Commentary | China’s Environmental Paradox

This past spring I’ve had the chance to visit four of Asia’s most vibrant cities. I’ve heard from leaders of government, opinion leaders in media, heads of multinational corporations, and people struggling to survive with small pushcart businesses.

There is a common thread in the attitudes of all of these people, in four different Asian countries: China is rising, and anyone who isn't ready for it is in for an unpleasant surprise. This is the easy news. Most newspapers or newsmagazines will clue us in to this. The big news is the attention the Chinese leadership is paying to the environment.

In meetings with top-level government leaders in Beijing, local journalists in other parts of China, and conversations with taxi drivers in different cities around the country, the theme was constant: pollution in China is no longer a "some people say" problem. It has become an "every day" problem. Cities in the north and the south, during every season, are suffering from the pollution of China's economic success.

As in the U.S., local leaders are feeling the problem more acutely than leaders in the capital. One provincial government has pledged to spend 150 billion yuan (approx. $20 billion US) from its own budget over the next ten years to research clean coal, and energy efficient technology. The central government in Beijing has also made significant commitments to create an environmentally friendly economic development plan.

This is leading China to an environmental paradox, and it’s one anyone who’s spent time in Beijing recently will understand. China desperately needs to clean up its environment; but at the same time China needs to ensure it has a supply of energy (especially electricity and gasoline) to continue economic growth and satisfy a growing—and increasingly vocal—middle class.

As with so many plans in China, the devil is in the details. What details? China plans to build the equivalent of one 1000 megawatt coal-powered electricity plant each week during the coming years. This isn't because they hate the environment or because they are convinced that coal is some new-age, clean technology. It's because their society is experiencing unbelievable growth. Let me repeat: unbelievable. I lived in the Chinese "rust belt" from 2001-2003. I've been back twice in the past four years. That's once every-other year. And I haven't recognized the place either time. Not only are there new streets and buildings; the increasing sophistication I find among my friends and others I run into is hard to describe. In short, China has become a confident country, not just in the big cities, but bottom-to-top. And it is increasingly becoming a sophisticated country.

This means confident purchases: computers, flat screen TVs, and MP3 players; to say nothing of air conditioners, cars, and significantly larger apartments. China's middle class is becoming a world-middle class, like their peers in Japan, Korea, Europe and the United States. The upwardly mobile have expectations to continue on this path. This means significant energy needs, and it means Beijing has to find ways to ensure they get this energy. To do otherwise would lead to unpredictable outcomes. Beijing is not interested in unpredictability right now.

But Beijing is interested in assuming a larger leadership role internationally. This means the industrialized world has an opportunity to find a way to bring China into an emissions or pollution control regime. The point of this regime should be to satisfy Beijing’s internal pollution control needs. If possible it can also satisfy the international community’s wishes, but this is secondary. Simply getting Beijing to buy into a pollution control regime that is endorsed by the international community would be a huge step towards an intermediate global solution on greenhouse gases.

Further, China would offer an example to both the developing and developed world that this isn’t just a problem that can wait for resolution until a country is rich. At the same time it would serve as a wake-up call for industrialized countries that acting on global warming confronts more than just the ‘economic’ cost.