China Beyond The Wall

A top diplomat has bashed the USA, as well as Europe and Japan, during the global summit currently held in Copenhagen where countries from all around the globe are discussing strategies to tackle global warming. The Chinese diplomatic envoy maintains that the PRC is a “developing country”, therefore unable to risk curbing its growth with “greener” developmental policies.

It is an open secret that China has been rising at the expenses of the global natural environment. As a fundamental “expendable” asset for the “greater good” of national economic development (and subsequent international status-building), China does not want to lose its competitive edge by trying to reduce consumption of natural resources, or by enforcing strictier environmental regulations for industrial production.

The world’s economic powerhouses (USA, EU, and Japan) have promised as much as 10 billion US dollars in foreign aid for developing countries willing to address global warming. China and the other receiving countries have considered the offer with mixed reactions. Without getting more conspicuous amounts of technology and financial aid from the West, China will have to play the “victim status” trump card, as Forbes reports:

“This $10 billion, if divided by the world population, it is less than $2 per person,” said Su, who then noted that such amount was not enough to buy a cup of coffee in the Danish capital or a coffin in destitute nations. “Climate change is a matter of life and death,” he noted.

“Given the fact that developed countries have done nothing but empty talk, they have no right to make further requests,” said Xie Zhenhua, China’s top climate negotiator, on Dec. 7.

China, the global manufacturing plant, is one of the world’s major producers of pollution, together with the the United States.  Rapid economic and industrial growth, paired with a relaxed enforcement of existing environmental policies and an ever growing production of energy from non-renewable sources, have launched China on the highway of development at the expense of natural balances.

Following the 1978 market reforms,  the majority of the population has been progressively enjoying a better quality of life. The most evident aspects of this rapid shift, clearly visible to any visitor walking the streets and countrysides of China,  are booming waste production and sprawling urbanisation. Has the state been proactively promoting an “environmental consciousness” among the population, and particularly among entrepreneurs, as part of the market reforms? The simple answer is no – such behaviour is to be found only in the last decade.

Although the whole nation-system has not yet internalised the value of environmental protection, something is changing and China is trying to catch-up. Recent institutional restructuring, such as the creation of an ad-hoc Ministry of the Environment (built on the legacy of the previous State Environment Protection Administration), is a clear political statement and trailblazes a new path for the near future. Up-to-date national regulations on environmental standards are no more uncommon.

Other encouraging signals come from the fledgling Chinese “green” civil society (scholars, NGOs, etc.) risks relatively little when discussing environmental issues: it is backed by top administrative cadres warmly supporting such forms of grassroot participation, especially after the infamous Songhua river incident.

China wants to do something more for preserving the planet, but how many of these efforts are purely face-saving and how many genuine remains a mystery. A mystery enshrouded in the lack of institutional transparency characterising the People’s Republic of China political system, and in particular its most decentralised appendices.

Should China be firmly and fiercly face the environmental challenge, it wouldn’t be just a matter of national policymaking: the solution lies in enforcing environmental regulations at the lowest levels of governance. A problem intermingled with rampant corruption and local cadres’ thirst for growth: and more growth equals to better official appointments for the cadre. Would an unscrupolous local cadre ever miss the opportunity to achieve his own personal success? No, particularly when achieving growth at all costs means turning a blind eye to the environment.

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