As China is faced with a WTO complaint alleging that the country is being deliberately lax in enforcing copyright and intellectual property rights, AsiaPundit knew that a crackdown was in the air.

And that was even before there were any noticeable toxic emissions:

China sets fire to pirated goods in latest crackdown
BEIJING (Reuters) - China launched a new nationwide crackdown on pornography and pirated tapes and DVDs on Saturday, setting fire to 42 million offending items, Xinhua news agency said. . .
Of the items destroyed, smuggled and pirated audio/video, software, electronic publications made up 30 million, and pirated and illegally published books and magazines totaled 11 million

If AsiaPundit were still a reporter he may ask: ‘Were any environmental impact studies done on the effect of burning 30 million discs?; ‘How toxic were the fumes for those unprotected officials and laborers in the above Reuters photo?’; ‘How will this adversely impact the achievement of Premier Wen’s emission reduction target?’

Torching 10 million books that could have been recycled is bad enough, but burning CDs is a spectacularly bad idea.

CDs and DVDs are made from mainly plastics and metals, such as aluminum, polycarbonate (a type of plastic made from crude oil and natural gas), lacquer made from acrylic, gold, chemical dyes partially made from petroleum products, and numerous other materials such as water, glass, silver and nickel. When they are manufactured and eventually disposed, they can release chemicals that contribute to global warming and create environmental and health problems.

We suspect that the WTO complaint is a deliberate attempt at making China an even more difficult place to live by simultaneously reducing entertainment options and worsening air quality.