Media in China have come out crying fraud and for those responsible to be held accountable in an intriguing case from our very own Jiangsu Province involving the use of fog cannon trucks to ensure that monitoring data meets standards.
A ubiquitous sight in many Chinese cities over the past few years, fog cannon trucks are a handy tool in combatting atmospheric dust, cooling the streets during summer and helping to nourish urban greenery.
But they have also courted controversy, most famously in early 2020 when they were filmed supposedly spraying disinfectant into the air of COVID-stricken Wuhan. Those images were for many the OMG moment that represented the reality of the epidemic hitting home.
Now, those fog cannons are back in the headlines, in Taizhou City of Jiangsu, where they have been caught red handed, calling in to question the believability of statistics released by the nation’s authorities.
Along a certain street in Taizhou, it rains 365. Local residents are frustrated, not only because their street is never dry, but because of the noise, as fog cannon trucks even operate during the middle of the night. They also wondered what on Earth was going on.
Then the media came out with it, saying that a driver involved had revealed the same street also happens to have a data-collection point measuring air quality.
Before jumping to conclusions as to a giant nationwide cover up, it is important to note that China has commitments to transparency in the data released by authorities. There are also some harsh potential punishments in place for those attempting to falsify such data.
As to the Taizhou case, the street in question is located in Jiangyan District. Upon hearing of the scandal, staff with the Jiangyan Ecological Environment Bureau were honest enough, saying that the monitoring point will be moved at the end of the year and that the spraying frequency “will be different than now”, as The Paper has reported.
Yet, it has also emerged that this is hardly an isolated case. In the past few years, various reports of fog cannon trucks interfering with data monitoring have come out from both central and local governments.
So have law enforcement and regulatory authorities always acquiesced and indulged in this?
Just a few days ago, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly released typical cases of falsifying automatic monitoring data in accordance with the law. Therein, it was revealed that guilty parties who come clean as to their acts may receive a “reduction in sentencing on the basis of mitigating circumstances”.
But that the three ministries and commissions also recommend probation to not be an option also sends a clear message; China is determined to hold accountable any illegal and criminal acts which interfere with various pollution-detection data.
