Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

China’s white river dolphin appears to now be extinct, according to a team of biologists that spent six weeks searching for it in its usual habitat of the Yangtze River. This makes it the first mammal globally to become extinct in the past 50 years, despite private attempts to preserve the animal. China’s rapid industrialization and pollution of the Yangtze River have largely been to blame, with no serious attempts by government to act to save the 25 million year old species.

For 20 million years, the white-fin dolphin, or baiji, swam China's longest river, the Yangtze. But a few years of breakneck development, overfishing and a massive increase in shipping have reduced sightings of this shy, graceful creature to zero.

Over one million people are facing water shortages because the Yangtze River is being ravaged by drought. But what effect will the ongoing drought have on the operation of the Three Gorges Dam? If the rain stays away, power generation targets must surely have to be amended.

August Pfluger, CEO of the baiji.org Foundation, declared the extinction of China's Baiji dolphin on December 13. A recent expedition to the Yangtze River failed to find any Baiji dolphins, thus confirming the worst fears of researchers and animal conservationists.

This article, via Mask of China, makes you think how far the river has come since Mao took his famous dips. Due to droughts (and a completely disregard for hard-hitting environmental policy), the Chang Jiang (??) or Yangtse River is packed with about 7 million cubic feet of garbage congesting at the controversial Three Gorges Dam.

From Public Radio International's program The World: China, the world's largest nation with one of the fastest growing economies, has a world-class pollution problem. In a four-part series, correspondent Mary Kay Magistad examines China's growing environmental crisis and what the country is doing to respond.
This was originally a radio piece, but it has several text and podcast components. The link goes to the feature's main page.

China Daily's star columnist Raymond Zhou rallies against China's excess of government agencies that charge exorbitant registration fees.

In Chinese, there are several words meaning river, such as Jiang, He, Xi, Shui, Chuan. This one give you some idea of how to distinguish them.

In the Nu River valley in southwest China, exploration work is under way for a string of hydroelectric dams. Yongchen Wang visited the region to hear what local people have to say about the controversial project, from chinadialogue.net.