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Don't say "non-existent eco potemkin city" too loudly, everyone will want one...
- Paul French, China Editor, 4 December 2007
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Arup and Dongtan, worthy winner of Greenwasher of the year
UK engineering and construction giant Arup are the clear winners in this year's Greenwasher awards ostensbily for their long announced, but never started, 'eco-city' in Dongtan, an island of pristine wetlands just outside the teeming city of Shanghai
Firstly, the project has been hailed by Arup as a visionary eco-city, a line that has then been repeated without crticism or investigation by most media organisations keen for a China good news story and being steanmrollered by the impressive Arup PR machine.
The non-existent eco-city has also given Arup excellent guanxi (connections) with the Chinese govenrment who, in return for maintaing that the illusory Dongtan is a 'green' project have awarded Arup numerous projects in China from decidely ungreen airports to skyscrapers.
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Comments:
Arup has rival in greenwashing - Shannon May, 21 Sep 2008
Paul, I appreciated your pushing to get people to actually look beyond the PR of these high-profile projects. You might be interested that the other project often named in the same breath as Dongtan, Huangbaiyu is as much greenwashing as this. And it's PR machine? William McDonough and his China-US Center for Sustainable Development. Thought you might like to take a look. www.shannonmay.com
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