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China Says Serious Polluters Will Get the Death Penalty
formaggio writes "According to the Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese government is now allowing courts to punish those who commit environment crimes with the death penalty. The new judicial interpretation comes in the wake of several serious environmental problems that have hit the country over the last few months, including dangerous levels of air pollution, a river full of dead pigs, and other development projects that have imperiled public health."
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The Chinese can't even effectively fine polluters and now there's talk of capital punishment for polluting? What next? Decimate school children when their class average isn't up to par because the instructor's scolding has no effect?
There are several key problems here that are the real underlying problems: 1) the Chinese government is not unified in their vision of the environment and I'm talking differences spanning across provincial & federal levels as well as between federal ministries. 2) they collectively refuse to accept that their abuse of natural resources is part of their winning equation against other capitalist nation states and, as a consequence, no one can talk about how this will hurt their bottom line even though several parts of the government realize it (we pay them to import our pollution). 3) there is widespread corruption at all levels which is why fining is ineffective -- it's so bad that I'm sure if capital punishment is meted out, it will be given to the fork lift operator who dumped those pig carcasses in the river after his supervisor told him to "make them disappear or you'll disappear." No one up the chain will be held accountable and if they are, they need only grease some local wheels and they can consider themselves shielded.
It's disgusting and it's why I tell people where they can shove it when they complain that the EPA is destroying jobs. It's not perfect but we have to cling to things that kind of work when so many other "solutions" are abysmal failures.
The Chinese government is threatening to kill polluters but they can't see that they're part of and dependent on and benefiting from a system of habitual polluting. Increasing the impact of the punishment is a poor and maybe even more detrimental substitution for actually bringing to justice the true criminals up and down their ranks.
My work here is dung.
Nah, this will be reserved for people who do not have sufficient political connections...or more likely for people who fall out of favor with the political powers that be.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If you accept the legitimacy of the death penalty(obviously, if you don't, that's another story, and you aren't likely to approve of it for this purpose, or any other) serious pollution is actually highly logical:
The death penalty is usually assessed in cases of murder(esp. premeditated) or grievous bodily harm(especially premeditated or particularly gruesome in some way).
Well, guess what? Serious pollution is usually called 'serious' because it does, albeit at some epidemiological remove, cause some mixture of death and serious chronic health impairment, sometimes also nasty birth defects and the like.
It doesn't have the emotional punch of a nice juicy murder or a photogenic teenager getting raped or something; but pollution is a totally logical thing to punish by death(if you accept the traditional uses of the death penalty). Probably even better, in fact, because polluters are highly likely to be committing their crimes out of pure greed, not out of fear, passion, or other possible-to-rehabilitate/unlikely to reoffend motive.
I second this. I spend a good portion of graduate school in Beijing and Manchuria, and you hit the nail on the head. The only people who will pay the price for pollution are the dumb schmucks whose guanxi is not powerful enough to shield them from scapegoating.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Holy bad example, Batman! A guy who robs a liquor store for $100 doesn't get 20 years for stealing $100. He gets 20 years for pointing a gun at the liquor store attendant and threatening his life for personal gain. Possibly as a repeat offender.
What a lot of commenters don't seem to get is that the sort of pollution that hardcore offenders engage in over there often results in human deaths. So the potential for punishment is merely being brought in line with the crime. You won't deter serious polluters with a fine.
That said, sure, many crimes are not proportional to their sentences. No news here. While we're making improbable demands, i think the act of spitting chewing gum on the street or sidewalk should be treated as vandalism, and enforced accordingly.
Connected with who in the PRC?
China is not immune to politics. Being aligned with the wrong person at the wrong time, you can end up being made a high profile example.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
China is not immune to politics. Being aligned with the wrong person at the wrong time, you can end up being made a high profile example.
Exactly. This is the whole point of the legislation. Now they can use "pollution" as an excuse to purge political enemies, while claiming to be "tough" on the environment.
Excessively harsh penalties tend to be counter-productive because they are almost never carried out, thus resulting in a culture of impunity. A $5 fine for littering would be far more effective.