Clean air is a must for global hubs of today
When I met a Singapore-based European banker at a conference last week and told him I lived in Hong Kong, the first thing he asked was how we coped with the air pollution. Such questions are now commonplace. Hong Kong's dirty little secret is out in the open: the air is filthy.
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The point was brutally underlined by a report last month on Asian air pollution sponsored by CLSA, the investment bank*. It said Disneyland's new Hong Kong theme park, due to open in September, would “suffer from constant haze” as a result of pollution from southern China.
It is tempting for Hong Kong investors to dismiss pollution as a minor health problem or a matter for environmental lobby groups. Health is an issue, of course. No one wants to breathe in the sulphur dioxide and carcinogenic coal dust once endured by residents of Victorian London.
More is at stake, however, than an outbreak of respiratory ailments. Having sensibly moved most of its manufacturing industries to low-cost mainland China, Hong Kong is positioning itself as an international services hub specialising in finance, commerce and tourism much like London, New York, Dubai, Melbourne and Singapore.
In today's competitive world of mobile international executives and well-travelled tourists, it is folly for any city, particularly one as modern and prosperous as Hong Kong, to tarnish its image with a reputation for old-fashioned smog. Among the city's greatest attractions are its sea and mountain views, but scientific measurements show that visibility has declined catastrophically over the past 30 years. Clear views have all but disappeared. Visibility continues to worsen.
Hong Kong bureaucrats and investors have been slow to tackle this threat to their future well-being and prosperity, even as foreign executives begin to talk about moving their families to Singapore. As recently as a year ago, Sarah Liao, the environment secretary, made optimistic predictions about improving air quality and was incensed by suggestions that the government was not doing enough. Now she admits it will be a long haul. To be fair to Hong Kong, it cannot simply do what London, Tokyo, Los Angeles and other cities have done since the 1950s, which is to enforce clean air regulations and watch the smog disappear.
Hong Kong has sharply reduced its own emissions, but it lies at the southern end of a vast industrial conurbation that includes Guangzhou and Shenzhen and is expected to have 50m inhabitants by 2030. China, which burns 1.5bn tonnes of coal a year, will have to act too.
About 95 per cent of the dust over the Pearl River delta comes from China's Guangdong province. Most of the nitrogen and sulphur dioxides in the skies over Disneyland also come from Guangdong, where levels of sulphur in fuel are between 50 and 500 times those allowed in Hong Kong. A shortage of electricity, forcing companies to run thousands of inefficient diesel generators to keep production lines going, has added to the problem.
Hong Kong and Guangdong have agreed that by 2010 they will cut air pollution by between 20 and 55 per cent (depending on the pollutant) from the levels measured in 1997, but they have shown little urgency in trying to ensure that the targets are met. Nor have they told anyone how well or badly they think they are doing. As the CLSA report recommends, it is time for a progress report and for some transparency.
Investors in China, led by the Hong Kong businesses accounting for 70,000 of the factories that have made Guangdong the world's manufacturing centre, have a role to play as well in cleaning up the dirty air blanketing the Pearl River delta. “Business people,” the report says, “cannot complain on the one hand about poor air quality and the health impact it is having on them and their families but at the same time neglect to act.”
By moving to mainland China, investors have avoided the strict controls of Hong Kong, Singapore and the rest of the developed world. But the resulting air pollution, if left unchecked, will also threaten Hong Kong's ambition to be a 21st century centre for trade, tourism and finance.
香港呼唤清新空气
我在上周开会时碰到一位常驻新加坡的欧洲银行家。当得知我住在香港时，他的第一个问题就是香港人如何对付空气污染。如今，这类问题已司空见惯。香港空气浑浊早已是一个公开的小秘密。
上月，由投资银行里昂证券(CLSA)发布的亚洲空气污染报告便毫不留情地将这个问题推到了大家面前。报告称，由于受到华南地区空气污染的影响，定于今年9月在香港开业的迪斯尼主题公园将“笼罩在持续不断的烟雾中”。
香港投资者很容易会把污染看成是一个只关乎健康的小问题，或者是环保游说团体所关心的事。健康当然是一个问题，没有人愿意像维多利亚时代的伦敦市民那样忍受空气中的二氧化硫和致癌煤尘。
然而，更严重的后果已超乎呼吸系统疾病的爆发。香港已明智地将其大部分制造业转移到低成本的中国内地，并将自己定位成专业从事金融、商业和旅游业的国际服务中心，类似于伦敦、纽约、迪拜、墨尔本和新加坡等城市。
如今，国际高管人士的流动性很大，游客的足迹遍布世界各地。在这样一个竞争激烈的世界中，任何城市如果因古老的烟雾问题而使其形象受损的话，都将是一件愚蠢的事情――尤其是像香港这么一个现代化的繁华大都市。海景和山景是香港最具魅力的地方之一，但是科学测量数据显示，在过去30年中，户外能见度已有惊人的下降。清晰的视野几乎已消失殆尽，能见度仍在持续降低。
香港的官僚和投资者在解决这个威胁到未来幸福与繁荣的问题时行动迟缓，甚至当外国高管人士开始谈及举家迁往新加坡时也没有任何改变。就在一年前，环境运输及工务局局长廖秀冬对于改善空气质量发表了乐观的预测，并对那些认为政府行动不力的言论表示愤怒。但现在，她承认这一努力还得长期做下去。自50年代以来，伦敦、东京、洛杉矶和其它城市强制执行洁净空气条例，亲眼目睹烟雾的消失。公平而言，香港却不可能做到完全。
香港本身已大幅减少了空气污染排放物，但问题在于包括广州、深圳在内的广阔的华南工业区；而且，到2030年，该地区人口有望突破5000万。每年燃烧15亿吨煤的中国也必须采取行动。
珠江三角洲上空95%的烟尘来自广东省，香港迪斯尼乐园上空的二氧化氮和二氧化硫也大多来自广东，而且那里的燃料中硫磺所占比例是香港规定的50到500倍。为确保生产线正常运行，电力供应不足迫使公司开动数千台低效率的柴油发动机，从而使问题更加严重。
香港和广东已经同意，到2010年，他们将使空气污染比1997年测得的程度减少20%到55%（视乎不同的污染物），但他们在确保实现目标方面却表现得不太迫切。而且，他们也没有告诉任何人，到底他们做得好还是坏。正如里昂证券报告所建议的，现在是公布进展报告和增加一定透明度的时候了。
广东堪称全球制造业中心，共有7万家香港工厂在那里落户。以香港企业为首的在华投资者也应对消除笼罩着珠江三角洲的空气污染出点力。报告称，“企业界人士不能一边抱怨空气质量差及对他们和家人健康产生的影响，而另一边却不采取任何行动。”
通过转移到中国内地，投资者能避开香港、新加坡和其它发达国家的严格管控，但由此产生的空气污染若不加抑制，也将对香港成为21世纪贸易、旅游和金融中心的雄心壮志构成威胁。
