The Great Leap Backward?

Foreign Affairs ^ | September/October 2007 | By Elizabeth C. Economy

[JACKRUSSELL]

Summary: China's environmental woes are mounting, and the country is fast becoming one of the leading polluters in the world. The situation continues to deteriorate because even when Beijing sets ambitious targets to protect the environment, local officials generally ignore them, preferring to concentrate on further advancing economic growth. Really improving the environment in China will require revolutionary bottom-up political and economic reforms.

China's environmental problems are mounting. Water pollution and water scarcity are burdening the economy, rising levels of air pollution are endangering the health of millions of Chinese, and much of the country's land is rapidly turning into desert. China has become a world leader in air and water pollution and land degradation and a top contributor to some of the world's most vexing global environmental problems, such as the illegal timber trade, marine pollution, and climate change. As China's pollution woes increase, so, too, do the risks to its economy, public health, social stability, and international reputation. As Pan Yue, a vice minister of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), warned in 2005, "The [economic] miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace."

With the 2008 Olympics around the corner, China's leaders have ratcheted up their rhetoric, setting ambitious environmental targets, announcing greater levels of environmental investment, and exhorting business leaders and local officials to clean up their backyards. The rest of the world seems to accept that Beijing has charted a new course: as China declares itself open for environmentally friendly business, officials in the United States, the European Union, and Japan are asking not whether to invest but how much.

Unfortunately, much of this enthusiasm stems from the widespread but misguided belief that what Beijing says goes. The central government sets the country's agenda, but it does not......

[JACKRUSSELL]

China ping.

[Rudder]

China is the worst polluter in the world, but...

China doesn't care.

[PeteB570]

Wrong thread. :-)

The title made me think it was about islam.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Chinese officials (as well as local NGOs) have adopted a much tougher stance toward them [MNCs], arguing at times that MNCs have turned China into the pollution capital of the world. On issues such as electronic waste, the detractors have a point. But China's attacks, with Internet postings accusing MNCs of practicing "eco-colonialism," have become unjustifiably broad. Such antiforeign sentiment spiked in late 2006, after the release of a pollution map listing more than 3,000 factories that were violating water pollution standards. The 33 among them that supplied MNCs were immediately targeted in the media, while the other few thousand Chinese factories cited somehow escaped the frenzy

Future headline? "Multinational corporations swarm Congress demanding reimbursement for FDI losses in China. China seen preparing to seize foreigner investments as "compensation" for eco-colonialism."

Doncha just hate government interference?

[gondramB]

I wonder if we had something to do with this. It sure is awfully good timing for info about Chinese product safety and their effect on the environment to come out.

The thing is, when intelligence gets a win its not so noticeable as their failures.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Fixing the myriad problems requires a political system fundamentally different from that of China today, and so far there is little indication that China's leaders will risk the authority of the Communist Party on charting a new environmental course. Until the party is willing to open the door to such reform, it will not have the wherewithal to meet its ambitious environmental targets and lead a growing economy with manageable environmental problems.

Headline from another universe? "Free traders see 'open door' to freedom, democracy in China. Communist Party willing to 'wither away' to save the environment, say free traders."