The reporting on China’s handling of its recent oil spill in the Global Times – an affiliate of the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily – was characteristically smug:
It is astonishing how a State-owned company can get back on its feet again in such a short time after a big explosion and oil spill. People will probably forget about it as soon as the news stories fade away.
On the other side of the world, another oil giant is in a similar position as CNPC, except that BP must envy the ease with which CNPC has dealt with a major oil spill. (see full article here)
The authorities were indeed quick to dispatch “more than 1,300 professional cleaners and 5,300 workers from the province to clean up the mess”. Here’s a photo of one such rescue crew hard at work cleaning up the mess, which appeared in the NY Times this weekend (see article here):
With what appears to be a kitchen ladle, this particular worker is better equipped, it seems, than many of her co-workers. According to Zhong Yu, a Greenpeace campaigner observing the clean-up efforts:
The citizens-turned-cleaners we saw yesterday in the sea basically did not have any protective gear and could only use their hands to clean up the oil (quoted in AFP article: Clean-up crews use bare hands against China oil spill)
At least give them ladles!
