In Brief

1. New: Report on Environmental Health in the Pearl River Delta
2. EU-China Civil Society Dialogue on Climate Change and Sustainable Consumption and  
     Production
3. June 2011: The 30th EU-China Human Rights Dialogue
4. China’s first Social Security Law became effective on July 1
5. China’s High-Speed Rail Politics
6.  Material related to the Assessment of the environmental impact of Chinese Banks

Unfortunately we learned that most files stored on www.eu-china.net cannot be opened and downloaded in China. So if you are interested in some specific publications please send an e-mail to china-programm@asienhaus.de.

Together with China Dialogue, German Asia Foundation has released a new report, "Report on Environmental Health in the Pearl River Delta", discussing the impact of the industrialisation process on the wider environment and on living conditions outside the factories, in the heart of the production engine of China, namely, Pearl River Delta.

The report presents a vivid and detailed account of reporting the environment and health in southern China, which may help readers to better understand the challenges and opportunities for reporters, activists, academics, funders and policymakers working in an important field.

Between 13 and 15 July, the first dialogue is taking place in Ningbo, under the framework of the "EU-China Civil Society Dialogue on Participatory Public Policy", a project funded by the European Commission. 

The Second Dialogue-Conference in the framework of the "EU-China Civil Society Dialogue on Participatory Public Policy" will be on industrial production and environmental health. It will be held between 20 and 23 August 2011, in Guangzhou, China. 

On June 16, the 30th round of the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue took place in Beijing. The EU-China Human Rights Dialogue has, with short interruptions, taken place twice annually since 1995.

Click here to see the statement from the EU-China Dialogue on Human Rights.

Click here to see the public benchmarks, proposed by Human Rights Watch, for the EU delegation to bring up. 

The Social Security Law of China was passed during the 11th session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China on 28 October 2010. The Law has become effective from 1 July 2011 onwards. Before its promulgation, the social security policies were formed a range of rules and regulations at both national and local levels.

Prior and after its promulgation, the law has attracted discussed by the expats who work in China.

Click here to see some background of this law.

Click here to see the calculations of the expats' contributions under the new law and discussions among them.

A collision between two high-speed trains on 23 July claimed at least 40 lives and turned the once a great pride of the state, i.e. high-speed railway, and the railway bureaucracy into a centre of criticism. 

Click here to see how the Communist Party’s showcase project gets into trouble.

The Communist Party's propaganda office has reportedly ordered the Chinese media to keep quiet about the deadly crash, not to express doubts against the official explanations and to withdraw their crews from Wenzhou, where the crash took place. Such an order came a day after Premier Wen Jiabao pledged that the government would keep the investigation transparent. Such a media restriction has snowballed into an outcry. By one way or another, bit by bit, the journalists and bloggers showed their resistance. 

Click here to see how they react to the media blackout.

The BankTrack network and Friends of the Earth have just completed the English translation of a report about the sustainability policies and practices of Chinese commercial banks, which was released by Green Watershed, a Chinese environmental NGO, in April 2011.

"Environmental Record of Chinese Banks 2010" benchmarks 14 Chinese commercial banks, including ICBC, China Construction Bank and Bank of China, which are currently some of the biggest banks in the world. The report assesses each bank based on indicators such as its environmental policies, implementation measures, lending reductions to energy-intensive and polluting sectors, lending to environmentally friendly projects, information disclosure and receptivity to public criticism. Noting that Chinese financiers are expanding their portfolios abroad, the study also looked at the banks' transparency about their overseas lending.

If you want to be regularly informed about the developments in the Chinese banking sector from a civil society perspective, you can subscribe to the "The Friends of the Earth's quarterly newsletter" which is following developments in sustainable banking in China. It offers updates on what Chinese banks, Chinese government regulatory departments, civil society and international stakeholders are doing to promote sustainable finance initiatives for China's financial sector. Click here for the recent issues.