"Mr. Wu, a jaunty, 40-year-old former factory salesman, pioneered a style of intrepid, media-savvy environmental work that made Lake Tai, and the hundreds of chemical factories on its shores, the focus of intense regulatory scrutiny. In 2005 he was declared an “Environmental Warrior” by theNational People’s Congress The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (NPC; ), or simply the National People's Congress, is constitutionally the supreme state authority and the national legislature of the People's Republic of China. With 2,9 .... His address book containedcellphone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...numbers for officials inBeijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...and the provincial capital ofNanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...who outranked the party bosses where he lived. But Mr. Wu was far from untouchable. He lost his job. His wife lost hers. The police summoned, detained and interrogated him. The local government and factory owners also tried for years to bring him into the fold with contracts, gifts and jobs. When party officials offered him a chance to profit handsomely from a pollution cleanup contract, a friend warned him not to accept. Mr. Wu, who needed the money, said yes. The country’s third largest freshwater body, Lake Tai, or Taihu in Chinese, has long provided the people of the lowerYangtze River Delta The Yangtze Delta or Yangtze River Delta (YRD, or simply ) is a triangle-shaped megalopolis generally comprising the Wu Chinese-speaking areas of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang. The area lies in the heart of the Jiangnan reg ...with both their wealth and their conception of natural beauty. It nurtured a bounty of the “three whites,” white shrimp,whitebait Whitebait is a collective term for the immature fry of fish, typically between long. Such young fish often travel together in schools along coasts, and move into estuaries and sometimes up rivers where they can be easily caught using fine- ...and whitefish, and a freshwater crustacean delicacy called the hairy crab. Natural and man-made streams irrigated rice paddies, and a network of canals ferried that produce far and wide. Along the lake’s northern reaches, near the city ofWuxi Wuxi (, ) is a city in southern Jiangsu province, eastern China, by car to the northwest of downtown Shanghai, between Changzhou and Suzhou. In 2017 it had a population of 3,542,319, with 6,553,000 living in the entire prefecture-level city ar ..., placid waters and misty hills captured the imagination of Chinese for hundreds of years. The wealthy built gardens that featured the lake’s wrinkled, water-scarred limestone rocks set in groves of bamboo andchrysanthemum Chrysanthemums (), sometimes called mums or chrysanths, are flowering plants of the genus ''Chrysanthemum'' in the family Asteraceae. They are native to East Asia and northeastern Europe. Most species originate from East Asia and the center ...."
Pollution of Lake Tai
In May 2007, the lake was overtaken by a major algal bloom. Authorities are blaming this on the lowest water levels in 50 years. However, low water levels alone did not cause these blooms. Increases in nutrients, from fertilizer for example, create conditions conducive to algae blooms, which has polluted the water with a toxic blue substance and a stink smell, making the water unusable. The Chinese government has called the lake a major natural disaster despite the clearly anthropogenic origin of this environmental catastrophe. With the average price of bottled water rising to six times the normal rate, the government has banned all regional water providers from implementing price hikes. Wuxi, which draws its tap water from the lake, has been particularly badly affected. As of October 2007, the Chinese government had shut down or given notice to over 1,300 factories around the lake. Some say that only unprofitable factories have been closed, others view the anti-pollution move as overkill. Despite Chinese authorities' increasing awareness of environmental problems, Wu Lihong was arrested and tried for alleged extortion of one of the polluters (seSee also
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* Joseph Kahn