China’s environmental awakening keeps chasing its economic boom

THE OUTLOOK: “How Weak Pollution Controls May Be Causing a Drag on China’s Economic Growth,” by Jane Spencer, Wall Street Journal, 2 October 2006. P. A2.

TECHNOLOGY QUARTERLY: “Visions of ecopolis: China has ambitious plans to build a model ‘eco-city’ near Shanghai. How green will it be? The Economist, 23 September 2006, p. 20.

The Chinese government warms to the notion of “green accounting” that takes into account the externalities imposed by rapid development on the environment. This calculation reduces China’s 10% growth rate to more like 7%, when all the remediation and clean-up and damage to people and places is factored in.

The so-called green gross-domestic-product figures are part of a long-term Chinese government project aimed at quantifying the economic impact of pollution and may mark a shift in strategy for a regime that has promoted unbridled growth as the key to social stability.

Hu’s bought in, sounding the theme of “sustainable development” (an old USAID buzz phrase) in speeches this year.

In a country of 1.3 billion, 400k deaths each year from pollution matter only so much--until your economic development demands just enough development of your court system that people start trying to sue for damages.

Then there’s the problem of promoting local officials purely on how much their regions crank out in GDP--no matter what the environmental costs.

None of this is going to happen overnight, but with grassroots pressure building from below and new explicit acknowledgment of these costs from above, and you begin to see the solution set emerge.

A point I like to make (BFA, for example), and one that’s become a big Tom Friedman theme, is that China’s environmental problems are really an entrepreneurial opportunity that they will seize with a vengeance in coming years--in effect, creating the new rules (in my vernacular). Not only will they be newcomers to the market, but they’ll be amazingly incentivized newcomers, and necessity--as we know--is the mother of invention.

The second story on this model eco-city is a theme we’ve going to see time and time again with China in coming years. Insanely ambitious, but very much in line with where China stands in history right now, reminding me of America near the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century--this sort of singular belief in progress and national achievement.

It hasn’t been cool to be Chinese for a very long time, but it is again today. I think we’re going to see that sort of national confidence get expressed in a lot of interesting--and ultimately helpful--sort of ways.

Yes, all this development will be both aided and hindered by the CCP’s single-party rule, but China’s attempting to do so much simultaneously, and has so many people within its own nation that are desperately poor and needing economic connectivity in the worst way, that even among a lot of young, well-educated and ambitious Chinese you get this response on the subject of democracy: they say in effect that only a fool would advocate rapid transition to democracy in China right now--or somebody hoping to sabotage China’s rapid economic rise.

I know that patience with China is very hard for a lot of Westerners, because we see so much change economically and yet so little change politically and so much environmental damage piling up in the meantime. But people gotta eat before they’ll care about the environment, and they gotta walk (economic freedom) before they run (political freedom).

And no, that route’s not as different from America’s path as you might think--unless you were a white land-owning male from the get-go. But I guess that was just our version of learning to walk before you run--not that that explanation would satisfy those left out of that democracy, much less treated as property.

A good thing to remember with China is that, despite all its centuries, we’re watching a new country essentially grow up from the Year Zero that was the Cultural Revolution (Pol Pot’s great inspiration). So as we see this fantastic historical process unfold, keep in mind how fast China is passing through history.

There is much to be learned in this process, much that informs how we shrink the Gap. We can either hide behind our sense of civilizational superiority, or we can learn.

Me? I’m all for the mixing of the races, which is why I find globalization so gloriously subversive and revolutionary. Anything of ours that’s truly good will naturally survive the process. In my opinion, that’s a confidence worth having.

Comments

[Lexington Green]

I agree with all this and would add a supporting fact. Getting the environmental mess under control is a regime-stability issue for the CCP, and I am sure is perceived as such. They know very well that one fo the things that undermined the USSR was the incredible pollution. This energized popular resistance. The secret police and the army can crush out a politically motivated protest movement. But if you have thousands of parents, especially Moms, whose kids are being poisoned, they will simply not give a damn about the threats and the billy clubs. Their kids are being poisoned and they will raise holy Hell about it, and they will be hard to intimidate into silence. The CCP has intensely studied how the USSR fell apart and how CPSU fell from power. They will act accordingly, to try to mitigate this problem, or be seen to be trying to do so.

[robert]

Is this "white land-owning male" stuff supposed to imply equivalency? Because I want to believe it if I see it plausibly argued, but otherwise I'm skeptical. How does the rule of Chinese law look upon yellow land-owning males, for example?

I see progress in China, but I don't see a constitution. Mewl all you like about non-white non-land-owners, but that document - the end product of hundreds of years of English society transposed to America - did specifically guarantee certain rights and limit the powers of government. Tell me how the Chinese court system and government is serving a limited but significant bourgeousie and above all limiting the powers of government. Tell me - because I want to believe it.