Wu Lihong is an environmental activist of the People's Republic of China. In August 2007, Wu was sentenced to prison by a local court in retribution for a 10 year crusade against pollution in Lake Tai. Ironically, the lake has been suffering from a "pond scum" outbreak since May, verifying Wu's claims that the government and big business were polluting and endangering the ecology of a water system that provides water for over 2 million people.

The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

ran an online article on his plight on 14 October 2007. An excerpt follows:

"Mr. Wu, a jaunty, 40-year-old former factory salesman, pioneered a style of intrepid, media-savvy environmental work that made Lake Tai, and the hundreds of chemical factories on its shores, the focus of intense regulatory scrutiny.

In 2005 he was declared an “Environmental Warrior” by the National People’s Congress. His address book contained cellphone numbers for officials in Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

 and the provincial capital of Nanjing

Nanjing

' is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on several occasions...

 who outranked the party bosses where he lived.

But Mr. Wu was far from untouchable. He lost his job. His wife lost hers. The police summoned, detained and interrogated him. The local government and factory owners also tried for years to bring him into the fold with contracts, gifts and jobs. When party officials offered him a chance to profit handsomely from a pollution cleanup contract, a friend warned him not to accept. Mr. Wu, who needed the money, said yes.

The country’s third largest freshwater body, Lake Tai, or Taihu in Chinese, has long provided the people of the lower Yangtze River Delta

Yangtze River Delta

The Yangtze River Delta, Yangtze Delta or YRD, also called Yangzi, or Chang Jiang Delta, Rive Chang Delta Tai Lake Region or the Golden Triangle of the Yangtze, generally comprises the triangular-shaped territory of Wu-speaking Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province and northern Zhejiang province of...

 with both their wealth and their conception of natural beauty.

It nurtured a bounty of the “three whites,” [white shrimp]], whitebait

Whitebait

Whitebait is a collective term for the immature fry of fish, typically between 25 and 50 millimetres long. Such young fish often travel together in schools along the coast, and move into estuaries and sometimes up rivers where they can be easily caught with fine meshed fishing nets...

 and whitefish

Freshwater whitefish

The freshwater whitefish are fish of the subfamily Coregoninae in the salmon family Salmonidae. Along with the freshwater whitefish, the Salmonidae includes the freshwater and anadromous trout and salmon species as well as graylings...

, and a freshwater crustacean delicacy called the hairy crab

Chinese mitten crab

The Chinese mitten crab, Eriocheir sinensis is a medium-sized burrowing crab, named for its furry claws that look like mittens, that is native in the coastal estuaries of eastern Asia from Korea in the north to the Fujian province of China in the south...

. Natural and man-made streams irrigated rice paddies, and a network of canals ferried that produce far and wide.

Along the lake’s northern reaches, near the city of Wuxi

Wuxi

Wuxi is an old city in Jiangsu province, People's Republic of China. Split in half by Lake Tai, Wuxi borders Changzhou to the west and Suzhou to the east. The northern half looks across to Taizhou across the Yangtze River, while the southern half also borders the province of Zhejiang to the south...

, placid waters and misty hills captured the imagination of Chinese for hundreds of years. The wealthy built gardens that featured the lake’s wrinkled, water-scarred limestone rocks set in groves of bamboo and chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemums, often called mums or chrysanths, are of the genus constituting approximately 30 species of perennial flowering plants in the family Asteraceae which is native to Asia and northeastern Europe.-Etymology:...

."

Pollution of Lake Tai

In May 2007, the lake was overtaken by a major algal bloom. Authorities are blaming this on the lowest water levels in 50 years. However, low water levels alone did not cause these blooms. Increases in nutrients, from fertilizer for example, create conditions conducive to algae blooms, which has polluted the water with a toxic blue substance and a foul smell, making the water unusable. The Chinese government has called the lake a major natural disaster despite the clearly anthropogenic origin of this environmental catastrophe. With the average price of bottled water rising to six times the normal rate, the government has banned all regional water providers from implementing price hikes. [2] Wuxi, which draws its tap water from the lake, has been particularly badly affected. As of October 2007, the Chinese government had shut down or given notice to over 1,300 factories around the lake. Some say that only unprofitable factories have been closed, others view the anti-pollution move as overkill. Despite of Chinese authorities' increasing awareness of environmental problems, Wu Lihong was arrested and tried for alleged extortion of one of the polluters (see Economist article). He received a three-year prison sentence. Released on April 12, 2010, Wu Lihong told journalists that he suffered brutal treatment during his three-year detention.

See also

• Environment of China
  Environment of China
  The environment in the People's Republic of China has traditionally been neglected as the country concentrates on its rise as an economic power. Chasing the political gains of economic development, local officials in China often overlook environmental pollution, worker safety and public health...
  
  
• Tan Kai
  Tan Kai
  Tan Kai is a mainland Chinese computer technician and an environmental activist from Zhejiang province. He operated his own company, called Lanyi Computer Repair, and co-founded an environmental advocacy and monitoring NGO called Green Watch...
  
  , a computer technician and an environmental activist from Zhejiang

External links

• Joseph Kahn, "In China, a Lake’s Champion Imperils Himself", International Herald Tribune
  International Herald Tribune
  The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...
  
  , October 13, 2007