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A dead pig is seen in a dirty tributary of the Yangtze River, in central China's Hebei province, some 750 miles from the city of Shanghai, in a photo taken on March 12, 2013. The number of dead pigs found in the Huangpu River, which runs through China's commercial hub Shanghai, has reached more than 13,000, state media reported on March 18.

BEIJING – To the chagrin of Shanghai city residents, there’s more “pork chop soup” on the menu for the foreseeable future. 

More than a week since authorities in Shanghai started pulling thousands of dead pigs from one of the city’s major waterways, the Huangpu River, municipal authorities in that city of 23 million are continuing to pull hundreds of carcasses from its waterways each day, bringing the total since last week to over 13,000. 

Workers on Sunday pulled nearly 500 pigs from the Huangpu, bringing the total found from that river alone to over 9,500. The Huangpu River supplies over a fifth of Shanghai’s drinking water.

As the pig tally creeps up, Shanghai government officials have been struggling to put a positive spin on the ghoulish images popping up each day from the city’s waterways. 

A report Monday in People’s Daily, the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party, focused on the stepped up food and water quality tests across the city. It also earnestly noted that not only have the numbers of pigs being pulled from the rivers dropped, but the size of them too.

Citing a report from Shanghai’s city government, the paper stated that two thirds of the most recent carcasses found were piglets, suggesting that the worse may have passed.

Social media outrage
Still, the daily sight of carcasses being pulled from the city’s waterways for disposal has angered the public and sparked a spirited discussion on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo. 

Reports that many of the pigs found have tested positive for porcine circovirus, a virus that has killed large numbers of pigs in the region in recent months, has also raised suspicions about the safety of Shanghai’s water supply.

“The water must have been polluted [by these dead pigs],” wrote one user named Lujun, “Authorities are being dishonest and trying to hide something.”

“The government is as corrupt as these dead pigs,” another user using the name Ziyoudeweini wrote disgustedly. “I feel so cold. Who can we count on?” 

“Water quality in the Huangpu River has been normal up to now,” one official at the Shanghai Information Office assured NBC News Monday. He also stressed that porcine circovirus cannot be contracted by humans. 

Where are they coming from?
Shanghai officials have stepped up surveillance for dead pigs around the Huangpu River and have called upon local government in the nearby city of Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province to step up their own searches. 

Just northeast of Shanghai, Jiaxing is believed to be the source of many of the dead pigs floating down into Shanghai. Shanghai’s Information Office officials declined to speculate on whether Jiaxing was the sole source of all the pigs, but told NBC News that the prefecture was the focus of a joint Shanghai-Jiaxing investigation.

An official at the Jiaxing Environmental Protection Agency declined to comment on the progress of the investigation late Monday.

But steps were being taken in Jiaxing to curb the continued dumping of pigs into the region’s waterways. The city’s local newspaper, Jiaxing Daily, reported that leaflets had been passed out to farmers in the region, urging them to properly dispose of dead pigs with local authorities rather than quietly dumping them into the river.

Jiaxing is likely not the only community to be dumping dead pigs into its waterways, as reports indicate that porcine circovirus has spiked across farming communities this winter, killing more pigs than usual. Many have speculated that farmers have been attempting to discretely dispose of the sick pigs rather than reporting them to authorities and risk investigation.

NBC News’ Danny Zhang contributed to this report.

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More than 2,800 dead pigs found in Chinese river

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Michael Reynolds / EPA file

Chinese cyclists pass by an enormous advertisement for Coca-Cola in Beijing.

BEIJING – When Coca-Cola began using high-tech systems to help its logistics in Yunnan Province, China, little did it know it would run afoul of that country’s strict “illegal mapping” laws.

Coke? Spying on the Chinese?

Not so fast, say Chinese officials, who have downplayed the charges from Yunnan province that Coca-Cola was collecting sensitive geographical information using handheld GPS devices.

An officer with the agency charged with safeguarding sensitive geographic information denied that the case against Coke is so serious that it involved the powerful Ministry of State Security, as was previously been reported.

“The case is regional, just a branch of Coca Cola,” said an official from the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation (NASMG), who asked to remain anonymous. 

She added that China does not hold the soft drink giant in contempt.

“We also have to protect our international companies,” she said. “Coca-Cola is a company that has been an important part of China.”

A local issue
The controversy erupted after officials in the southern province of Yunnan announced an investigation into charges that Coca-Cola was illegally collecting information on secret areas using handheld GPS devices.  

The case was just one of 21 instances cited in an annual report involving companies allegedly doing illegal surveying in the mountainous southern province of Yunnan which borders Laos, Burma and Vietnam, a tourist destination famous for stunning vistas of jagged snow-capped mountains and rivers.

Gong Yinyong, a spokesman for NASMG, stressed it is still too early to conclude that Coco-Cola has violated Chinese law, and said the investigation was being handled by its Yunnan bureau.

 “We appointed our Yunnan bureau to handle the investigation,” Gong said. “The accusation against Coca-Cola Yunnan plant was originally reported to our Yunnan bureau.” 

However, the other officer who spoke anonymously with NBC and works in NASMG’s law enforcement department, confirmed that the agency has been tougher on foreigners and foreign companies in recent years.

Cracking down on foreigners
China has been tightening its regulations on the surveying and mapping of its geography, in particular by foreign organizations and individuals. Each year, NASMG picks 10 samples of the most common and important violations and makes them public. Since 2009, at least one case has involved a foreigner every year.  

In 2011, the bureau fined an American man for using handheld GPS illegally in Xinjiang Province and confiscated his equipment. The man had collected and stored 90,000 data points about Chinese geographic locations as he traveled from Beijing to Xinjiang. He claimed the mapping was part of a plan to open a tour company.

Chinese law prohibits foreigners from “arbitrarily carrying out surveying and mapping” without government permission.

A spokesperson for Coca-Cola sent NBC an official statement, saying that it is cooperating with the investigation to make sure that it coordinates the delivery of its drinks legally.

“Every day, Coca Cola’s trucks deliver beverages to thousands of local retail outlets,” the written statement says. “Some of our local bottling plants in China have adopted logistics solutions to improve our customer service levels and fuel efficiency.”

The mapping systems used by bottlers are commercially available in China through authorized local suppliers, the company added.

Military fears
On Thursday a story in the South China Morning Post quoted a mapping expert who suggested Beijing was sensitive about the use of GPS devices by foreigners because such geographical data could be used by guided missiles to strike key military facilities.  

Professor Weng Jingling, an expert in geographical information systems at Beijing University, said the government’s caution would be necessary to protect military facilities. 

“A GPS device can pinpoint the exact coordinates, which a satellite picture cannot provide,” he said.

NBC’s Amy Langfield has contributed to the story.  

BEIJING — Thousands of dead pigs, a number of them diseased, were found in Shanghai's major drinking water supply in the last two days, officials said.

According to Xinmin newspaper, 2,813 pigs were fished out of the Huangpu River, which provides drinking water for Shanghai's 23 million people. When contacted for up-to-date information on the number of pigs retrieved from the river, officials referred NBC News to the local news report.

Some of the pigs were infected with porcine circovirus (PCV) virus, according to an official statement by the Shanghai Agriculture Committee. The statement posted on China's Twitter-like social media service Weibo said that the disease would not infect humans. 

A water management officer said by telephone that results of hourly water tests were normal.  

"We are adding more chlorine as an action to protect water safety," said the official who would only identified herself as Zhu.

Water pollution, usually created by fertilizer run-off, chemical spills and untreated sewage, is a big problem in China. According to Reuters, the government will invest $850 billion over the next decade to improve the water supply system.

People from the Songjiang area of Shanghai, where many of the pigs were found, said this was not the first time they had seen the carcasses floating in the river.

Eugene Hoshiko / AP

A dead pig floats in a river on the outskirts of Shanghai on Monday.

"Am I scared? I have been hearing this kind of news all the time, so I am immune," said Songjiang resident Ma Leiying, 42, who works as a clerk at a state-owned company. "I’m sure other cities have the same problems, but the difference is the incidents have not been reported yet."

Some expressed outrage via Weibo.

"Have we been drinking dead-pig-polluted water? We are already panicked by the polluted air now we have to worry about poisoned water too," one user wrote.

Xinmin News, Shanghai’s most popular newspaper paper, reported that labels on some of the carcasses indicated that the animals had come from Zhejiang and Jiangshu provinces.   

According to Jiaxing Daily, many pigs have died in the area in recent months. In Zhulin village alone, there were 10,078 dead pigs in January, 8,325 in February, it reported.  The newspaper added that the cause of death was down to the cramped conditions the animals were kept in.

The Associated Press reported that the surge in the dumping of dead pigs came after a police campaign to curb the illegal trade in sick pig parts.

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This story was originally published on Mon Mar 11, 2013 6:14 AM EDT

AP

A vendor watches the live telecast of the annual government work report by outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao on a television in a vegetable market in Fuyang in central China's Anhui province on Tuesday.

BEIJING — China pledged to tackle problems which threaten to alienate the country's growing middle class and aspirational masses as its once-in-a-decade changing of the guard at the top of the country’s government got under way.

"We should unwaveringly combat corruption, strengthen political integrity, establish institutions to end the excessive concentration of power and lack of checks on power and ensure that officials are honest, government is clean and political affairs are handled with integrity,"said China's outgoing premier Wen Jiabao at the China’s National People’s Congress (NPC).

Wen on Tuesday enumerated major domestic challenges that have caused public discontent in recent years — air pollution, toxic factories, tainted food and abuses of power — and pledged more resources to environmental protection and public welfare. His speech was a tacit admission that quality of life had been sidelined by a focus on breakneck economic growth.

"We are keenly aware we still face many difficulties and problems in our economic and social development," said the premier, whose family was accused in a New York Times report late last year of amassing billions of dollars in assets. 

While the Chinese leadership also announced a boost in defense spending, the focus of this year’s Congress appeared to be decidedly domestic.

Widening inequality and a more discontented middle class were the big issues facing new leaders, said Damien Ma, analyst at the Paulson Institute, an independent think-tank.

"The problem is whether China can address the costs of that growth and seriously face the growing social cleavages that such growth has wrought," he said.  

The rhetoric about improving the quality of life was not new, said Susan Shirk, an expert on Chinese politics and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during the Clinton administration.

Reuters, file

An elderly exercises in the morning as he faces chimneys emitting smoke behind buildings across the Songhua river in Jilin, Jilin province, on Feb. 24. China's new rulers will focus on consumer-led growth to narrow the gap between rich and poor while taking steps to curb pollution and graft, the government has said.

"The ... government talked about it every year at the NPC for the past 10 years," she said.

It was also unclear how far the government could go to address worries over extraordinary high levels of pollution and food safety, experts said.

A boost in budget for forces tasked with maintaining the peace at home was worth note, said Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author of "China in the 21st Century."

China's public security budget will reach $32.6 billion, an increase of 7.9 percent, which will "improve the mechanism for ensuring funding for primary-level ... judicial and public security departments," according to a Ministry of Finance report.

A big challenge for the government, and a possible impediment to addressing environmental concerns, will be the need to maintain high rates of economic growth, according to experts. 

"The government will struggle to reconcile its environmental agenda with the resource-intensive urbanization program that is set to underpin economic growth," said Nicholas Consonery of political-risk consulting firm Eurasia.

To boost domestic consumption and mitigate the widening rich-poor divide, China plans to migrate hundreds of millions of farmers to the cities in the next ten years. With higher incomes, the urban middle class will boost domestic consumption which will underpin future economic growth. 

In addition to promising to grapple with environmental and social welfare issues, the government announced a 10.7 percent increase to its military budget, continuing the double digit increases seen in the last two decades, even as the country appeared set to see its lowest economic growth in years. 

A new aircraft carrier and stealth fighter bombers would be added to the military amid escalating maritime disputes with Japan and other Asian neighbors, the NPC announced.

The defense modernization will help to ”resolutely uphold China’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity,” Wen said during his last work report after ten years at the helm of China’s Cabinet.

The move is seen as attempt of the new leadership headed by Party chief and incoming President Xi Jinping to project strength and forge strong ties with China’s military, a major base of support. China is now the world’s second biggest military spender with $114 billion, after the United States which spent $633 billion last year.

The ongoing military buildup was not cause for alarm, Shirk said.

“The increase is consistent with past budgets... Roughly in line with economic growth. Not a massive military buildup,” she said.

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Chinese soldiers march past the Great Hall of the People after a pre-opening session of the National People's Congress, China's parliament, on March 4, 2013 in Beijing, China.

BEIJING — The call came late on Monday night.

"More than 70 police raided our (guest house)," said former policeman He Zuhua. "Police are everywhere."

His voice shook and he soon hung up, fearing that authorities would trace the call to the public telephone on the capital’s ragged outskirts. NBC News has been unable to reach him since.

He says he and a handful of former police officers are being pursued and detained by authorities after traveling to the capital to help shine a light on corruption within their ranks. The officers have joined droves of unhappy citizens who annually converge on Beijing in the hopes of petitioning their leaders for help during the annual National People's Congress which started Monday. Each spring scores of petitioners are pulled from buses, trains, sidewalks, and simple hotels and locked up in secret locations, known as "black jails."

The police stand out because all were once part of the justice system they seek to reform. According to two members of the group of 14 hoping to press for change, all of them are former police officers claiming to be themselves victims of pervasive corruption. 

Their plight underscores how hard it is to combat patronage and graft in China, and how easy it was for insiders to fall from grace, said Hu Xingdou, a professor at Beijing Institute of Technology.

"In a country that lacks legal protection, it is not safe for anyone," he said. "In China the judiciary, which is the base of anti-corruption, is not just."

"Anyone can fall into a disadvantaged group from an advantaged group," he added.

The crackdown on police petitioners came after China’s new leader Xi Jinping declared war on corruption, staking his name to promises that he would root out graft that infests everything from kindergarten admissions to the highest levels of government. He has called for anti-corruption campaigns ranging from banning luxury banquets to prohibiting floral displays and red carpet treatment for the official delegations.

According to He, he and the other former police officers from around the country were first rounded up on Feb. 24 as they ate together in a restaurant in Beijing. After 24 hours, three of the petitioners were taken from the detention facility with officials from their home provinces, He said. The rest "escaped," he said.

"Corruption in the judicial system is the cause of all corruption," he said before the Feb. 24 incident. "If we cannot change this, then China will collapse."

Police officials contacted by NBC News denied any knowledge of a raid involving former officers.

He says he had worked in a county investigation unit in China’s central Henan province until 2002 when he refused to give false evidence in a trial involving local officials. He was sentenced to a year in prison on charges of corruption, He says.

Senior officials in Henan told him that his case lacked the proper evidence and promised a new investigation, He says. A decade after He lost his job and nothing had been done about the case.

Both of the police officers NBC News interviewed said they had traveled to Beijing to protest corruption within the judicial system, and hoped to present an open letter asking the delegates of the NPC to address the issue.

The NPC, made up of nearly 3,000 candidates is vested with lawmaking powers. In reality, it has acted mainly as a rubber stamp for the ruling Communist Party decisions. Over time, however, votes on measures or candidates nominated by the party have stopped being unanimous, signaling growing diversity if not the emergence of an opposition. Petitioners come from all over the country seeking redress for wrongs.

Tian Lan says she was once an award-winning senior police officer. After exposing a corruption scandal among local police in Northern Hebei province in 2002, Tian says she was jailed and tortured for a year. A Guangping court in Hebei charged Tian with six crimes including passing on states secrets, but the court failed to present evidence.

Since then Tian says she has been a petitioner. She says that to prevent her from petitioning, the local government has refused to renew her national identity card, which she needs to apply for a new job. Sometimes Tian has had to beg for food, she says.

"If people like me, who are inside the system, are mistreated like this, can you imagine how average citizens are treated?" Tian asked in tears.

Tian and He are not unique.

In the vast central city of Chonqqing, over 1,000 policemen, were recently given back their jobs as redress for mistreatment suffered at the hands of notoriously heavy-handed deposed police chief Wang Lijun. Wang has since been charged with crimes of abuse power for his role in a scandal that brought down charismatic Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai.

Before their arrest Tian and He told NBC they knew they might be detained before their demonstration.

"We are not here out of personal interest, but to fight against this nation’s corruption," said He. "This country must change."

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