By Zhu Yihong
Smog over Shanghai. Source: John Chandler’s flickr photostream, used under a creative commons license.
Environmental issues in China are intertwined with the struggle within the energy sector, the back-and forth between the public and the authorities, and broad institutional reform. The recent case of Chai Jing and her film, “Under the Dome: Investigating China’s Smog,” illustrates this point.
On February 28, 2015, independent Chinese media professional Chai Jing launched her self-produced documentary, “Under the Dome.” Chai is a Chinese journalist, television host, and author. She joined China Central Television (CCTV) in 2001 and became well-known for her coverage of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crisis in various areas around China in 2003. Chai left CCTV in early 2014.
In the documentary, Chai begins the narrative with her daughter, who was diagnosed with a benign tumor at birth, which she implicitly links to the smog. In the 103-minute video, she employs interviews, statistics and lessons from developed countries to answer questions about the origins of smog and potential solutions.
The documentary was first launched on an official media platform, and received resounding praise from the general public and official Chinese media outlets. Within 48 hours, the film got more than 200 million hits.
The attention that the documentary has drawn reveals the increasing awareness of environmental issues among Chinese people. The average person can feel the environment deteriorating in their daily lives. The smog problem and the word “PM2.5” have exploded in China since about 2011 when the U.S. embassy in China, celebrities, and public opinion leaders became vocal about the subject online and on social media platforms such as Weibo. This course of events successfully pushed the Chinese government to adopt the PM2.5 monitoring system in various areas, but without more solid environmental policy steps, it ended with a Weibo crackdown.
The documentary responds to the demands of the common people and raised a lot of sympathy. However, as its impact grew, Chai’s research methods received criticism for being unscientific. Moreover, as people found out that her daughter was born in the United States and that Chai was a long-time smoker, viewers began questioning the implicit link between the baby’s disease and the smog in China.
Though Chai has emphasized that it was her personal resentment toward the smog that inspired her to make this film, others speculate about her relationship with high officials. Some have accused her of becoming involved in the power struggle within the energy sector because the documentary seems specifically critical about one of the state owned oil companies, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). The documentary also favors the natural gas industry over the coal industry. The documentary did have economic implications — stock prices of the environmentally friendly companies surged right after the release of the documentary.
As the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, often referred to as the “two sessions,” approached, there were signs that the authorities wanted to reduce the amount of discussion on Chai and her film – People’s Net deleted their interview with Chai and a leaked file online showed that the authorities ordered the media to stop reporting on Chai and her film. The documentary was ultimately banned by the government on March 6, the second day of the two sessions. The wide-ranging netizen discourse about the documentary came to an abrupt stop, and the film can no longer be accessed via normal channels. At his news conference at the end of the two sessions, Premier Li Keqiang answered one question from the Huffington Post about environmental issues, which also mentioned Chai’s film. Li expressed his concerns over smog problems and stressed the importance of transparency and supervision in implementing environmental policies, but did not comment on Chai or her documentary.
The real story is no longer just about Chai or her film, but about the signals that the Chinese government is sending through its handling of the incident. It is likely that Chai had some high-level official encouragement early on, demonstrating that the government is indeed eager to begin tackling the nation’s huge environmental problems and is even willing to draw public attention to the issue. Some argue that it was not a coincidence that the documentary was released when it was. One day before the film’s release, Chen Jining became the Environment Ministry’s new chief. Chen commented positively on Chai’s film, but the comments have since been deleted. When the film and ensuing discussion went viral, the leadership likely worried that it could spark public unrest.
As long as freedom of expression online helps the government gauge public opinion and garner support for tough policy reforms, actors like Chai will use the internet as a platform to raise awareness. However, this case demonstrates that the government has no qualms about changing its mind and censoring the discussion if the debate generates massive attention and moves in a direction that is directly or indirectly critical of central government and privileged actors, such as state-owned enterprises.
Ms. Yihong Zhu is a researcher with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS.
