East Asia: Environmental Issues

Abstract

East Asian countries started industrialization through cultural diffusion from the West. Among them the earliest was Japan in the prewar period, and next to Japan were the ‘Four Little Dragons,’ followed by mainland China from the 1970s to the 1980s. The environmental problems in East Asia occurred with the industrialization in these countries. The first big industrial pollution in Japan was the contamination of the river and the rice fields caused by the slag of Ashio Copper Mine beginning in 1885. Another incident of industrial pollution in the prewar period was the air polluted by soot and smoke in the industrial cities in the 1920s. The postwar big industrial pollution occurred intensively in the high rate of economic growth period (1955–1973). The largest three were: (a) Minamata disease and Niigata Minamata disease caused by methyl mercury spilled into the river and sea from the industrial sewage of Chisso Co. and Showa Denko Co., respectively, (b) Itai-itai disease caused by cadmium spilled from the Mitsui Mine into the river, and (c) Yokkaichi asthma caused by sulfur oxide emission into the air from a petrochemical complex. Industrial pollution, however, came to be controlled effectively by law enactment established in 1970 in the light of public opinion and protest movements. After 1975, the environmental problem in Japan changed its character totally from the problem of factory pollution to that of the ‘global environment.’ The People's Republic of China under the Mao Zedong regime did not achieve industrialization. China's economic development began after the Cultural Revolution came to the end under the Deng Xiaoping regime. However, from the point of view of environmental problem, economic development started the deterioration of the environment. The first problem is air pollution. The second problem is deforestation. The third problem is that of water shortage. The fourth problem is the shortage of disposal facilities for factory waste and sewage. The fifth problem is the spread of desert. When the UN Conference on Environment and Development was held in Brazil, China established the environmental standards in ‘Agenda 21 of China’ on the rate of the diffusion of sewage disposal facilities, the rate of reutilization of solid industrial waste, and the rate of forest to total national land in area, etc. Though the East Asian countries are now in the stage of high rate of economic growth, there are big differences among them in terms of the level of per capita GNP. Unlike in Western Europe, in Asia many countries with different industrialization levels adjoin. This means that there is opposition of interest among them. However, now that not only Japan and the Four Little Dragons, but also the advanced area of the mainland China have already achieved industrialization, East Asian countries, together with the Western countries, must shoulder responsibility for the global environmental problems with which the entire world is confronted.