【Economist】Public hygiene: Labour of lavs — 音频链接

THE state of China’s smallest rooms is no small matter. So said Xi Jinping, the Communist Party’s general secretary, in statements carried

prominently

by state media last month. For three years national and local authorities have been busily

scrubbing

up the country’s public

lavatories

, an effort the party has

dubbed

the “toilet revolution”. Having hit the programme’s original set of targets, Mr Xi is requesting another push.

In the past few decades China has done a fairly good job of supplying basic sanitation. Only 2% of Chinese still do their business in the bushes, compared with 40% in India; three-quarters have access to toilets which the World Health Organisation deems acceptable,

up from

less than two-thirds in 2000. But about 70m still

use shared facilities使用公共厕所

, and 260m continue to rely on

bucket loos尿壶, open pits 露天茅房

and other

grungy

facilities. Some are literally lethal: last month police

traced

a huge blast in the port city of Ningbo, which killed two people, back to an exploding

septic

tank.

A second problem for the party is that China’s middle classes are growing ever less inclined to tolerate the rank state of public toilets, which can be filthy even in big cities.

Poisonous smells waft from squatting pans that may not be hidden in cubicles

.

Loo roll is a luxury and hand soap vanishingly rare,

even in places, including some hospitals, where it is essential. Rising domestic tourism means that more and more Chinese are coming face to face with

gritty provincial and roadside privies.

A steady succession of official initiatives has gradually improved matters. Since 2003 officials have operated a national rating system for public toilets, similar to the star-gradings for hotels. In 2012 authorities in Beijing issued a much-mocked circular stipulating that toilet blocks should contain no more than two flies. Mr Xi’s “toilet revolution” began in 2015, when the tourism ministry launched a three-year loo-upgrading programme. It says that it has supervised the building or renovation of 68,000 toilets since then.

A lot of the new loos are in scenic rural spots; the hope is that they will benefit both villagers and visitors. Meanwhile city planners have started requiring developers to provide more female toilets than male ones (a reform for which some women had long campaigned), and are growing more enamoured of unisex ones. Showboating authorities in some well-off places have flooded flashy new toilet blocks with free Wi-Fi, phone-charging and vending machines. Earlier this year toilets near the Temple of Heaven, one of Beijing’s biggest tourist draws, were fitted with facial-recognition systems designed to prevent thieves from absconding with its loo roll (the technology prevents toilet-paper dispensers from serving each visitor more than once).

More is to come. On World Toilet Day, a UN-sponsored event celebrated annually on November 19th, a senior tourism official promised that his agency would not only “consolidate the fruits of the last round of the toilet revolution” but also “open up a new chapter”. In a statement padded with reverent references to the Communist Party’s just-concluded congress, he promised to improve or construct another 64,000 toilets by the end of 2020.

The hope is that cleaner toilets will both improve public health, and boost tourist receipts, which the government hopes will swell by 11% a year. Chinese manufacturers hope that swanky new public facilities will boost the market for smart toilets, in which they compete fiercely with the Japanese. Less whining from foreign visitors would also provide a fillip to national pride.

As for politics, some wonder if Mr Xi’s very visible support for better lavatories is designed to paint him as a man of the people. The renewed focus on toilet-upgrading does seem to chime with a subtle doctrinal shift detected during the recent congress, at which a party long obsessed with boosting economic growth hinted that it would start looking for more holistic ways of improving citizens’ lives. China-watchers are jumping at any indication of what the “new era” Mr Xi proclaimed at the event in October will look like in practice. The relaunch of the toilet revolution will give them something to go on.