The Washington Post has an epic recounting of the T@1sh1 prot3sts, detailing the support from outside p0litical activists (including Lu B@ngli3, whose beating at the hands of hired thugs sparked international outrage) and Beijing intellectuals who came of political age in 1989. The article is too long and too detailed for me to adequately summarize it, but here are a few highlights:

…T@1shi has become a milestone in the peasant uprisings that increasingly are breaking out around China, generating open concern in President Hu Jintao’s government and in the Communist Party. In T@1shi’s rebellion, outraged local farmers for the first time received help from outside p0litical act1v1sts and Beijing-based intellectuals whose p0litics were shaped in part by the 1989 d3m0cr@cy m0vement.

The cooperation between local peasant prot3st3rs and veteran act1v1sts pursuing a national political agenda — pushing China toward d3mocr@cy — was hailed by Chinese and foreign civil rights advocates as a significant advance. By helping peasants learn from others, they saw a promise of generating more d3mocr@cy in China’s village el3ctions. And by aggressively promoting coverage in Chinese and foreign media through multiple Web postings and broadcasts of cell phone text messages, they thought they had found a way to pressure the authorities. L1u Xia0b0, a well known Beijing act1vist and writer, said on an overseas-based Web site popular with d1ssid3nts, “Civil elites working together with grass-roots villagers created a new method to safeguard villagers’ hum@n r1ghts.” He added, “Domestic intellectuals and Internet users have provided tremendous support and also brought massive attention among Western media.”

But for the government and Communist Party, the coming together of disgruntled peasants and political act1vists in T@ish1 caused alarm. It raised the specter of a nascent national leadership and coordination for what so far has been an unconnected series of violent outbursts, usually over local economic issues, each of which has had homegrown leaders without broader ambitions…

…The authorities in charge of T@1shi cracked down hard. They sent in riot police to break up prot3sts. They branded the act1v1sts as “plotters” and threw several of them in jail on charges of inciting social disorder. Lu was detained for a day even before the beating. The offices of some were rifled, they said, and their houses were put under surveillance. Some went into hiding.

Most of all, the authorities made sure that T@1shi remained under the leadership of Chen J1ngsh3n, the elected village chief and, simultaneously, the unelected Communist Party secretary. He was the target of the angry peasants, who charged that he bribed his way to victory in last April’s vote and siphoned off thousands of dollars in village funds over the last several years.

Notable is the attempt by the organizers and T@1shi’s protesters to use China’s laws to achieve their goals:

Yang and Lu, two veteran act1v1sts, quietly got involved in the struggle. They advised the T@1shi villagers on what options were open to them under China’s election laws, Lu said, and inspired them by recounting Lu’s experience in booting out a corrupt leader back home in Hubei province. Basing their demand on the election law and its recall provision, Feng and Liang filed a formal recall motion on July 29. According to Lu and the district government, the motion was drafted with help from Lu and Yang.

It carried more than 400 signatures, meeting the threshold of endorsement by 20 percent of T@1shi’s 1,500 registered voters.

Villagers gathered two days later in an open square. From atop a heap of bricks, as local reporters and other witnesses looked on, Feng read a section from Chinese law books saying village accounts must be published every six months and villagers had the right to recall Chen.

“The law will be our guardian,” he vowed.

What followed was an escalating series of sit-ins, hunger strikes and protests as the local government attempted to remove the town’s ledgers to avoid any outside audit that would reveal village chief Chen’s alleged financial improprieties. Riot police eventually cleared the protesters, who included elderly women, using batons and high-pressure hoses. In spite of this set-back, it appeared for a time that the villagers might have actually achieved their objectives:

Then, in a surprise turn of events, the district government announced that the recall motion was proved valid and villagers should choose an el3ction committee to organize a new vote for village chief, scheduled for the middle of October. The pr0tests should now stop, it said, and activ1sts with “ulterior motives” should be ignored.

On first glance, this seemed like a triumph for the villagers. The official party newspaper, People’s Daily, hailed the outcome as a model for village elections and pointed to signs of “a d3m0cratic environment built upon rationality and legality.”

But then the district government arbitrarily chose all candidates for the seven-person election committee — and all were local officials loyal to Chen.

Outraged, the still-defiant villagers threatened to boycott the vote. Seeking to prevent more violence, the district government swiftly relented and allowed another slate to run as well. The vote was held Sept. 16; all the unofficial candidates were elected and none of the government’s slate.

The seven committee members now had four weeks to organize a new vote for village chief. But somewhere in the government and party bureaucracy — activ1sts believe it was at a senior level in Beijing — officials had decided Chen would not be replaced, lest a precedent be set.

Under pressure and repeated threats, a majority of the petitioners withdrew their signatures, and the recall vote was canceled.

The article concludes with a quote from Lu, the peasant act1vist, who vows to continue his org@nizing: “I will definitely continue. But how to do it is the question now.”

The Japanese scientist who made the claim in New Scientist clarifies his earlier statement.

In my presentation at the meeting in Marburg, I stated that WHO’s official numbers of H5N1 human cases are only based on laboratory confirmed cases. It should be therefore an iceberg phenomenon. Due to poorly organized surveillance and information sharing systems in many affected countries including China, it is reasonable to consider that more cases have occurred actually. We have heard many ‘rumors’or unauthorized information which we cannot confirm. In this context, I talked about a few examples of non-authorized information and rumors about Asian countries which I received through private channels. I clarified that I do not know the original sources and I cannot confirm whether they are true, how these numbers were derived and what laboratory tests and epidemiological investigation were done.

When you think about it, and consider the number of deaths in surrounding countries, 300 doesn’t seem all that outlandish. But as the doctor says, we just don’t know because information channels in China, despite all the SARS reforms, still suck.

Via CDT.

Big surprise.

The government tried for days to keep secret the threat posed to the nearly four million people of this city by a chemical explosion and benzene leak that has made the water supply unusable, Chinese news accounts revealed Friday.

The reports, including some from the official Xinhua news agency, suggested that officials here and in Jilin Province, where the disaster occurred 380 kilometers, or 235 miles, up the Songhua River, lied or told only part of the story until they had no choice but to admit the truth.

The explosion at the chemical plant occurred on Nov. 13, but factory officials announced only that the accident posed no threat of air pollution. They denied that chemicals had spilled into the river, the main source of water for Harbin and other communities.

A Shanghai newspaper, the News Morning Post, reported that government officials in Jilin told their downstream neighbors in Heilongjiang Province, home of Harbin, that there had been no chemical spill. But Jilin officials finally told their peers in Heilongjiang on Nov. 19 that there was a problem.

The China Youth Daily reported that environmental officials in Jilin – instead of telling the public – had tried to dilute the spill with reservoir water.

By Monday, officials in Harbin were preparing to shut down of the water supply, but they feared news of the chemical spill would start a panic, the News Morning Post reported. Instead, they announced that they had to cut off the water to do maintenance work on the mains. Rumors then erupted that the government had detected signs of an earthquake.

Enough people panicked that the officials then had to confirm that the explosion had released benzene into the river. But the damage was done.

On Friday, a front-page headline in the Modern Evening Times here stated: “There Will Not Be an Earthquake in Harbin.”

“They were trying to lie and get by,” said Qi Guangzhong, 64, as he walked along the Songhua River on Friday. “The government wanted to hide this.”

I know, when you refer to “the government” in China, it’s not a monolithic entity. And I’m well aware of how this is argued by certain China followers: the ones doing the lying were the local officials, while the central government was trying to correct the lies and take responsible action. I just wonder whether it’s that black and white, as if the “two governments” – local and central – are truly self-contained organizations, one good, one bad. And I also wonder, if the central government thought they could lie about this and get away with it, wouldn’t they? I mean, look at SARS and AIDS. But when you have a 50-mile-wide toxic slick heading for the Russian border and threatening to poison millions of your own citizens along the way, it’s not very practical to lie about it. And don’t forget, as the article points out, it took the country’s environemntal protection agency 11 days to finally speak out about the danger. Maybe truth was seen as the last resort to a situation beyond the Party’s control…?

Update: Well, this must-read article by the great Philip Pan certainly puts a hole in the “two governments” argument.

“All of these problems are caused by the government,” one man growled as he struggled to carry a huge red bucket of water back to his apartment. He began to say more, but his wife cut him off as a local official walked over, loudly praising the ruling Communist Party.

Twelve days after an estimated 100 tons of benzene and other toxic compounds poured in the Songhua River following an explosion at a state-owned petrochemical plant, the party is struggling to contain a political crisis as much as an environmental one.

Daring journalists succeeded in publishing a series of reports on Friday describing in remarkable detail the efforts by party officials to cover up the chemical spill. Among the disclosures was an admission by a provincial governor that officials in Harbin initially lied to the public about why they were shutting down the water supply, because they were awaiting instructions from senior party leaders.

On Friday night, reporters received orders from the party’s central propaganda department to stop asking questions and go home. All state media were told to use the reports only of the official New China News Agency, the journalists said.

Meanwhile, the central government used the news service to announce it was sending a team of high-level investigators to Harbin. In a sign the party is worried about a public backlash, the report suggested in unusually blunt terms that officials would be disciplined. “Punishments of irresponsible acts are on the way,” it said….

Reached by phone, an environmental official in Songyuan, a city of more than 400,000 located between Jilin and Harbin, confirmed that officials there were told of the spill but chose to keep it secret. The official, who asked to be identified only by a surname, Li, said the city shut off the part of its water system that is linked to the river but told the public it was just doing repairs.

A water industry official in Harbin, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was likely that farmers and others living in rural areas between Jilin and Harbin were not informed of the spill and drank or used the contaminated water. Benzene poisoning can cause anemia, some forms of cancer and other blood disorders, as well as kidney and liver damage.

It was not until Nov. 21, when they were confronted with tests showing pollution at more than 100 times acceptable levels, that Harbin officials decided to shut down the water supply. Even then, the city said the reason for doing so was to “carry out repair and inspections on the pipe network.”

In the most damning report in the state media, China Newsweek magazine said the governor of Heilongjiang province, Zhang Zuoji, told a meeting of 400 officials that the city lied because it was waiting for permission from higher authorities to disclose the spill. The magazine also said participants in the meeting were told that Harbin officials were reluctant to contradict the denials of Jilin officials that were reported in “authoritative media,” a reference to official outlets in Beijing.

It was only after an urgent message by provincial officials on Monday night seeking help and guidance from the central government that officials decided to end the coverup, the magazine said. The announcement came at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, less than two hours after city authorities received instructions from Beijing.

A day later, the central government confirmed that a “major water pollution incident” had occurred.

But by then, the damage to the party’s credibility had been done. Residents described a rush to leave the city and panicked buying of bottled water and other supplies as the conflicting explanations fueled public confusion and rumors of an imminent earthquake, apparently introduced by a vague television forecast.

If they are so willing on all sides – local and central – to cover up a disaster that can kill their citizens, why on earth should we believe that they are eager and sincere in their efforts to be transparent and open about bird flu? This is a reflexive, automatic and apparently unalterable response in China to bad news: place stability and harmony above all else, even at the expense of human life. It is not restricted to local governments. This mentality pervades all levels of the Party, and if there were any lessons learned from the great SARS catastrophe, they are not in evidence today.

No, I still haven’t read the book and probably won’t be able to get to it until Chinese New Year. But this story is still relevant to this blog.

In “Mao: The Unknown Story,” authors Jung Chang and Jon Halliday portray Mao (1893-1976) as a cynical hedonist who rose to absolute power on Soviet strongman Josef Stalin’s muscle and his willingness to crush millions of peasants in famine, war and sadistic repression….The authors say he sold international leftists a fairy tale of a corrupt state transformed by revolution from the bottom up.

“It was mainly, I think, hot air,” Halliday dryly told a large crowd during an appearance at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business earlier this month.

The assertion that Mao used the bloody turmoil of Marxist revolution for purely egotistical ends has prompted praise in some quarters and outrage in others. The controversy comes as China’s 20-year economic boom is creating growing social disparity — and the ruling Communist Party worries about Maoist nostalgia among a new generation of have-nots even as it holds up Mao as a symbol of its historical legitimacy.

“But overall,” said Qiang Xiao, director of the Berkeley China Internet Project at Cal’s Graduate School of Journalism, “the government doesn’t allow the truth about Mao to come out. The information is suppressed. I believe the book is a very good thing.

“I do not see much positive out of what he has done to China,” said Xiao, who devoted himself to human rights after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. “I saw the devastating result, not only then but still lasting today.”

The husband-and-wife team of Chang and Halliday supported their archival research with interviews with 150 former Mao lieutenants, concluding that Mao was not only bloodier than Hitler or Stalin but worse in his destruction of culture. Chang is the author of the best-selling “Wild Swans: Three Daughters in China,” a memoir detailing her family’s suffering during the period.

“During the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, he turned China into a cultural desert,” she told the crowd at Haas. “He made torture public. My mother went through over a hundred of those denunciation meetings. She was made to kneel on broken glass and so on. China must be the most traumatized nation in the world.”

Halliday said Mao appealed to “a large group of fantasists” who gullibly thought he was the real thing. Halliday said Mao also attracted leftists who tolerated violence.

Maoist intellectuals have counterattacked, saying the book negates any historical grounds for the Chinese revolution and positive changes in what had been a corrupt society before Mao’s military victory in 1949.

“It’s just outrageous,” said Gary Miller, a volunteer at Berkeley’s Revolution Books, as he leafleted the authors’ event on campus. “A lot of people look with a great deal of affection at the Mao years because China’s been turned into one giant sweatshop.”

Personally, I’m more inclined to take seriously the opinion of Xiao Qiang than I am “a volunteer at Berkeley’s Revolution Books.” Your call.

Okay, so Firedoglake and Dependable Renegade already have this up. But I’m feeling the holiday spirit…

So what’s on your plate?

I cringe when I think about Harbin and the 50-mile lethal slick of benzene drifting toward the Russian border. The famous environmental carelessness that has been the hallmark of China’s economic boom had to catch up with the government sometime, and I’d guess this is just a sign of more catastrophes to come. It’s all about corruption, as usual. And it’s always the little people on the ground who have to bear the misery brought on by the greedy businessmen and corrupt local officials. I suspect the CCP wil come down on them hard and in a very public way.

I’m still on vacation and won’t be back to blogging fulltime until the weekend. I’ll have a lot of catching up to do. To those angrily awaiting my response to their emails, please be forebearing.

AP has an update:

The 50-mile-long patch of water carrying toxic benzene began entering Harbin, a city of 3.8 million people in China’s northeast, before dawn, the government said. It was expected to take 40 hours to pass.

“After it passes … we will have to make efforts to disinfect the water,” Shi Zhongxin, director of the city’s water bureau, said on state television. He gave no details…

…The city government announced it was digging 100 new wells.

On Thursday, thousands of one-liter bottles of drinking water stood in huge stacks outside wholesale shops. Families bought them by the dozen to take home by bicycle, while sidewalk vendors pushed carts straining under hundreds of bottles…

…China’s central government confirmed for the first time Wednesday that the shutdown was a result of a “major water pollution incident.” Local officials earlier disclosed the reason, but officials in Beijing had refused to comment…

…The explosion, which forced the evacuation of 10,000 people, was blamed on human error in a facility processing benzene, which is used in the manufacture of plastics, detergents and pesticides. Short-term exposure can cause drowsiness, dizziness and unconsciousness.

A top official with China’s environmental watchdog said Thursday the company overseeing the plant should be held responsible — state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., which is the country’s largest oil company.

“We will be very clear about who’s responsible. It is the chemical plant of the CNPC in Jilin province,” Zhang Lijun, deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, said at a news conference.

Zhang did not give any more details but said investigators were looking into criminal responsibility.

He also had no details on what authorities would do to protect against long-term damage to the river and surrounding soil.

In neighboring Russia, news reports said concern was growing in the border city of Khabarovsk, about 435 miles downriver from Harbin.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said officials briefed the Russian Embassy twice this week and both sides have agreed to share information….

…Zhang said China did no wrong in waiting until this week to tell Russia about the effects of the Nov. 13 accident. “There are different levels of reporting,” he said, explaining that local officials along the river were told first.

“It will be another 14 days before the toxins reach the Heilongjiang River” which flows into Russia, “so we don’t think we were late in providing information,” he said.

But, an official in Khabarovsk told Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency that not enough was known about the accident on the Songhua River — known in Russian as the Sungari.

“Unfortunately, the Chinese side has so far not released full information about the chemicals in the Sungari and their amount,” Ivan Sych, head of the Khabarovsk regional department for civil defense and emergency situations, was quoted as saying…

…With its huge population, China ranks among countries with the smallest water supplies per person. Hundreds of cities regularly suffer shortages of water for drinking or industry. Protests have erupted in rural areas throughout China over complaints that pollution is ruining water supplies and damaging crops.

The Financial Times account is grim:

Thousands of residents of Harbin last night jammed its railway station while others booked all available flights as a deadly 80km toxic slick made its way down the Songhua river, threatening to poison the north-eastern Chinese city’s water supplies.

The slick of benzene and other toxins was leaked into the river, the city’s main source of water, after a series of explosions 10 days ago at a chemicals factory 200km upriver.

A mood of distrust and paranoia was spreading through the industrial city of 9m people, sharpened by the local government’s decision to turn off water supplies for four days for fear of an environmental catastrophe.

Trains leaving the city are fully booked until the weekend. All 42 flights from the city’s airport were also full yesterday.

The Guardian adds:

While the true extent of the risk to human health remains unclear, the public’s sense of unease has been heightened by mixed signals coming from the authorities, who have taken more than a week to raise the alarm…

…The state environmental protection agency said it had started monitoring water safety levels within three hours of the explosion at the plant, yet its report – that 108 times the safe level of benzene seeped into the river – only became public knowledge yesterday…

…in China, questions about the environmental disaster are spreading beyond Harbin. According to the Xinhua news agency, the provincial government is so concerned that it has warned city residents to stay away from the river to avoid possible exposure to airborne toxins.

Upstream, there have been reports that many fish have died and, contrary to earlier denials, it appears that at least two cities, Songhua and Jilin, have shut down water supplies because of health fears.

I’m running out the door and have no real time to comment here. But for me, this has echoes of another disaster from a few decades ago. That too took place in a state that zealously tried to control the flow of information, and the fall-out from the government’s handling of it helped trigger major changes in that government.

Remember Chernobyl?

I’ve said before that perhaps a grassroots environmental movement has the potential to be a dem0cr@tizing force in China. Pollution affects everyone, rich and poor, and in addition there are many in the government who recognize the severity of China’s problem and are pushing for concrete actions to address it (check out this interview with Minister Pan Yue). A balance with nature is an essential aspect of traditional Chinese culture as well – something that even Mao and the rush to modernization has not completely destroyed.

China’s officials claim they will share information on a timely basis. I imagine Harbin’s residents will be very interested to see if they do – particuarly their plans to ensure the future safety of the water supply.

UPDATE And the criticism is rolling in:

Environmentalists criticized the government for failing to take action and inform the public sooner.

“Careful environmental evaluation should have been made to avoid building dangerous factories near residential areas and water sources in the first place,” said Xue Ye, general secretary of the Chinese group Friends of Nature.

“The local government should have predicted the possible pollution, but they didn’t. It makes us wonder whether the plan was made for real use or just for showing off.”…

…Reporters from China’s usually docile state press peppered Zhang with questions, asking repeatedly why the government waited so long to disclose the scale of the threat faced by Harbin and other communities.

Zhang replied, “We did report it right away. There are different levels of reporting.”

A reporter from China Central Television, noting that China has suffered a string of fatal industrial accidents recently, asked whether the government would be setting up a new emergency-response mechanism.

Zhang said the government already had such a mechanism and that it functioned as planned.

Now this is an unsual article, from the conservative Washington Times’ sister magazine.

The overwhelming assessment by Asian officials, diplomats and analysts is that the U.S. military simply cannot defeat China. It has been an assessment relayed to U.S. government officials over the past few months by countries such as Australia, Japan and South Korea. This comes as President Bush wraps up a visit to Asia, in which he sought to strengthen U.S. ties with key allies in the region.

Most Asian officials have expressed their views privately. Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has gone public, warning that the United States would lose any war with China.

“In any case, if tension between the United States and China heightens, if each side pulls the trigger, though it may not be stretched to nuclear weapons, and the wider hostilities expand, I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives,” Mr. Ishihara said in an address to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mr. Ishihara said U.S. ground forces, with the exception of the Marines, are “extremely incompetent” and would be unable to stem a Chinese conventional attack. Indeed, he asserted that China would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against Asian and American cities—even at the risk of a massive U.S. retaliation.

The governor said the U.S. military could not counter a wave of millions of Chinese soldiers prepared to die in any onslaught against U.S. forces. After 2,000 casualties, he said, the U.S. military would be forced to withdraw.

“Therefore, we need to consider other means to counter China,” he said. “The step we should be taking against China, I believe, is economic containment.”

My first guess is that this is a “scare article” intended to shake us up into thinking that if we leave Iraq, it proves to our allies and enemies alike that we are incompetent cowards afraid of incurring any casualties. Of course, that’s not true, and my gut instinct is to see this entire piece as BS. There would be no talk of pulling out of Iraq if the majority of Americans believed we have a clear mission with attainable goals, and that those 2,000+ Americans died for something worthwhile. Americans aren’t cowards who run away; they just want to know what they’re dying for. In the face of a true threat, like Al Qaeda, the nation rallies and fights.

I may be totally wrong about this, and the article may be spot-on. The governor may be a qualified spokesman for other Asian countries. Still, I find it on the bizarre side. In a conventional war, America would be pretty hard to beat, even though being bogged down in Iraq doesn’t help us any.

The Los Angeles Times reports that “second wives” have made a comeback in China – and that where “golden canaries” flock, corruption is sure to follow:

China’s economic boom has led to a revival of the 2-millennium-old tradition of “golden canaries,” so called because, like the showcase birds, mistresses here are often pampered, housed in love nests and taken out at the pleasure of their “masters.”

Concubines were status symbols in imperial China. After the Communists took power, they sought to root out such bourgeois evils, even as Chairman Mao Tse-tung reportedly kept a harem of peasant women into his old age.

Now, mistresses have become a must-have for party officials, bureaucrats and businessmen.

“We are in a commodity economy,” says retired Shanghai University sociologist Liu Dalin. “Work, technology, love, beauty, power — it’s all tradable.”

So-called concubine villages — places where lotharios keep “second wives” in comfort and seclusion — are now spread across the nation, in booming cities such as Dongguan, Chengdu and Shanghai.

The mistress boom is contributing to a surge in divorces — and fierce battles over property when relationships collapse. Not long ago, Beijing amended the country’s marriage law to make men who indulge in mistresses pay heavy penalties and to give their spouses greater rights in separations.

Now, local governments are starting to take action.

This year the city of Nanjing issued an order for all public officials to register their extramarital relationships. In Guangzhou, a prosperous city in the south, a major university issued stern warnings to female students about having affairs and wrecking marriages. And last month, state media reported that Hainan province had stipulated that party members who kept mistresses or had children outside of marriage would be expelled.

Government leaders worry that philandering also could have detrimental effects on China’s economy and the credibility of the Communist Party.

State-run banks and agencies have lost billions of dollars to embezzlement and fraud, many at the hands of officials seeking money to support their golden canaries. In a government review of 102 corruption cases in several Guangdong province cities a few years ago, every one involved an illicit affair.

“If a government official has a mistress, there must be some corruption,” says Sun Youjun, a private investigator in Shanghai. “Visits to high-end hotels are not easy with officials’ incomes.”

And apparently, “second wives” rather understates many of these cases:

Li Xin knelt in a hotel room here, wearing polka-dot boxer shorts and a grimace on his face.

The deputy mayor of Jining, in Shandong province, was pleading with his lover not to report him to authorities.

But in the end, the 51-year-old official was exposed and sentenced to life in prison. His crime: accepting more than $500,000 in bribes, which he used to support at least four mistresses in Jining, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Li’s transgressions were minor compared with those of other public officials. A top prosecutor in Henan province, for example, was recently stripped of his post and Communist Party membership after investigators alleged that he embezzled $2 million to support his lavish lifestyle — and seven mistresses.

I’m at work, so I don’t have any time for commentary on this. But here is an update on the H@rb1n situation:

HARBIN, China (AFP) – A chemical plant explosion has severely polluted one of China’s biggest rivers, causing water supplies to be cut for millions of people and sparking pollution fears in neighbouring Russia.

The explosion at a PetroChina factory in the northeastern province of Jilin led to an outpouring of the carcinogen benzene into the 1,897-kilometer-long (1,176-mile) Songhua river, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said Wednesday.

“After the blast at the chemical plant the monitoring station in Jilin found that benzene went into the river and polluted the water,” the EPA said in a statement on its website.

“Benzene levels were 108 times above national safety levels.”

The announcement came 10 days after the November 13 explosion and followed repeated denials from government officials that there had been any major environmental impact.

In Harbin, the capital of neighbouring Heilongjiang province about 380 kilometers downstream from the blast site, water supplies were cut off at midnight on Tuesday over the pollution fears, the local government said.

The Songhua is the main source of drinking water for more than three million urban residents of Harbin, which has a total population of about nine million and is one of China’s biggest cities.

The EPA said the pollutants in the water were expected to hit Harbin around 5:00 am on Thursday, although the contaminants would be diluted.

Xinhua news agency quoted government sources as saying that Harbin needs 1,400 tons of active carbon to purify the contaminated water in the Songhua but is currently 700 tons short.

The polluting material index had dropped to 29 times above national safety levels when the contaminants reached the border of Jilin and Heilongjiang on Sunday, the EPA said.

However the polluted water flowed past Songyuan and Zhaoyuan, two big cities between the blast site and Harbin that lie along the Songhua, before the government admitted the contamination.

Songyuan has a population of just under three million and Zhaoyuan has about 450,000 residents. An official from Songyuan city government told AFP on Wednesday that its water supplies had not been cut over the past 10 days.

I don’t know how sensitive this topic is, so please let me know if I need to do additional ed1t1ng…