"From the late 1990's onwards, the research of children and childhoods has gradually become a topic of study in the social sciences. Children have increasingly come into the limelight as culture makers and not just as extensions to the study of adults. At the same time, African children have remained in the margins of such studies despite the fact that over forty percent of Africans are under the age of fifteen.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/376/48440china.jpgChina’s media and official reaction to the devastating Sichuan earthquake has been given generally positive coverage by Western media and governments, writes Stephen Marks. It may be a coincidence, but the earthquake and the allegedly more open reaction happen to follow soon after the coming into force of sweeping new Chinese government regulations on transparency - which could be a useful lever for activists seeking greater transparency in tracking the impact of China’s African footprint.

China’s media and official reaction to the devastating Sichuan earthquake has been given generally positive coverage by Western media and governments - both by contrast with the Burmese military junta’s handling of the recent floods, and also with Beijing’s reaction to previous natural disasters.

The Shanghai-based blog reviews and discusses the generally favourable global and Western reaction.

It may be a coincidence, but the earthquake and the allegedly more open reaction happen to follow soon after the coming into force of sweeping new Chinese government regulations on transparency - which could be a useful lever for activists seeking greater transparency in tracking the impact of China’s African footprint.

May 1 saw the entry into force of the Measures on Open Environmental Information (for Trial Implementation), issued by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection. According to Ma Jun, Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Chinese environmental NGO, ‘the measures require environment agencies to disclose 17 different kinds of environmental information, including regional environmental quality, amounts of discharge and the records of polluters in various regions’.

The categories of information which the new measures require to be made available to the public include:

- A list of enterprises violating discharge standards or exceeding discharge quota limits;

- Letters, visits and complaints filed about pollution caused by enterprises; and the result of their disposal;

-Administrative punishments, reviews, lawsuits and enforcement;

- A list of enterprises causing major and extremely large pollution accidents and incidents;

- Enterprises that refuse to comply with the effective administrative punishment decisions.

Enterprises listed for environmental violations must publish detailed discharge data within 30 days, on pain of a fine, and members of the public have a legal right to require environmental agencies to publish the list of polluting firms.

In addition, enterprises are encouraged to publish a much wider range of information regarding their environmental impact, and firms agreeing to do so will be rewarded with priority in the allocation of contracts for government-funded environmental projects.

All of which dovetails significantly with the conclusions reached last month in Nairobi at a strategy meeting of some 20 civil society activists and researchers from across Africa organised by Fahamu to discuss China’s growing African involvement.

A central theme to emerge from the meeting was the lack of direct links between Chinese and African civil society; While most African civil society groups are not explicitly concerned with China (and vice-versa) they are very much concerned with issues with a strong China dimension, and high on that list are issues connected with the environment.

Could African civil society groups pressure Chinese companies in Africa to raise their game, in ways which Chinese activists could use as leverage back home? This possibility might well be reversed if the new Chinese regulations prove to have teeth - African campaigners could press Chinese firms to be as open in Africa as they may yet be required to be in China.

The Chinese Government has a declared policy that where local laws are lacking or deficient, Chinese companies should abide by the relevant Chinese legislation. So participants at the Nairobi meeting agreed that better knowledge of China's own domestic laws, both on environmental regulation and on issues of employee rights and broader social responsibility, would help.

If the new regulations on disclosure prove to have teeth they could prove a useful basis for closer co-operation between environmental activists in China and in Africa. But how effective are the new rules likely to prove in practice?

As Ma Jun points out ‘It is well-known that there is weak enforcement of laws and regulations in China. As a law that reflects new thinking, the implementation of the measures is expected to be even more challenging’.

On the plus side, the regulations are launched by the energetic and radical Environment Minister Pan Yue whose State Environmental Protection Administration [SEPA] has since the last Party Congress, been officially retitled and promoted to the status of Ministry of Environmental Protection [MEP].

Pan Yue is on record as connecting China’s environmental crisis with the uncritical adoption of Western capitalist models of industrialisation, and the consequent widening of .

So it is not surprising that his Ministry was among the first to issue .

Which brings us back to the issue of government and media reaction to the earthquake crisis. Some of the positive Western comment has explicitly linked the greater openness about the scale of the disaster and even of inadequacies in the response, to the new directives on openness - Financial Times reported last week that:

‘In spite of wall-to-wall coverage of the earthquake in Sichuan province, the ruling Communist Party has been working hard to shape the news.

'A meeting of the party’s most powerful propaganda officials on Tuesday stressed the importance of “correct guidance of public opinion” and ordered a strengthening of political consciousness among journalists.

'All frontline coverage of the disaster should “uphold unity and encourage stability” while “giving precedence to positive propaganda”, ordered Li Changchun, a member of the party’s supreme Politburo standing committee, the People’s Daily reported.’

Just what these central edicts will mean in practice is still not clear. In the same issue of the Financial Times Mure Dickie analysed the implications in a piece headed China Media Project [CMP] at Hong Kong University reports that:

‘CMP has confirmed with sources inside China’s media that the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department (...) has issued “numerous” directives on coverage of the Sichuan earthquake, including a directive against “critical reporting” on the disaster. The general atmosphere for coverage, however, seems to remain relatively open. While media have been instructed to follow the lead of central party media – Xinhua News Agency, CCTV and company – regional commercial media can and are, for the moment, pursuing the story with intensity.’

CMP illustrates the point with a comparison of the coverage in the official Xinhuanet, site of the official Xinhua news agency, and Caijing, the leading independent business and current affairs magazine.

So where does that leave us? Central government agencies that issue commendable regulations, which will not be implemented by sluggish and self-interested officials unless, perhaps, they are forced to by energetic popular pressure. And politicians who encourage press openness - as long as it is ‘positive’ and avoids ‘irresponsible sensationalism’.

Sound familiar? Clearly Chinese and African civil society activists will have a lot of common experiences to share in future.

*Stephen Marks is research associate with Fahamu.

**Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

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