Pollution film disappears as China pledges to fight smog

'Under the Dome' was viewed by more than 100 million people in its first week of release but has now been removed from major Chinese websites.

A woman wears a mask during a day of heavy pollution in Beijing on March 7, 2015. Ng Han Guan/AP Photo

BEIJING // A popular Chinese documentary on the air pollution choking major cities was scrubbed from websites even as president Xi Jinping pledged to unleash an iron hand to protect the environment.

“Under the Dome” which was viewed by more than 100 million people in the week since its release, was removed yesterday from major Chinese websites including Youku.com. Its disappearance coincides with the annual meeting of the legislature — the National People’s Congress — where Mr Xi made his pledge.

“We are going to punish, with an iron hand, any violators who destroy ecology or environment, with no exceptions,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing Mr Xi’s comments yesterday at a meeting of NPC deputies from Jiangxi Province.

The film was produced and financed by former China Central Television reporter Chai Jing after she became concerned about the health impacts of pollution when her infant daughter needed surgery to remove a benign tumour. Some government officials openly praised the film after its release, with environment minister Chen Jining comparing it to “Silent Spring,” Rachel Carson’s 1962 take on the environmental damage wrought by the US chemical industry that spurred a nationwide ban on the use of DDT in agriculture.

The full-length video couldn’t be found on streaming sites where it once appeared such as Youku.com, sohu.com and qq.com. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that the film had been pulled from websites on orders of the government, citing people familiar with the matter.

Two calls to the spokesman’s office of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television weren’t answered. Calls to Youku.com’s corporate number went unanswered while a person who wouldn’t give her name on Youku’s customer hotline said that the video wasn’t available on its service.

At a press conference today held as part of the NPC sessions and scheduled before the video’s disappearance, Mr Chen was not asked about the documentary by reporters called on to raise questions. The minister echoed Mr Xi’s pledge, saying China will use “tough measures” to fight smog and also said that the government would provide more transparency for its efforts to protect the environment.

Earlier this week, the minister said he had sent Chai a text message to express his gratitude as she “raised public attention on the environment,” according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Mr Chen also said today that rules to fight pollution won’t be loosened to counter slowing economic growth. China aims to cut sulphur dioxide emissions by 3 per cent, nitrogen oxide by 5 per cent and ammonia nitrogen by 2 per cent in 2015 from a year earlier, according to a statement distributed before the press conference.

Air pollution has become a focus of public discourse in China in the past few years as thick smog has blanketed large swathes of the country, with many residents of cities such as Beijing and Shanghai regularly wearing masks to try to protect against the toxins. Ninety per cent of the 161 cities whose air quality was monitored in 2014 failed to meet official standards, according to a report by China’s National Bureau of Statistics last week.

The dominance of PetroChina Co, the country’s biggest oil and natural gas producer, and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, Asia’s biggest refiner, was cited by the documentary as a key reason the country has been slow to produce more clean energy. Calls by Bloomberg to the two companies weren’t answered after business hours on Friday.

* Bloomberg News