‘ENVIRONMENTAL FAILURE’ FORCES RAZING OF VILLAS
Dozens of excavators deployed to destroy 1,000 homes in conservation area after development singled out in ministry of environment report
Authorities in the mainland’s southwest are rapidly trying to demolish more than 1,000 villas and flats in a nature conservation area after the development became the target of Beijing’s wrath.
The housing estate on the banks of Dianchi Lake in Kunming, Yunnan province, was singled out last week in a report by inspectors from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
After a month-long investigation, the inspectors said the project had resulted in the illegal destruction of over 90 per cent of the surface of Changyao Mountain on the south side of the lake, turning the previously lush green hillside into a “concrete mountain”.
The criticism is one of the most high-profile public dressingdowns of a local government authority over an environmental failure since Beijing took Shaanxi government officials to task three years ago for ignoring President Xi Jinping’s orders to demolish illegal villas in a protected zone in the Qinling Mountains.
Unlike the Shaanxi officials who ignored Beijing’s demolition orders, Yunnan Communist Party secretary Ruan Chengfa and governor Wang Yubo urged Kunming authorities to destroy the 813 villas and 294 flats covering 230 hectares.
Dozens of excavators had been deployed and 1,700 workers sent to plant saplings in the degraded landscape, the official Kunming Daily reported.
Dianchi Lake is the biggest in southwestern China, covering 330 sq km. It is one of the city’s best known scenic spots but has a fragile ecosystem.
Xi inspected a wetland by the lake in January 2020 and told local officials to not “pursue short-term economic development at the cost of the environment”.
Images of the development prompted anger online.
“What shocking scenes! Such a huge waste!” one person wrote on the news portal Sina.com.cn.
“Where were officials when construction of these houses began?” another user commented. “They should be held accountable for the harm to the environment and for the waste of resources.”
The villas were developed by Northstar Group, a local private conglomerate with interests ranging from jade to Puer tea and property development.
According to corporate registration data, Northstar is controlled by the low-profile businessman Ren Huaican. Ren was born in 1951 and is a Canadian permanent resident, according to a statement by one of Ren’s listed companies.
Construction began in January, 2015 and the project was promoted as an “international tourism and health replenishing” development based in large part on its location near the lake.
Most of the units – the most expensive of which are priced at over 20 million yuan – have already been sold.
Environmental protection is an increasingly important criterion in performance assessments for local officials.
The lake became heavily polluted during three decades of rapid economic and population growth from the 1980s.
In February 2015, Xi inspected Kunming and urged local officials to clean up the waters, by saying the lake had become “a scar” on both Kunming and Yunnan.
Since 2018, the water quality of the lake has been rated as grade four, the second-worst category in the country’s water standards.
Nevertheless, the water quality was still the best that it had been in three decades, state news agency Xinhua reported.
On Friday, the news agency said the ministry notified the local government of the property development problem in 2016, but the instructions fell on deaf ears.
In an editorial, Xinhua said: “We should protect Dianchi Lake like our eyes. However, the local government chose to be blind selectively.
“It’s such a large-scale development. Why didn’t the local government see it?
“How many were involved and how serious was the corruption behind this violation? Who cheated both the public and higher authorities?”
The Dianchi exposé is similar to a case three years ago when authorities targeted officials in Shaanxi province about 1,200 villas built illegally in a nature reserve in the Qinling Mountains.
Hundreds of officials were investigated for corruption and dereliction of duty, accused of ignoring six direct orders from Xi to stop the developments.
Where were officials when construction of these houses began?
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