Tag: China

GDP that kills GDP (as well as people)

31st January 2008

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Image source: Economist.com

An article appearing in The Economist last week, Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air (reproduced below), provides a commentary on the largely impotent State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) in China. The Deputy Director, Pan Yue, is one of the most outspoken Chinese bureaucrats you are ever likely to come across, but his dire warnings go unheeded, largely because SEPA does not carry much weight alongside the big Ministries.

Despite its best efforts, SEPA has been unable to secure support from the government to publish a green GDP because it was “not internationally accepted”. Interestingly, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) did publish one figure; namely, that environmental damage in 2004 cost 3.05% of that year’s GDP. Maybe this kind of statistic will resonate more deeply with the Chinese government than the number of deaths each year as a result of pollution. According to Pan Yue, 70% of China’s more than 2 million annual deaths from cancer are pollution-related.

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Welcome to the spaceship earth

29th December 2007


This article was first published in XL Magazine, volume 3, issue 12, December 2007.

The economist, Kenneth Boulding, in his famous 1966 essay, The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, wrote: ‘I am tempted to call the open economy the “cowboy” economy, the cowboy being symbolic of the illimitable plains and also associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic, and violent behaviour, which is characteristic of open societies. The closed economy of the future might similarly be called the “spaceman” economy, in which the earth has become a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything, either for extraction or for pollution, and in which, therefore, man must find his place in a cyclical ecological system which is capable of continuous reproduction of material form even though it cannot escape having inputs of energy.’ Forty years ago, these two sentences did not have the same resonance as they do today. Clearing forest land, pumping water, or drilling for oil went ahead without a second thought because in an ‘empty’ cowboy economy, there was plenty more where that came from. The challenge then was to develop sufficient man-made capital (chain saws, water pumps and oil rigs) to tap into the natural capital (the timber, water and oil). The challenge now, in a ‘full’ spaceman economy, is not the availability of man-made capital, but the increasing scarcity of natural capital.

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The perils of environmental activism in China

16th September 2007

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Image source: Reuters

I caught a snippet on BBC World the other day which typifies the incoherent approach of the Chinese to the environment. The public pronouncements from the centre convey the message that the government is cracking down on environmental vandalism. The reality of the situation in the provinces is quite different as the new and increasingly powerful industrial class thumbs its nose at Beijing. Thus, a man like Wu Lihong, can be named among China’s top 10 environmentalists and feted at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2005 after his work drew attention to the fact chemical factories were pouring effluent into Lake Taihu, and be jailed for 3 years last month for allegedly extorting $7200 from businesses by threatening to report them for environmental crimes.

The reality of the situation is that local businessmen in towns around the lake closed ranks against him. When Wu was arrested in his hometown of Yixing in April, he was preparing to travel to Beijing to appeal to the authorities there. The trial was a farcical affair, where no witnesses were called to testify, and police statements went unchallenged. Wu’s wife also claims that he was tortured during five straight days of interrogation. Needless to say, since his arrest, the pollution at the lake has got worse, the local authorities having to turn off tap water for 2 million local residents because of a blue-green algae created by discharge from the chemical plants.

No holds on China

13th August 2007

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Image source: bbc.co.uk

Read an excellent piece this morning on one of my favourite topics; the future of US hegemony. Basically, the article paints a very grim picture for the US on account of the fiscal recklessness of successive governments (none more so than the Bush administration) and how this has ensured that China has the US by the short and curlies. China effectively finances the US budget deficit, and while the US has typically displayed a very sanguine attitude to this, it has now reached a point (about USD900 billion to be precise) where the stability of the US economy is now utterly dependent upon the whims of the Chinese. It could – as it has been hinted by leading Communist Party officials – dump its holding of US government bonds, not only placing a constraint on future US government spending, but also impacting upon US domestic interest rates and the forex value of the greenback. Thankfully, it is not in the interests of the Chinese to engage in such sabotage because its fortunes rest on a stable world economy. However, it is pure folly on the part of Washington if it thinks it can impose trade sanctions on China to force a yuan revaluation. One thing is for sure, the US is suffering from a chronic case of imperial overreach. It is in tatters militarily, its deficits are getting bigger, and its moral authority is at an all time low.

The Weathermakers (Chinese style)

12th August 2007

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Image source: treehugger.com

I was astonished to learn the other day (see clip from BBC news) that the Chinese government plans to fire rockets into clouds to induce rainfall immediately prior to the Olympics in Beijing next year to help clear the air of pollution, and to avoid having any rain during the opening ceremony. These guys don’t let a little thing like nature get in the way of anything. The Three Gorges Dam, the road to Everest base camp, and now rainmaking to clear pollution. A recent report in The Hindu reveals that this has been going on for years, the Weather Modification Department under the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences benefitting from a sizeable budget. Firing chemicals into the atmosphere does not seem to be an issue (surprise, surprise), nor does the fact the US and the Europeans gave up this practice several decades ago given there were questionmarks over its effectiveness.

What to do about China?

21st June 2007

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Image source: bbc.co.uk

On BBC news today (RealPlayer required), there was a pretty scarey piece on the latest environment news to come out of China. Last week, a master plan was unveiled that spoke of China’s aim to bring about a 20% improvement in energy efficiency by 2010. This week it has been revealed that now TWO coal-fired power stations are being commissioned each week. It is inevitable that China will overtake the US as the world’s leading polluter soon (if it hasn’t already), but what can be done to halt environmental catastrophe? As The Guardian reports today, the Chinese are still way behind the US on an emissions per person basis, but what if all the Chinese live like Americans? How many more power stations would need to be built? The prognosis is not good and it seems the Chinese central government is unable to control the regions as they forge ahead disregarding national policies and directives. Even if there were some compliance, data collection techniques are so poor, quantitative restrictions on emissions are meaningless. The answer, it seems, is intervention by western governments to assist with technology transfer that might help to wean China off high-polluting coal powered energy (even if it is using coal in a more efficient manner).

China environment update

30th March 2007


Image source: www.spiegel.de

My travels in southern China this week did nothing to convince me that the authorities are making any progress in dealing with their environmental problems. The air quality in Guangzhou and Shenzhen was diabolical, and as Jennifer Turner of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars noted recently when she was interviewed by Phillip Adams (listen here), it is not just the Chinese who are affected by this. Mercury is being transported to Korea in dust storms, and it is also believed that 1/5 of the mercury entering rivers in Oregon in the US originates from China.

The challenge is therefore geopolitical but, ultimately, it is economic. One of the great virtues of an authoritarian state is that once it makes up its mind to do something, execution of the plan is straightforward (in contrast to democracies where the gestation period for environmental policy can be painstakingly long). However, despite the ‘environmental authoritarianism’ being exercised (increasingly) by the Chinese central government, it is not being policed by local governments. Thus, coal scrubbers might be installed and waste water treatement plants may be in place, but these facilities are not being turned on because they are deemed ‘too costly’. ‘Cost’, however, does not include the cancers, low IQs and miscarriages being attributed to the high level of pollutants in the air and in China’s waterways, 50% of which are running black (i.e. they are completely dead and cannot be used for anything, even for industrial purposes), and the 700 million people who now lack access to safe water (the people living in the Huai River basin being amongst the worst affected).

While there have been some signs of improvement, environmental policy is not keeping up with the pace of environmental degradation, and unless there is some technology transfer to overcome the economic obstacles to sustainable production, I do not foresee any change in the immediate future. National laws will continue to be flouted at the local level, and firms will continue to destroy the natural environment. It is not a case of trying to stop China, it a question of how China can helped. Weaning this country off its heavy reliance on coal is a start. CO2 emissions are set to surpass those of the US in 2009, and they will get a whole lot worse after that.


Image source: www.spiegel.de

Yah-boo!

4th June 2006

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Shi Tao (Chinese journalist)
Image source: www.irrepressible.info

Wired Magazine reports this week that a study has revealed about a third of big companies in the United States and the UK hire employees to read and analyse outbound e-mail to “guard against legal, financial or regulatory risk”. To protect your privacy, therefore, it is probably wise to send any risque jokes, love notes to your spouse, or any other details relating to your personal life via your private email account. Unless of course, you happen to have a Yahoo account. In China this can be extremely detrimental to one’s personal liberty; like 10 years in gaol, for example, in the case of journalist Shi Tao if you happen to email material in support of the pro-democracy movement. This might have been avoided had Yahoo shown themselves to have more of a backbone and not surrendered information to the Chinese authorities. If this sort of thing worries you, please consider pledging your support for Shi Tao at www.irrepressible.info.

Social and environmental vandalism

23rd May 2006

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Image source: BBC news

Broadcast on live television, the wall for Three Gorges Dam was completed the other day to much flag waving. This concrete monstrosity will go down in history as one the biggest acts of ecological terrorism ever perpetrated. The goons masquerading as economic advisors to the Chinese government will no doubt receive accolades for this ‘masterstroke’ which will ease the problems China has in generating enough power to meet the needs of its burgeoning economic growth. Apart from the fact it is way over budget (some estimates place total cost at USD100 billion) … if only this money had gone into solar, wind or geothermal energy … the social impact is of obscene proportions (1 million people relocated) and the ongoing, irreversible environmental consequences incalculable.

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