The greening of China - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Slowly, very slowly, some good news about China´s environment is coming in. Journalist Ian Johnson talked for the New York Times with Mark Clifford, author of The Greening of Asia, about the changes in the world´s largest coal consuming country.

Ian Johnson:

Q. You have a lot on China.

A. The good news is we have good policies coming down from the top levels of the Chinese government. Where China continues to struggle is the implementation at the ground level. There’s not always enforcement, and there’s no civil society to act as a check. The time when China decides that the environment and energy issues are as much of a threat as the color revolutions were, or the Hong Kong protests were last year, that’s when we’ll know we have serious progress. We’ve seen with Chai Jing [whose popular documentary film on the environment, “Under the Dome,” was banned] that civil society is muted.

Q. We read a lot about air pollution, but you also think that water is crucial.

A. Increasingly, water is a hard-stop issue. Air pollution is horrible, but most people affected by it are still living. But no one can live without water. I don’t know what people will do when the water stops. In China, projects like the South-North Water Diversion Project just delay the day of reckoning. What concerns me is that even most otherwise far-sighted governments are not facing up to the challenges.

For example, what do you do if you’re a municipal official, and you have an industry, say semi-conductors, which uses a lot of water? What do you do when you have to make a choice: water for the factory or the town? These are the kinds of choices that aren’t going to happen today or tomorrow, but governments will face this.

Q. And yet there are signs of hope in China.

A. China is about to overtake Germany as having the largest amount of installed solar power capability. It also has large wind turbine facilities. All of this is important because China burns half the world’s coal and accounts for 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. So to fix China, we need to cut coal use. Coal is supposed to peak in 2030, but it could happen a lot faster. So these are huge challenges, but China is potentially further ahead than many people realize.

More in the New York Times.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

Are you interested in more stories by Ian Johnson? Do check out this regularly updated list. 

 

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Why banning a documentary does not help - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

The environmental documentary "Under the Dome" by Chai Jing has become more influential, even after Chna´s censors banned it from the internet. Not only because between 100 and 200 million already watched the documentary, says author Zhang Lijia to Bloomberg. The government can no longer brainwash the people.

Bloomberg:

While censorship makes it more difficult to access the file, it also generates excitement over the film. “Given the lack of transparency, ordinary Chinese have a fascination with the unpleasant secrets of the government,” says Beijing-based writer Lijia Zhang. “Now people know about the inaction of local government, and how coal is produced just to keep up GDP levels. People are not surprised by such facts, but angered by them anyway. The days when the Chinese authorities can brainwash its citizens are over in this Internet age.”

More in Bloomberg. Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

Are you interested in more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check this recent list.  

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China shapes up its war on pollution - Sara Hsu

+Sara Hsu 

China has declared war on pollution, but what is equally important, it is also setting apart funding to fight the war, writes financial analyst Sara Hsu in the Diplomat. China has enough environmental measures in its books, she writes, but is it going to enforce them?

Sara Hsu:

Last week, China announced that it would be launching a 50 billion RMB ($8.13 billion) environmental protection fund to curb pollution. Funds take the form of low or no-interest loans from the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance to critical industries. Although these industries have not yet been specified, analysts anticipate funds going, at least in part, to the water treatment industry. This policy is viewed as a market-based solution to environmental protection since it will boost the role of pollution treatment industries. 

The fund is part of the administration’s “War on Pollution” declared by Premier Li Keqiang earlier this year. This is a war fought on many fronts. Some solutions implemented this year include installing pollution controls on coal-fired plants, eliminating some high-polluting plants, and altering requirements for particulate matter reduction. These latter solutions are not market based. Viewed together, a multi-pronged environmental protection scheme that includes both market-based and non-market based solutions is essential to reduce carbon emissions and other pollutants. 

First, a market-based solution that channels funds to pollution-fighting industries will help to stimulate much-needed growth. Promotion of the water and possibly the waste gas industries via the environmental protection fund will result in both cleaner resources and GDP generation. Trial carbon emissions trading programs have also been under way in seven cities, although Beijing’s program is the only one that requires annual absolute emission reductions for companies in the manufacturing and service sectors. Market-based solutions are often viewed by economists as first-best solutions to pollution externalities, since they align incentives among public and private actors to reduce pollution using price signals. 

Second, non-market based solutions that regulate pollution are also essential in curbing some of the worst practices, as markets cannot prevent all polluting behavior. For example, the Airborne Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan introduced in May of this year required the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta to reduce coal use by 2017. Under this plan, the greater Beijing area must reduce particulate emissions by 2017, while Liaoning and Jilin must restrict growth of coal use to less than 2 percent by 2017. 

Restrictions on coal emissions implemented this year, mentioned above, will require companies like China Huaneng Group, which owns 14% of China’s coal power fleet, to spend at least $1.61 billion this year alone to implement desulfurization and dust removal equipment. Non-market based solutions—in this case, regulation, often referred to as “command and control,” is necessary where the market is incomplete; in China’s case, the coal market is controlled to a large extent by the government. 

A major problem in carrying out these policies is the reluctance or refusal of major corporations to comply with environmental protection policies. PetroChina, one of the largest state-owned enterprises, owed 800 million RMB in fines to the city of Yanan in Shaanxi Province as of January 2014. If state-owned enterprises cannot be forced to comply with environmental regulations, the state’s war on pollution may well be in jeopardy. China has extensive environmental regulations on its books; the problem has been enforcing them.

More in the Diplomat.

Sara Hsu is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you interested in more financial experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check this latest list.  

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Where is the Shanghai pollution coming from?

Polluted Shanghai

The pollution that has hit Shanghai, and much of eastern China, was a mystery to me, looking at it from clean Switzerland. Not the fact that China was producing a lot of pollution was new, but unlike the horror stories Beijing, Shanghai has been able to keep its air reasonable clean.
When I flew in last Thursday, it was obvious those days were over, but did not yet explain why in the past the reasonable success to keep Shanghai´s air relative clean image was gone.
In the second half of the 1990s, air quality was also bad, although we did not have the detailed figures that are able today through the internet. But Shanghai´s government did a lot of smart things to wipe clean their own front-store.
A handful of measures, I could recall. Coal burning was banned. The thousands of building projects were ordered to cover up, literally, and stopped the dust from spreading over the city by using green nrts to cover those projects. The number of cars was strictly limited. Busses and taxi´s were forced to change to LPG. Polluting industries were moved to neighboring provinces and got a decent funding to modernize its new operations, as they could sell expensive ground in downtown Shanghai.
Compared to the horror stories from Beijing (coal, the Gobi desert and a disadvantaged geographical position), Shanghai was for a while doing well.
What has happened, according to my friends in Shanghai, is that the city is now the victim of the success of its past policies. In the past, China´s export industry was mainly concentrated in the south, Guangdong, Fujian. Those industries were polluting too, but the winds blew into a for Shanghai favorable direction.
Now, much of manufacturing, including that of Shanghai, moved west, because of the availability of cheap labor. Unfortunately, the winds are now blowing into the direction of Shanghai. And those newly industrialized areas are out of the political influence of the cities who are hit by the pollution.
Of course, Shanghai itself is doing its own bit, by increased car traffic and energy production. But now the negative effects of the country´s economic boom cannot be reversed by measures in Shanghai only. So, even if new measures against environmental degradation are put in place (always a big if in China), it might easy take ten to fifteen years to repair the damage.
Not surprising some of my friends are discussing emigrating all together.
On the positive side, many Shanghainese have switched to mostly electric motorbikes. Unfortunately, they are often massively driving on the sidewalks, offering pedestrian a quicker death than that from lung cancer and other lung-related diseases.

This evening, dinner with Mario Cavolo, one of few of our speakers who has not fled the city during the holidays. Meetings with Mark Schaub and James Farrer are in the making.

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Why I decided to leave Shanghai - Marc van der Chijs

Marc van der Chijs

A tougher business climate, poor internet connections and other problems did not deter serial entrepreneur Marc van der Chijs from working in Shanghai. But when his son started coughing, he left for Vancouver, Canada. The pollution the tipping point, he tells The Vancouver Sun. 

The Vancouver Sun:

“My son was getting asthma. He was coughing a lot,” said van der Chijs, who moved his family to West Vancouver and set up with venture capital company Cross Pacific Capital. “We went to see the doctor and he said it was probably pollution-related. As parents, we felt pretty bad about it.” 

Van der Chijs isn’t the first, nor likely the last, expatriate to flee China because of the country’s notorious smog... 

Air pollution has also been worsening in Shanghai over the years, van der Chijs said. A trail runner, he never ran outside while he was there, preferring to run on a treadmill, while his children rarely played outside. 

“It was off the scales sometimes. If it was really bad there I just stayed inside,” he said. “When you live here you realize it’s not the norm.” 

Exposure to high levels of air pollution can lead to cardiovascular and lung disease, and increase the risk of cancer... 

Van der Chijs admits he likely wouldn’t have felt the urgency to leave China if his son hadn’t become sick. 

“I like China a lot. It’s just very hard for families who live there,” he said. “I’m very happy to be here. It’s night and day compared with what you have over there.”

More in the Vancouver Sun.

Marc van der Chijs is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in  our speakers' request form.

+China Weekly Hangout

Pollution featured already more than once in our China Weekly Hangout. Our most-watched session, with now over 2,000 viewers, is the discussion with +Richard Brubaker of AllRoadsLeadtoChina and CEIBS on the rampant pollution in China. Is it getting worse, and what can be done? Moderator: +Fons Tuinstra of the +China Speakers Bureau.

 The China Weekly Hangout is holding on May 9 an open office, where you can discuss current affairs in China or suggest subjects for hangouts later this year. You can read our announcement here, or register for the hangout here.  

Update:

A few potential subjects have already emerged ahead of the upcoming hangout:

1. What can you earn in China, focused on business executive

2. The Chinese influence on the Australian/New Zealand dairy industry

3. Chinese tourism in New Zealand and Australia.

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