Yu Hua, one of China’s most acclaimed writers, wrote in his 2012 book China in Ten Words: “We had no concept of expressways or advertisements; we had very few stores, and very little to buy in the stores we did have. We seemed to have nothing then, but we did have a blue sky.”

Twenty-first century China, however, is a different story. The once insulated and agrarian-based nation has been transformed into a petrie dish of modern technological and economic advancement. Manufacturing has boomed and exports have skyrocketed, but so have their unsightly results.

Smog-filled skies now blanket the country’s metropolitan centres, along with polluted waterways and excess waste. Last year, Beijing issued its first ever “red alert” on the city’s air quality, closing schools and factories, and forcing thousands of private vehicles off the road.

Dire as China’s environmental situation may seem, recent studies have noted some improvements. The World Health Organisation’s latest data shows that air pollution is no doubt rising in the world’s poorest cities, and that Chinese cities are still some of the most polluted. But at the same time, air quality throughout much of the country has also improved.

Similarly, Greenpeace East Asia’s air quality rankings found worsening conditions for almost 70 cities in central and Western China. But in major cities in the East such as Beijing and Shanghai, the average concentration of pollution in both cities fell by double digits.

In a media release, Greenpeace East Asia’s climate and energy campaigner Dong Liansai says that the implementation of anti-pollution measures five years ago has had a drastic effect in cutting down on toxic emissions

“The findings show that the government’s measures to curb air pollution in eastern China’s key regions work,” says Dong.

“But now is not the time to selectively implement these policies. They must be introduced across the country to ensure clean air for all.”

Declaring change
For the government, curbing pollution has been a serious matter for some years now, and it now seems to make a routine of declaring war on the country’s atmosphere.

Speaking at the opening session of the country’s parliament last year, China’s Premier Li Keqiang announced that an “unrelenting” effort was needed to clear the country’s smoggy skies and toxic rivers. A year before that, Li promised to “declare war” on pollution.

Dr Jason Young at the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre, says that the government realises the model that brought modernisation to China can no longer be sustained.

“There is a realisation that energy security cannot follow the traditional uses. They have come to the realisation that China’s urbanisation and industrialisation has come about at a period of world history where it’s just no longer an option to industrialise in the same way.”

Environmentalist Ma Jun says he has been encouraged by the government’s commitment to punish not just the companies causing pollution, but also local officials who have often ignored environmental crimes.

Despite having environmental protection laws, Jun says “the cost of violation remains low and serial polluters just pay fines year after year without solving their problem”.

Dr Young says that part of the problem stems from the fact that many polluters are often local and beyond central government control.

‘Abject failure’
“A lot of efforts have been made at the central government level on new environmental standards. But you have this disjuncture between the interests of central government, the interests of local government, and the interests of local businesses and state enterprises.”

“I’d say they’re making more of an improvement lately…but at the moment it’s still quite an abject failure.”

Following Li Keqiang’s speech, the Finance Ministry announced that it would spend more than 11 billion yuan (more than NZ$2 billion) in combatting air pollution. A further 47 billion yuan (NZ$10 billion) has been ear-marked to subsidise work such as energy conservation and emission reduction.

With both figures outpacing China’s GDP growth target, it highlights a key balancing act for the government.

“On one hand you want to keep a certain level of economic growth, while on the other hand, you want to restructure and rebalance, and environmental issues are part of that,” says Professor Xiaoming Huang, a specialist in East Asian political economy at Victoria University

Premier Li also announced that the money would be partially spent upgrading coal-fired power stations to help them achieve “ultra-low emissions,” as well as introducing “zero-growth in the consumption of coal in key areas of the country”.

But with traditional forms of energy still embedded into the livelihoods of thousands of Chinese, many workers will be forced to pay the steep price of the ‘clean energy revolution’.

‘Unfair distribution’
“There’s a groundswell of opinion that the environment is a really significant issue, but the implications of doing that often have very unfair distributions on people’s livelihoods. So people who work in the fuel sector or coal sector are the ones that get made redundant,” says Dr Young.

“They want to ensure their kids don’t get lead poisoning from water or that their school isn’t next to a polluting factory. But on the other hand, there’s a general belief that China needs to push on through development so that it can become an advanced.”

“China is still a middle income country. It’s not an advanced economy, so you have this strong push, almost like a social desire for the country to develop.”

In China, coal accounts for almost two-thirds of all energy produced, but is also one of the biggest pollutants into China’s atmosphere.

In an effort to curb its coal dependency, it was announced that not only would the world’s largest energy consumer continue to trim production capacity, but that it would halt the building of all new coal mines for the next three years—the first time the government has ever done so.

With coal consumption currently around 64.4 per cent, the National Energy Administration is aiming to cut this number down to 62.6 per cent by the end of 2016, as well as closing down more than a 1000 existing coal mines.

To compensate, China plans to increase its wind and solar power capacity by more than 20 per cent, continuing its path onto a renewable energy-based future.

Renewable technology
Professor Huang says China is becoming one of the international leaders on renewable technology.

“The predominant form of energy in China is burning fossil fuels. So the government is spending quite a lot of money in solar, wind, and water-based energy and it works with quite a lot of American and German companies.”

“Internationally, in terms of technology, China is doing very well. Over time they want to reduce fossil-based energy forms, although I don’t think they’re there yet.”

Yuan Ying, an energy campaigner for Greenpeace East Asia, says the reality of China’s efforts to become a high-tech, innovative economy is much more complicated.

“China’s grid is in urgent need of an upgrade if it is to fully utilise the potential of wind and solar power…Coal is doing its utmost to dig itself in, despite the headwinds of falling coal consumption, declining heavy industry, government policies limiting coal and promoting renewables.”

Social consciousness
Since the making of former United States Vice-President Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, the film has been credited with raising international awareness on global warming and reenergising the environmental movement.

Almost a decade on from its release in 2006, Chinese audiences were treated with their own cinematic examination when Under the Dome was released online last year. The feature length documentary went viral, attracting more than 200 million viewers before internet censors removed the film for sparking intense criticism of the government online.

Created by celebrity journalist Chai Jing, Under the Dome looks at the human faces behind China’s perennial smog problem, with some observers calling the film “a tipping a point”.

As viewers faced up to the facts of their ‘inconvenient truth’, the government vowed to tackle the “unprecedented” environmental issue of mass pollution.

Ying says there has been a massive upsurge in public awareness around the safety hazards of pollution and waste.

“For many people, it is now a daily routine to check air pollution apps and make the decision whether or not to wear a protective mask.”

“Awareness in other areas is starting to grow too. Many safety concerns over food, for example, have given rise to an awareness of environmental standards in the agricultural industry.”

Rest of Asia still faltering
Despite China’s steady improvements, the rest of Asia—containing some of the most populous developing countries—are still falling behind on the air quality radar.

In the same WHO report which found China’s air pollution rates to be falling, it says the most polluted cities are in India, while Hanoi is the most polluted city in Southeast Asia.

With one of the worst air quality levels in the entire continent, Vietnam’s environmental monitoring agency says that road traffic is to blame for 70 per cent of Hanoi’s stifling air pollution.

As was the case in China, rapid economic growth in the post-Cold War period has seen the use of cars and motorbikes skyrocket in Vietnam, a significant departure from days when cycling was the primary form of transport.

Even in advanced economies such as Japan, activists warn that it is at serious risk of damaging its air quality. As the country continues to suffer from the radioactive fallout from the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Japan plans to build dozens of new coal-fired power plants over the next 12 years instead.

Low carbon plan
In March, China announced its 13th Five-Year plan that will lead one of the largest economies into the next phase of development. The plan, which was announced at the National People’s Congress, announced that it would promote a cleaner, greener industry.

According to Chinese state media, the plan will focus on the “energy revolution” which will establish a modern system that is clean, low-carbon, and efficient”.

Dr Young remains realistic, and says that China will suffer “a lot of environmental degradation, a lot of pollution, and a lot of pain in the medium term”.

“But in the long term, I’m quite positive that’s how China will pull through.”

Jihee Junn compiled this report as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Journalism Studies course.

Basic rights for refugee children is an issue troubling some South-East Asian nations. In Indonesia, more than 800 asylum seekers have been identified as children, while in Malaysia, close to 300 children out of the country’s 12,000 asylum seekers are seeking refuge. Jihee Junn looks into the issue for Asia Pacific Report.

With hundreds of children currently in detention in the Asia-Pacific region, a panel of experts has said that ending child detention could be the starting point to help the refugee crisis.

In a discussion hosted by the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN) in Auckland this week, the global campaign to help end child detention was introduced, as well as alternatives to current detention practices in the region.

The End Immigration Detention of Children campaign advocates for support in New Zealand, calling for all refugee, asylum seeker, and irregular migrant children to have basic rights such as the right to be looked after and to be with their parents.

The issue is most prevalent in South-East Asian nations. In Indonesia, more than 800 asylum seekers have been identified as children, while in Malaysia, close to 300 children out of the country’s 12,000 asylum seekers are seeking refuge.

“If you look at the numbers, they’re not massive so we do feel it’s something that is manageable and it could really be a first positive step in advancing refugee protection in South-East Asia,” says Julia Mayerhof, executive officer of the refugee rights network.

Speaking in the context of New Zealand’s potential role in the issue, the chair of APRRN’s Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Working Group, Paul Power, says that the country could use its unique regional position to help with funding or expertise.

“Child detention in the region is a really strategic way to start that conversation [about resettlement]. No one thinks children should be detained and it’s a great starting point for these complex issues.”

Appalling conditions
Speaking from Melbourne where he is now resettled, 26-year old Habib from Afghanistan recalls his experiences in an Indonesian detention centre where he shared the same facilities as many families and children also seeking asylum.

“I think detention of children in Indonesia is not the right thing. It was very overcrowded and it was not actually the right place for them to be.

“We had to bear all kinds of arguments and conflicts because people were sitting together having discussions … I was feeling very sorry for families. For me, I could tolerate some of the arguments, but for the families I think it was very difficult.”

Julia Mayerhof says that such circumstances for children are not unusual.  Children are often faced with poor sanitation, insufficient food, and health issues such as skin diseases and tuberculosis.

“People are sometimes allowed to go outside, while in some detention centres there’s no way to go outside at all so they would never see the daylight,” says Mayerhof.

“No sports, no access to education, so everything that a normal child should have to grow up in a normal way, it doesn’t happen in a detention centre. This is bad for adults but for children it’s even worse.”

Unaccompanied minors
Unaccompanied minors — those travelling without a parent or adult — would often face similar circumstances to what Habib witnessed, although there are exceptions.

“There are a lot of countries where they’d be detained in the same environment as adults,” says Dr Robyn Sampson, senior adviser and research coordinator at the International Detention Coalition (IDC).

“But there are some great examples of countries that do not detain unaccompanied minors because they would be so vulnerable, and the Philippines is a good example. They actually place these children in the mainstream child protection system that they have set up for their own children who don’t have parents or adults to look after them.

“In my opinion, one of the ideal outcomes for these young people is to go into the mainstream protection system that might involve foster care,” says Dr Sampson.

“Another example is when they go into shelters, and that can be good because they are with other young people who have had the same kinds of experiences and may even speak the same language.”

But despite these alternatives, lack of capacity has become a recurring issue, which Dr Sampson cites as one of the main problems with the case management programme in Malaysia.

“This programme is helping to keep these children from being placed in detention in the first place and it’s something that could be expanded in the future.”

“But at this stage, the resources are too low. So although they’re managing to keep children out of detention, they’re not managing to get children who are in detention to be released because they don’t have the capacity.”

Seeking alternatives
In addition to the global number of designated refugees passing the 20 million mark, there are also around 2 million asylum seekers and more than 40 million internally displaced people.

Paul Power says that because of the issue’s scale and complexity, there is simply no single set of solutions. Instead, national, regional, and subregional answers should be sought on particular issues.

“A big problem that the world faces is the tradition of durable solutions for refugees. Voluntary safe return after a conflict has ended and integration in a country of asylum and resettlement are in such short supply,” he says.

“Around 100,000 out of 20 million refugees were resettled. So if you’re waiting on resettlement as the answer to your displacement, you’re going to be waiting two centuries at the back of the mythical queue that many Australian politicians believe.”

Asia and the Middle East stand out as the two regions in the world where most countries have not signed the refugee convention, and with 76 percent of refugees living outside of camps in Asia, the international community must look beyond simply ending detention.

“The situation of refugees in camps is of critical importance and lack of support for people living in these camps is a major factor in the misery of people who’ve sought refuge” says Power.

“But that’s not where most refugees around the world are at. They’re trying to survive in urban settings and most of the international support does not actually take account of that.”

Jihee Junn is a postgraduate student journalist at Auckland University of Technology and is on the Pacific Media Centre’s 2016 Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies course.

Tensions have mounted in both Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and Nauru as the controversial Australian offshore processing detention centres have once again come under fire.

In Nauru, allegations have surfaced from a group of detainees that they were assaulted by guards following a protest.

The Department of Immigration confirmed that a “disturbance” had occurred at the site, with chairs, tables, and other objects being thrown at service provider staff.

But detainees are accusing the guards of violent behaviour, claiming that they had punched children and thrown rocks and chairs. Two detainees are currently receiving medical treatment.

Addressing these claims, the department denies that any children or women were assaulted during the incident, stating that the event had quickly “de-escalated”.

As tensions in Nauru simmer, asylum seekers in Australia’s other immigration centre on Manus Island were told they would either be resettled or deported.

After more than three years since the camp was re-opened, Papua New Guinea officials announced that 400 out of the 850 men on the island had been found to be legitimate refugees.

60 men refused claims
At least 60 men were reported to have refused to submit their claims, instead asking PNG authorities to transfer them to the United Nations.

Those who failed to file their claims or received “negative” assessments will face deportation.

Those with “positive” assessments will be resettled in Papa New Guinea as part of Australia’s Regional Resettlement Arrangement, otherwise known as the “PNG solution”.

Shrouded with reports of rape and abuse, conditions on both Nauru and Manus Island have long been heavily criticised.

Columnist and founder of refugee awareness initiative Wage Peace NZ Tracey Barnett insists that Australia is failing its human rights obligations.

“I would argue these centres are illegal and I would also argue they are terribly inhumane. Unfortuantely, Australia has seen fit to essentially sell their human rights obligations to poorer countries who need the cash.”

“I would argue that they are in essence trading human lives in the people trading business themselves. Although Australia has tried to stop the boats in Operation Sovereign Borders, the irony is that they’ve become people traffickers themselves.”

‘Justifiable’ Australian view
But University of Auckland’s foreign policy analyst Professor Steven Hoadley says that from Australia’s point-of-view, it’s off-shore detention centres are justifiable.

“The Australian government doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong. They assert that the asylum seekers are being treated in a humane fashion and they can go back to where they came from at any time.

“The Australian government will actually pay their airfare and put $5000 in their pocket and send them off with a friendly smile. So they’re not actually incarcerated.”

Late last year, the government of Nauru banned all media from reporting from the island state, prompting plenty of concern from rights groups.

Barnett called the ban “a terrible shame” while also criticising Australia’s Border Force Act which severely restricts the freedom of those working in detention centres.

Passed by the Australian Federal Parliament in 2015 with bipartisan support, the Act means that government-contracted staff can face up to two years in prison for speaking to media about conditions in facilities.

In February, the Australian High Court upheld the country’s right to detain asylum seekers off-shore. But for Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) spokesperson Ian Rintoul, detention centres in Nauru and Manus Island breach international law.

“According to Australian law, the off-shore processing arrangements are legal. But it’s very clear that it violates both the spirit and the letter of the refugee convention.”

“We think the situation should go back prior to 1992 when mandatory detention was introduced. We want to see an end to off-shore processing regimes.”

Cambodian programme ‘failure’
Controversy has also surrounded Australia’s resettlement policies for legitimate refugees.

In 2013, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that no asylum seekers arriving by boat would be resettled as refugees within Australia. Instead, they would be resettled in Cambodia or PNG.

However, it was recently revealed that of the five refugees that had been voluntarily resettled in Cambodia in 2015, only two now remained in the country with the Cambodian government deeming the programme “a failure”.

With millions of dollars spent on the programme, Barnett is among the many critics of the so-called “Cambodia solution”.

“They offered I believe $55 million to resettle any of the refugees whose cases had been decided in Nauru, and what Cambodia did was it put one proviso on that deal, and the proviso was that the refugee had to want to come to Cambodia.”

“So far, only four or five have taken up that offer. So if you divide that by $55 million, that’s a very expensive price tag indeed for what is essentially a failed policy.”

However, a spokesperson for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Joe Lowry, whose organisation has been involved in the resettlement programme, says that regardless of the number of those who resettle, some costs are fixed while others are not.

“There are certain costs that have to be paid out whether or not one person comes from Nauru or a thousand come. Things like accommodation, language lessons, teachers, and utilities.”

Vulnerable migrants
He says that despite criticism, the IOM’s decision to involve themselves in the programme was not taken lightly.

“We took the decision that it was best for vulnerable migrants to get off Nauru if they wanted to leave and be in Cambodia. It took us as an organisation about six months to come to that decision. It wasn’t something we did lightly. “

With the general election likely to be held in Australia by mid-year, focus has shifted to the two major political parties.

Professor Hoadley believes little will change following the upcoming election, and says there is broad agreement among politicians about the country’s approach to dealing with asylum seekers.

“There’s definitely a consensus in Canberra among the political elite. When Labour was in office, they reinstituted the Pacific solution, while the current Coalition government is perhaps slightly more robust.

“They created a special Navy task force with a general in charge of it, which is a little bit higher profile, but it’s something that the Navy had been doing for over a decade under both political parties as they alternated in power.”

Rintoul takes a different view, and says that visible differences have started to emerge.

“I think there’s growing disquiet between the Labour party and the Coalition. Labour has been willing to make more critical comments about the slowness of processing.

“Those kinds of issues have similarly become issues inside the Coalition which is an increasing indication that there are serious differences of opinion inside the Coalition as to what policies can be implemented.”

Jihee Junn is a postgraduate journalism student at Auckland University of Technology and is on the Pacific Media Centre’s 2016 Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies course.

• Human rights and media forum in Fiji

Greenpeace has long experience at non-violent direct action. But this week’s demonstration against policy failure on climate change was the first time in New Zealand the general public have been invited by Greenpeace to take part in civil disobedience en masse.

Environmental activist and main organiser of the event Steve Abel says they were demonstrating as part of a global movement.

Civil disobedience was chosen as a protest method at Auckland’s SkyCity convention centre on Monday in order to convey the seriousness of climate change.

“I think when you still have this intransigence on the part of the government and industry to act on this all-important issue, then you need to up the ante,” says Abel.

“We operate in that proud tradition of peaceful civil disobedience. For us, the peaceful nature is really important. We’re really about non-violence and peaceful action. Hopefully it has some effect in disrupting the oil conference.”

The protesters demonstrated against an oil conference organised by the Petroleum Explorers and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ), convening leaders in the oil and petroleum industry for the three-day event.

The protesters were part of a Greenpeace-led act of civil disobedience hashtagged #RealClimateAction. Delegates were disrupted from entering the convention centre, some of whom were delayed by more than an hour.

No oil found
“We’ve been protesting the deep sea and off-shore oil drilling for many years now. They so far haven’t found any oil (in New Zealand). It’s been a very successful protest to date,” says Abel.

“But what we’ve got here is a government that’s still hell-bent on drilling for more oil, and it’s the exact oil that we need to leave in the ground if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change.”

At an early morning briefing hours before the demonstration, protestors were told about the day’s plans.

Organisers split protesters into five groups to block all five entranceways into the conference center.

Two more groups were located inside SkyCity.

The protesters were also briefed on police procedures, discouraging protesters from resisting arrest. They were told that faced with any legal proceedings, Greenpeace would be willing to cover the financial costs, providing the protest protocols were followed.

Protester Perry Wilton believes that if the government is going to engage in deep sea oil drilling, then raising environmental awareness is important.

“I think that this (protest) does that. I think this says that people care and with this stopping people from getting in, it will definitely come up in any discussion that goes on in there.”

Hottest month
The protests come in the wake of new findings which showed February was the warmest month in recorded history. Scientists are already predicting 2016 to trump last year’s temperatures in being the hottest on record.

The report cited the dangers that climate change was already posing to countries around the world.

In the Pacific, a prolonged and damaging drought in the Marshall Islands has forced the government to declare a state of emergency.

In Indonesia, forest fires have ravaged farmlands, blanketing both the country and its neighbours in a dense screen of smoke and haze.

Professor Richard Betts, head of climate impact research at Exeter University, cites in the report that soaring temperatures caused by rising carbon emissions have caused Indonesia to be turned into a “tinder-box”.

Part of Monday’s action was former Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimmons. She insists that the climate impacts of deep sea oil drilling would be profound.

“Pacific nations are at the frontline of experiencing the effects of carbon emissions, which are rising sea levels and increasing tropical storms. We know what just happened in Fiji. There’ll be more and more of that and it’ll get worse and worse,” she says.

Going underwater
“Islands like Kiribati and Tuvalu will go underwater and we’re here to tell the petroleum industry: ‘enough’.

“I think New Zealand should be putting all its weight behind alternatives to fossil fuels and assisting Pacific Island nations to develop plans to cope with climate change that’s already underway. We have to be prepared to accept refugees from the Pacific when they have no where else to go.”

Indigenous rights activist Catherine Murupaenga-Ikenn echoes Fitzsimmons’ sentiments.

Having worked with many Pacific human rights advocates, she says that both New Zealand and Australia will have to deal with the impacts of rising sea levels in the region.

“How are we going to accommodate the mass mobilisation — forced mobilisation — of Pacific peoples and others who won’t have any homelands? That’s major. People need to think beyond themselves in terms of wider society.”

Regional leadership

Former executive director of Oxfam NZ Barry Coates also says that New Zealand must do more for the Pacific region.

“New Zealand often draws a distinction between New Zealand and Australia in the sense that Australia visits the Pacific while New Zealand is part of the Pacific. But I don’t think that’s true when that comes to climate change.

“New Zealand relied on the help of Pacific Island countries in order to, for example, get appointed to the UN Security Council. But then it turned its back on the Pacific when it comes to taking on a strong role with regards to emissions reductions, which are obviously important for the future of the Pacific Islands.”

In Paris last year, more than 190 countries signed an agreement to reduce carbon output and keep global warming well below two degrees Celsius. But New Zealand is being accused of skirting many of its international obligations.

“NZ has used climate finance to help some Pacific countries, but the climate finance that is used is really recycled aid,” says Coates.

“Whereas the Copenhagen agreement talked about ‘new and additional’ climate finance which would not be part of aid budgets, what they’ve done is they’ve taken items from their aid budget and called them ‘climate finance’.

“What we’ve seen New Zealand do is to not abide by either the spirit or even the letter of the agreements on climate change that have been made.”

As a protester, Wilton believes that this week’s conference shows the “hypocritical” nature of the New Zealand government despite signing the Paris agreement. He also believes that hosting such conferences for the petroleum industry will only serve to damage the country’s environmentally friendly image.

“New Zealand is expected to lead the global environmental movement. I think people see us as being a 100 percent pure country. I think that it might not only compromise our image but suggest that that isn’t the reality.”

Jihee Junn is a postgraduate journalism student at Auckland University of Technology and is on the Pacific Media Centre’s 2016 Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies course.

• Climate change protesters blockade oil summit