Pollution in China

According to the World Bank, six of the world’s ten most polluted cities are in China.  It is also a very inefficient user of energy requiring 4.7 times as much energy to produce a unit of GDP than in the U.S., a consequence of subsidized fuel in China leaving little incentive to implement energy saving technology and lax environmental regulation.  The energy subsidies and the lack of environmental regulation contribute to the cost advantage enjoyed by Chinese producers. And, according to BusinessWeek, China is becoming even less efficient in its energy usage:

China's Dirty Face, BusinessWeek Slide Show: As the Middle Kingdom's economy has grown, so have the environmental costs of largely unregulated growth. Despite a clean-up of Beijing and a handful of other big cities, most of China is still reeling from the devastation wrought by three decades of communist industrial development and the subsequent 25 years of quasi-capitalism. ... Of the world's 10 most-polluted cities, 6 are in China, according to the World Bank, which estimates that pollution costs China more than $54 billion a year in environmental damage and health problems.

The problems are compounded by China's inefficient use of electricity, oil, and coal. China consumes 4.7 times as much energy as the U.S. to produce each dollar of GDP-- and 11.5 times as much as Japan. Alarmingly, the nation is getting less efficient, not more. After making steady progress in energy efficiency for two decades, China has been consuming energy at a rate faster than its GDP since 2002.

Coal may be the biggest culprit. China has tens of thousands of small mines that pay scant attention to environmental concerns or safety ... Such neglect helps keep costs down, so most of China's electricity comes from power plants that burn high-sulfur coal. Worse, few have effective emission controls, a big contributor to the acid rain that falls on one-third of the country.

In its quest for development, China is building highways -- and cars -- at an accelerating pace. There are 26 million cars on the road today, and that number is expected to double by 2010. By then, automobiles are expected to account for nearly two-thirds of China's air pollution. Some officials, though, are trying to hold the line on auto emissions ... And Beijing has equipped more than 2,500 buses with engines powered by natural gas, at a total cost of $26 million.

Some 70% of China's lakes and rivers are heavily polluted, largely because more than 80% of its sewage flows untreated into waterways. What's more, even where waste-treatment gear is installed, some companies opt to pay fines rather than operate expensive equipment. Regulators say that while most major industrial plants have water-treatment facilities, one-third don't operate them at all and another third use them only occasionally. There's a bit of good news: China expects to invest $61 billion in city waste-water treatment facilities between now and 2010…

Comments

[Dave Schuler]

Yes, the first post I wrote in my series on China's time bombs was on pollution there. Particularly disturbing is the fact which caught your eye as well: for each dollar added to GDP China uses more energy than for the previous dollar. China's forays into becoming an important international supplier of heavy manufactured goods suggests that this trend will accelerate.

[Barry]

Funny, I had a post a few months ago titled: "China's Thirst for Oil (and Cancer treatments)"

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/04/chinas_thirt_fo.html

[anne]

There are a set of important articles on environmental disruptions in China. I have kept a file for years, but think of the issue from a less anachronistic perspective. Remember "Bleak House?" Remember Dicken's smoke belching engines running to London? Could England have been any darker? Remember turn of the century Chicago? China wishes to be England and America, and there are many costs to be borne in the effort, but there were costs for us. Remember America's coal miners a century ago? The lives of 1.4 billion people are being dramatically changed where we had no sense they could be so changed much more than a decade ago but so wished they might be.

[anne]

Think a moment to the problem of SARS and wonder how effectively the disease was controlled initially in Vietnam then China. As well as in Canada, actually. There are strengths of organization and response to recognized problems we may readily overlook. Recognition is an issue, always has been. When is a problem properly recognized? But, China's leaders have been moving on environmental issue for a while. The need is to keep pressing from within as is occuring and without.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/25/international/asia/25fprofile.html?ex=1125481876&ei=1&en=e6e713dc0dff8d6f

Bad Air and Water, and a Bully Pulpit in China
By JIM YARDLEY

BEIJING

FOR the untold thousands of bureaucrats in the Chinese Communist Party, a cardinal rule of political self-preservation might be this: best not stand out too much, certainly not in public. A government official marching too far ahead of the parade of acceptable opinion runs the risk of finding himself dangerously alone.

So it is always a surprise to see what comes out when Pan Yue opens his mouth, as he did one afternoon this summer at his office at the State Environmental Protection Administration. The afternoon sky was clotted with the usual soup of haze and pollution as Mr. Pan ticked off one doomsday statistic after another.

Acid rain, he says, now falls over two-thirds of China's land mass. Of 340 major Chinese cities surveyed last year, 60 percent had serious air pollution problems. In China's seven major waterways, pollution is so severe that vast stretches are not suitable for fish.

"Problems that were supposed to be future problems are now problems in the present," warned Mr. Pan, 44, as he smoked a cigarette.

If he is blunt in identifying the problems, he sounds almost radical in offering a solution: China must change the way it is developing to prevent an environmental crisis and a depletion of natural resources. Environmental protection must become a national priority. And, for good measure, public participation must be encouraged - the sort of language that in China usually means more democracy.

"The pressures China is now facing simply can't be sustained, the population and resource pressures," Mr. Pan said. "They cannot be ignored."

Well known for years in intellectual circles, the outspoken Mr. Pan has become a national figure in a country where environmental awareness is rising, even as environmental degradation is widespread and severe. His job as a deputy director of China's top environmental agency, if low on the totem pole of power in China, has given him a bully pulpit to help put environmentalism on the agenda - apparently with the silent blessing of higher leaders....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/international/asia/19china.html?ex=1279425600&en=2319c5dae21c9ab8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

July 19, 2005

Anger in China Rises Over Threat to Environment
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

XINCHANG, China - After three nights of increasingly heavy rioting, the police were taking no chances on Monday, deploying dozens of busloads of officers before dusk and blocking every road leading to the factory.

But the angry residents in this village 180 miles south of Shanghai had learned their lessons, too, they said, having studied reports of riots in towns near and far that have swept rural China in recent months. Sneaking over mountain paths and wading through rice paddies, they made their way to a pharmaceuticals plant, they said, determined to pursue a showdown over the environmental threat they say it poses.

As many as 15,000 people massed here Sunday night and waged a pitched battle with the authorities, overturning police cars and throwing stones for hours, undeterred by thick clouds of tear gas. Fewer people may have turned out Monday evening under rainy skies, but residents of this factory town in the wealthy Zhejiang Province vow they will keep demonstrating until they have forced the 10-year-old plant to relocate.

"This is the only way to solve problems like ours," said a 22-year-old villager whose house sits less than 100 yards from the smashed gates of the factory, where the police were massed. "If you go to see the mayor or some city official, they just take your money and do nothing."

The riots in Xinchang are a part of a rising tide of discontent in China, with the number of mass protests like these skyrocketing to 74,000 incidents last year from about 10,000 a decade earlier, according to government figures....

says...

USA is the most polluting country in the world. Only one of the ones who didnt agreed with Kyoto`s protocol. They`re destroying our world with atomic bombs, wars and pollution, also by making 3rd world countries to be each day more poor.

[Anshul]

It seems in order to progress, China is ignoring Environment which would be harmful in long run

The ice in Himalayas if, melts due to GLobal warming would affect not only China, but India to a wide extend along with Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar.

[tyler]

I truly think America is partly responsible for pollution in china, because we buy from their factories or hire out. im not saying stop doing so, im just saying stop pointing the finger...