Landscape in Beijing celebrating the cooperation between Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province Photo: IC

Chu Daye

My job as a Global Times reporter took me on a few trips around Hebei Province in North China this year. 

My assignments were mostly concerned about issues related to the regional integration of the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin and Hebei Province, as well as industrial improvements aimed at reducing environmentally damaging emissions and moving the region's economy further up the industrial value chain.

These trips illuminated my understanding of events taking place at the grass-roots level throughout the region, so I'd like to take this moment to share my findings with our readers. 

The North China region has certainly become one of the most polluted areas in the world. In Beijing, although the occasional strong northern wind will bring pollution levels down and let you see blue skies for a time, you can always count on the smog returning the very next day.

Pursuit of profit

While traveling in Baoding, a city in central Hebei, I almost threw up when my taxi driver described to me how his fellow villagers substitute horse meat for donkey meat to make a local delicacy they call the donkey burger.

But such is the reality for many Chinese, we sacrifice our quality of life in pursuit of profit.

With these lessons firmly entrenched in my mind, I was hardly shocked when an industrial worker told me that his plant routinely operates with its emission control facility turned off. Why? Again, because of a profit-seeking mentality. This is in turn aided by the fact that, due to weak or selective law enforcement, a polluting plant can actually go unpunished.

Sitting on considerable iron ore and coal deposits and possessing a seasoned work force, Hebei has been the largest steel-producing province by output in China for 12 years now. While it produces about half of the world's steel, at the same time these furnaces also pollute the skies.

To ease pressure on the environment, China ordered that the country's steel-making capacity be "streamlined" by 80 million tons by 2017. Three-fourths of these capacity cuts will take place in Hebei.

Most of the middle-class people living in big cities I interviewed, such as those who work in the service industry and inside office buildings, tended to agree with the idea that plants that produce pollution should be closed down without remorse.

"Because a big clear blue sky matters to both the mind and the body," as one interviewee artistically put it.

However, at the grass-roots level, people's reactions seem to be a bit more sober, and perhaps, in my opinion, more aligned with the reality of China.

I believe that China's future lies in devising, developing and mastering advanced industry. Alternatives like service, property, and the stock market are far too volatile to provide a solid foundation for China's rise. 

Industry remains the most efficient means to provide the most jobs with stable income and tax revenues to the local community.

Some people I interviewed said it is too soon to start with mass closures.

"I believe our plant would still make a profit and be able to keep the jobs of hundreds and thousands of workers, even if it had its environmental facilities running at full throttle, given that the leaders are keen to carry out the country's laws and regulations and agree to be less greedy," a veteran worker at a petrochemical business in Yanshan, which lies at the outskirts of Beijing, told me.

But of course, this lead to a deeper issue of a necessary improvement in the effectiveness of the management team in our industries. Doing this, however, means getting involved in even more complicated issues such as corruption.

No clear solution

However, if we finally get to the point where we have to close down factories in the region, then we must also fully take into account the fate of millions of industrial workers in Hebei who will face relocation or unemployment.

"If something like this would happen, it would wipe out thousands of jobs. I believe the local community would not be able to withstand such an impact," a local resident of Xingtai, an industrial town in southern Hebei, told me. Xingtai is home to heavy industry involved in coal mining and chemical production, but was also the most polluted city in China in 2013, according to data from the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

"Currently a lot of the working-age population has already lost access to stable jobs. If a clear cut policy is carried out, these people will have no option but to leave their hometowns," she said.

Social security networks at the local level are weak and there isn't much vocational training available to help the unemployed rejoin the workforce, she said. 

I agree with her it is very important that we must not drive people away from their hometowns by killing their jobs. This happened in three provinces in Northeast China, old industrial bases that saw an irreversible exodus of the working-age population that was disastrous to the local community and whose effects took years to heal. 

The education levels of people in many parts of Hebei are low and considering that many of those who would be affected are no longer young, it is doubtful that they would be able to adapt to new jobs.

As such it is vital that we transform vocational training and implement job protection networks in order to keep up with industrial transformation China is experiencing.

In Sweden, for instance, newly laid-off workers can take vocational training with paid salary and benefits for as long as six months. Now that our government has more money at its disposal, it's time to consider establishing similar projects to ensure no one is left behind as our economy moves one step further.

From my interviews I discovered that the most amazing assets that this region possesses is the industrious and jovial character of its people, and with what we have already achieved, there is every reason to believe we can achieve more.