As air pollution worsens across the Pearl River Delta, the smog may soon bring with it a new form of civic activism - consumer boycotts aimed at the 63,000 Hong Kong companies that help generate the problem through environmentally unfriendly practices.
Organising consumer boycotts is easy. Activists work backwards, from brand name products to suppliers. A British watchdog organisation, Ethical Consumer, offers advice on its website about how to organise a boycott, together with long lists of countries and companies that are the subject of action. Most Hong Kong companies are well beneath the radar in terms of brand names, but their customers are not. And so, even a relatively obscure company, by virtue of a network of global activists linked by the internet, may find itself under harsh scrutiny.
The complexity of the issues is so great that it seems to have overwhelmed minds on all sides. A Hong Kong government special panel on the Pearl River Delta air quality management and monitoring has been almost invisible to the public. Business, represented by the Greater Pearl River Delta Business Council, has failed to generate new ideas, although air pollution is included under a programme on sustainable development.
Non-governmental organisations have taken an increasingly strident stand, and it is hard to find fault with them. Last week, when the Civic Exchange think-tank came out with a brace of reports on air quality, Tse Chin-wan, principal assistant secretary of the Environment, Transport and Works Bureau, offered a classically vague bureaucratic response - the government had already taken steps to amend the problems, he said, without being specific.
While Mr Tse may be given the benefit of the doubt - he is speaking today to an Open University conference about the 'partnership case' for improving the air quality of the delta - such exchanges simply reinforce the impression of a government that does not listen. Imagine if the air pollution issue was given the priority it deserves, as a health, environmental and economic issue that unites the delta region. The Hong Kong and Guangdong governments might begin by recruiting every available human and technological resource to combat the problem. Citizens would support the effort by monitoring and naming offenders, and by organising product boycotts.
As with many of Hong Kong's issues, business could play a crucial role. The Greater Pearl River Delta Business Council could mobilise business on both sides of the border, to seek innovative financial and technological strategies for a clean-up, as well as to self-regulate offenders. If the idea of consumer boycotts gains ground, business will have the most to lose. Hong Kong business also has the most to gain, as it moves into new, lifestyle-centred investments in the delta. These will take over as Guangdong gradually gives up its industrial base to China's less-developed regions. To thrive, it will need clean air.
