Achemical spill on China's Songhua River is a grim reminder of the costs attendant to China's breakneck economic development. The release of toxic chemicals underscores three sets of challenges that China faces as it modernizes: environmental practices of its businesses, government's response to the inevitable accidents, and the mounting environmental costs of China's growth. All are related, and the Beijing government must better deal with each if it is to maintain the confidence of its citizens, its neighbors and the world.

An explosion Nov. 13 at a chemical plant run by the energy giant PetroChina near Jilin city released a toxic slick that has drifted past Harbin, nearly 300 km downstream and home to 9 million people. Reports that levels of benzene, a chemical used in plastic production, were more than 100 times the allowable levels, closed schools, forced the shutdown of the water supply and prompted a mass exodus.

There were fears that the spill would continue downstream to threaten the Russian city of Khabarovsk and the 1.5 million people that live in and around it.