic restructuring.

The city mayor would have to appeal to the next level up. That would be to the Jilin provincial governor, to call the plant to order.

But CNPC, the owner of the plant through its majority control of PetroChina, could also call on its senior officials for back-up.

That's because the company's bureaucratic structure reflects that of the city and provincial governments.

Ultimately, it would take Ma Kai himself, the top man at the National Development and Reform Commission, one of China's most powerful ministries, to ensure that CNPC respects the rules.

Only he could outrank the CNPC's chairman, who is so powerful that he has the same bureaucratic rank as Ma Kai's second in command.

In the meantime, the CNPC chairman could safely ignore any complaints issuing from the humble bureau-level reform commission unit responsible for energy in China.

That a situation should arise where a company is deliberately made more powerful than a city government is the product of China's preference for huge state-owned enterprises.

The theory behind these giants is that they need special privileges to compete against foreign entrants.

CNPC and its Hong-Kong listed unit, PetroChina, were created by giving them a monopoly of the sum total of the country's onshore oil assets, operating directly under the central Beijing Government.

In the process, they outrank not just provincial companies but even provincial governments.

A couple of days ago, China's No 2, Wen Jiabao, showed up at the scene of the disaster. This shows the Government is serious about rectifying the problem - but it also shows just how rigid and inflexible the system is.

The problem should have been fixed long ago by the officials on the ground in Jilin. It shouldn't take a visit by China's second most powerful leader.

The other crucial issue raised by the incident is the role of the press. Many Chinese officials blame the panic that hit the city on news reports.

Foreign and domestic journalists retort that there would have been no panic if the Government was open about the extent of the disaster in the first place.

Journalists argue that people panic in an environment where accurate information is hard to find. That's why the rumour of an imminent earthquake sent people streaming out of the city.

Chinese officials don't see it that way. Steeped in the tradition of a powerful, all-knowing state, their take on the situation is that keeping the population informed will only cause confusion and panic. What underpins this view is a low opinion of China's population by its rulers.

"They [the people] are stupid, superstitious and uncultured. We cannot trust them to make the correct decisions - we must guide them," one official put it to me in all sincerity.

To a Westerner, this sounds like a recipe for disaster - but wait: there is another motive for the cover-ups which Western observers don't always grasp: fear.

"The population is so huge and unstable that a mass panic could literally bring the country down. This is a serious concern," the official said.

It is the Chinese history of large and terminally violent mass uprisings which really underpins the country's attitude towards handling the "truth". Most foreign journalists come from relatively peaceful societies, but China was being torn apart by near-civil war just 30 years ago during the Cultural Revolution.

Fair enough. But when a government exists whose relationship to its people is marked by such contempt and terror, officials would do well to ponder what kind of society they have brought into being.

* The writer remains anonymous to protect his position in China.