Focus on Arts and Ecology

Southern Weekly reports that Shenzhen will improve the water quality along the 31-kilometre Maozhou River, which has been polluted since the 1990’s. Shenzhen rose quickly to become one of China’s economic growth engines, incurring severe environmental costs along the way. The river’s water quality is graded “below Class V”, but will be addressed as part of a nationwide campaign to cleanse “black and smelly bodies of water”. Industrial wastewater contributes 10% of the river’s pollution but is often untreated so proves a far more dangerous contaminant than other pollution sources. Shenzhen’s goal calls for the river to reach Class V status by 2019, which means it will move from being useless and harmful to usable for farming and landscaping.