Polluted city seeks mayor for dirty job

Earth Island Journal, Summer, 2009

The Chinese city of Linfen has a soiled reputation when it comes to health and safety issues. Home to more than four million people, this city in Shanxi province is notorious for its foul air and deadly mining accidents. A haze often envelops Linfen, which is surrounded by coal mines (some permitted, but others illegal), iron foundries, and coking plants. The city grabbed international headlines last year when a mining disaster killed 270 people.

The place's long list of problems helps explain why Chinese government officials have had a difficult time filling the city's top two administrative posts--that of mayor and Communist Party chief. The leadership positions have been vacant for more than six months, an "unusually long" time, according to officials. An article in China Daily, the state newspaper, says that aspiring leaders are shunning the positions because they fear the jobs would lead to a short political career.

The city's intractable pollution problems have been the bane of ambitious up-and-comers. Linfen has had four mayors in the last three years. After the major accident in September 2008--caused when a landslide triggered the collapse of a mining waste reservoir--the city's mayor and party boss both lost their jobs, as did Shanxi's provincial governor.

But maybe things are looking up. The city--which made the Blacksmith Institute's 2007 list of the 10 most polluted cities in the world--last year lost the title of having the worst air in China. It now has the second worst air in the coal-dependent country.

--AFP, 4/1