Xiao Wang is a toddler, trapped in the body of an octogenarian. His lungs fight for breath and his head nods in listless slumber, his blood poisoned by lead. Sitting in the arms of his grandfather in a fly-blown courtyard, up the hill from a lead-emitting manganese smelter in China's rural Hunan province, little Wang is both a tragic victim of the “dirty development” that has made China great and, if Beijing has its way, a poster child for the promise of a cleaner, greener China.
Xiao Wang's village of Hengjiang, a settlement of 1,800 mostly elderly people left behind to grow rice or mine alluvial coal, has emerged as a test case of Beijing's resolve to clean up the Chinese mining and minerals industries.
Last month, state media publicised anti-lead protests in Hengjiang and in Shaanxi province, a big lead-producing area, prompting the government to shut down enough lead smelters to cause a sharp jump in the world price for the commodity.