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BIZCHINA> Review & Analysis
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Don't kill hens for eggs
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-09-19 16:12 It is more than appropriate to compare economic growth at the expense of the environment to the act of killing hens to get eggs. Vice-Mayor Ma Jianguo of Wuxi, the envied boomtown in southern Jiangsu Province, used the saying when he admitted over the weekend that their oft-lauded model for economic development had come with a heavy environmental cost over the past two decades. The rapid urbanization and economic boom in southern Jiangsu Province during the final two decades of the last century have earned it credit as the "southern Jiangsu model," which has been a byword for economic prosperity. The vice-mayor confessed the lack of environmental awareness in decision makers at almost all levels over the past several decades, when the entire nation was preoccupied with growth instead of sustainable development. Never has anyone questioned this model in public before, and many parts of the country have launched thousands of township enterprises to follow it. Even now that it has become explicit that township enterprises have become the biggest dischargers of pollutants in rural areas, the Southern Jiangsu development model still prevails. It seems to have become a tradition in this country that the negative side is not supposed to overshadow the positive side whenever something has earned a name as a model. (For more biz stories, please visit Industries)
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