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Five Signs of a Greening China
So now we’re ready to be nice to our Mother Earth, now that it’s all but too late, now that we see continued abuse won’t devolve on our grandkids’ shoulders, but our own. With a fifth of Mother Earth’s homo sapiens, all busy fulfilling the “next superpower” prophecy, China must convert to Sustainability if this new religion is to have any temporal effect.
Her standing in the church excites much gossip among the laity. A little googling turns up a novena’s worth of sins: tales of cancer villages downstream from the chemical plant, toxic waste dumps next to schoolyards, bakshish buying carte blanche to pollute and despoil.
Such wickedness always follows radical national mandates, even those as noble as “Let’s beat the first world at its own game, for the glory of China.” But there’s always hope, we hope. Zhongnanhai can get a nation toeing the party line like no other political force known to man. And the party line now unequivocally crosses out industrialization at all costs. Here are five signs of the new faith in China, and a new credo – To be rich in a barren, toxic wasteland isn’t glorious.
Roll Out the Hybrids
#93 gasoline is over 6 kuai a liter, and emissions standards are pegged to match the EU’s by 2010 [at least in Beijing and Shanghai]. As much as the pocket-protector crowd loves them, hydro-cars are currently infeasible on a mass basis. And Chuppies see dusting off their bicycles as a step backwards ["What's the point of clawing your way out of the renmin masses if you look like one going to work?"]. That leaves hybrid autos, a profitable market drawing some of China’s biggest players, finally.
Last December, number four automaker Chang’an rolled out its first hybrid sedan, the Jiexun-HEV [the name could be catching]. Six years of R&D went into its manufacture, and its 130 to 150K RMB price tag makes it a respectable car for a Chuppie to park in a Skyscraper’s garage, if not a KTV joint’s. Chang’an may be justly proud of its exclusive Chinese patents for the engine and hybrid power system, a long stride towards core technology mastery. And Chery has a hybrid based on its A5 model slated to hit the streets later this year.
Sweating the Sweatshops
What’s the biggest threat to the good ol’, down and dirty Guangdong SME – global recession? Rising labor costs? Appreciation of the RMB? National policies, according to Guo Weiwen, head of Wanbang Shoe Co. in Guangzhou. “Some thousand small and medium-sized companies have gone bankrupt in the last two months in Guangdong, at a conservative estimate,” said Guo.
No pity party forthcoming from regional government, however. On the contrary, local leaders are committed to a transition from labor and energy-intensive industry to an economy defined by technological innovation. They’re backing it up with no nonsense regs such as decreasing energy consumption’s percentage of GDP by 4.61 points yearly until 2010. It may sound trifling, but such measures have coal and cheap labor reliant outfits across the Pearl River Delta choosing between revamping their entire production lines and going out of business.
Free from GDP
For years, GDP was hands-down the most recognizable English acronym in China, more so even than MBA [Married But Available]. From humble but vague yardstick for measuring a nation’s overall growth, GDP acquired enough slavish admirers that it became a cult, a god to be propitiated before all others.
The cult demanded its followers abandon all notions of sustainability and conservation. Relatively pristine areas such as Qinghai suffered most obviously. Deserts ate up 13,000 new hectares of forest every year in the late nineties. Whole lakes evaporated at Sanjiangyuan, an Italy-sized nature reserve at the headwaters of the Yangtze, Lancang and Mekong Rivers.
Today, Qinghai officials need no longer fear GDP growth as a criterion on their performance reviews. Nature is quickly forgiving its betrayal to the GDP god, restoring wetlands, turning dusty basins to lakes again, and limiting the insatiable desert to only 2,000 new hectares last year.
The Right Kind of Paper Pushing
Of all the Kafkaesque bureaucratic snafus Chinese developers faced in starting new ventures, environmental impact studies never made the list. Now steel, petrochemical, power, paper, and coal companies from Chengdu to Beibu are kindly requested to stop at window 419-C. The EPA has a small ream of extra paperwork to fill out.
Actually, the State Environmental Protection Administration will lend a hand, savvy enough not to let companies check boxes on their own. With 26 of the 75 largest steel plants in China located in cities of more than one million, there is simply too much at stake. A council of 39 experts will help these industries develop eco-friendly strategies. The council has already advised on pilot projects in ten cities, and three industries. Insiders say we may thank the brave people of Xiamen, who last summer protested their monstrous, befouling chemical plant, for prodding national level administration into proactivity.
A Tree Grows in Guilin
As far back as 1981, the NPC passed a resolution that all citizens above the age of 11 plant a tree or two annually. The long term goal was to boost green space in China from 12 percent to 20 percent in 2010.
Those grade schoolers called into service are rapidly approaching forty, and have every hope of seeing the job through. In 2006, China’s forest covered 175 million hectares, 18.21 percent of China’s total. This year, another 5.3 million are slated for planting, some 2.5 billion trees. The forestry sector is enjoying a corresponding boost, increasing output by a tenth last year, ensuring the survival of cheap notebooks, and boosting China’s lung capacity to filter its endless volumes of sooty air.
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