Introduction
China’s environmental crisis is one of the most pressing challenges to emerge from the country’s rapid industrialization. Its economic rise, in which GDP grew on average 10 percent each year for more than a decade, has come at the expense of its environment and public health. China is the world’s largest source of carbon emissions, and the air quality of many of its major cities fails to meet international health standards. Life expectancy north of the Huai River is 5.5 years lower than in the south due to air pollution (life expectancy in China is 75.3 according to 2013 UN figures). Severe water contamination and scarcity have compounded land deterioration. Environmental degradation threatens to undermine the country’s growth and exhausts public patience with the pace of reform. It has also bruised China’s international standing and endangered domestic stability as the ruling party faces increasing scrutiny and public discontent. More recently, amid waning economic growth, leaders in Beijing appear more determined to institute changes to stem further degradation.
A History of Pollution
While China’s economic boom has greatly accelerated the devastation of its land and resources, the roots of its environmental problem stretch back centuries. Dynastic leaders who consolidatied territory and developed China’s economy exploited natural resources in ways that contributed to famines and natural disasters, writes CFR’sElizabeth C. Economy in The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future. “China’s current environmental situation is the result not only of policy choices made today but also of attitudes, approaches, and institutions that have evolved over centuries,” Economy writes.
It wasn’t until the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment that China began to develop environmental institutions. It dispatched a delegation to the conference in Stockholm, but by then the country’s environment was already in dire straits.
Economic reforms in the late 1970s that encouraged development in rural industries further exacerbated the problem.
Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping implemented a series of reforms that diffused authority to the provinces, creating a proliferation of township and village enterprises (TVEs). By 1997, TVEs generated almost a third of national GDP, though TVEs have since declined in relative importance to the Chinese economy. But local governments were difficult to monitor and seldom upheld environmental standards. Today, with a transitioning Chinese economy fueled by large state-owned enterprises, environmental policies remain difficult to enforce at the local level, where officials often priotize hitting economic targets over environmental concerns. Despite the government’s stated goals,actual change to environmental policies and effective implementation will require revisiting state-society and state-market relations and China’s bureaucratic power structure, writes CFR’s Yanzhong Huang.
China’s modernization has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and created a booming middle class. In some ways, the country’s trajectory of industrialization is not unlike those of other modernizing nations, such as the UK in the early nineteenth century. But experts say China’s environmental footprint is far greater than that of any other single country.
How Bad Is It?
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, having overtaken the United States in 2007, and was responsible for 27 percent of global emissions in 2014.
The country’s energy consumption has ballooned, with reports from late 2015 implying that it consumed up to 17 percent more coal than previously reported. In January 2013, Beijing experienced a prolonged bout of smog so severe that citizens dubbed it an “airpocalypse”; the concentration of hazardous particles was forty times the level deemed safe by the World Health Organization (WHO). In December 2015, Beijing issued red alerts for severe pollution—the first since the emergency alert system was established. The municipal government closed schools, limited road traffic, halted outdoor construction, and paused factory manufacturing. At least 80 percent of China’s 367 cities with real-time air quality monitoring failed to meet national small-particle pollution standards during the first three quarters of 2015, according to a Greenpeace East Asia report. In December 2015, the Asian Development Bank approved a $300 million loan to help China address the capital region’s choking smog.
Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping implemented a series of reforms that diffused authority to the provinces, creating a proliferation of township and village enterprises (TVEs). By 1997, TVEs generated almost a third of national GDP, though TVEs have since declined in relative importance to the Chinese economy. But local governments were difficult to monitor and seldom upheld environmental standards. Today, with a transitioning Chinese economy fueled by large state-owned enterprises, environmental policies remain difficult to enforce at the local level, where officials often priotize hitting economic targets over environmental concerns. Despite the government’s stated goals,actual change to environmental policies and effective implementation will require revisiting state-society and state-market relations and China’s bureaucratic power structure, writes CFR’s Yanzhong Huang.
China’s modernization has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and created a booming middle class. In some ways, the country’s trajectory of industrialization is not unlike those of other modernizing nations, such as the UK in the early nineteenth century. But experts say China’s environmental footprint is far greater than that of any other single country.
How Bad Is It?
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, having overtaken the United States in 2007, and was responsible for 27 percent of global emissions in 2014.
The country’s energy consumption has ballooned, with reports from late 2015 implying that it consumed up to 17 percent more coal than previously reported. In January 2013, Beijing experienced a prolonged bout of smog so severe that citizens dubbed it an “airpocalypse”; the concentration of hazardous particles was forty times the level deemed safe by the World Health Organization (WHO). In December 2015, Beijing issued red alerts for severe pollution—the first since the emergency alert system was established. The municipal government closed schools, limited road traffic, halted outdoor construction, and paused factory manufacturing. At least 80 percent of China’s 367 cities with real-time air quality monitoring failed to meet national small-particle pollution standards during the first three quarters of 2015, according to a Greenpeace East Asia report. In December 2015, the Asian Development Bank approved a $300 million loan to help China address the capital region’s choking smog.
CFR’s Economy points out that one of the most important changes in China’s environmental protest movement has been a shift, beginning in the late 2000s, from predominantly rural-based protests to urban-based movements. The issue has worried the top leadership, which views the unrest as a threat to the party’s legitimacy. “Air pollution in China has turned into a major social problem and its migitation has become a crucial political challenge for the country’s political leadership,” write Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Jane Nakano and Hong Yang. Yet the government has responded to public outcries: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang declared a “war on pollution” in March 2014; in May of the same year the government strengthened the country’s Environmental Protection Law for the first time in twenty-five years. Such moves reflect “a changing understanding within China about the relationship between economic development and societal wellbeing,” Economy and Levi write.
The Internet has played a crucial role in allowing citizens to spread information about the environment, , placing additional political pressure on the government. In March 2015 Under the Dome, a TED Talk-style documentary on China’s air pollution went viral, attracting hundreds of thousands of views before Internet censors blocked access, and in 2013 the discovery of thousands of dead pigs in the Huangpu river also spread rapidly online. However, experts say the jury is still out on the current government will implement meaningful reforms, which has shown more resolve in cracking down on public dissent than implementing environmental measures.
What’s Being Done?
The government has mapped out ambitious environmental initiatives in recent five-year plans, although experts say follow-through has been flawed. In December 2013, China’s National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planning agency, issued its first nationwide blueprint (PDF) for climate change, outlining an extensive list of objectives for 2020. Since January 2014, the central government has required fifteen thousand factories, including large state-owned enterprises, to publicly report real-time figures on air emissions and water discharges. The government also pledged to spend $275 billion over the next five years to clean up the air and $333 billion for water pollution. In a November 2014 joint statement on climate change with the United States, China committed to hit its peak carbon emissions by 2030 and to have renewables account for 20 percent of its energy mix by 2030. More recently, President Xi Jinping, on a state visit to Washington, announced that China would initiate a national cap-and-trade program in 2017.
China is one of the biggest investors in renewables, investing nearly $90 billion in 2014 as part of its pledge to cut its carbon intensity (far outspending the United States’ $51.8 billion). Some analysts have predicted that China is on track to overtake the United States as the world’s leading producer of wind energy by 2016. Meanwhile, Chinese firms continue to invest in and partner with international companies to develop renewable energy technologies.
Though policy implementation has been inconsistent, the environmental NGO community has grown to push the government to stay on track. Thousands of these groups—often working with U.S. and foreign counterparts—push for transparency, investigate corruption, and head grassroots campaigns. Friends of Nature is one of its oldest; Global Village and Green Home are among other well-known NGOs. Despite state support, these organizations inevitably face constraints from government fear that their activities could catalyze democratic social change.
Despite the political reforms needed to catalyze any real change in the environmental sphere, the response to China’s crisis has triggered some optimism about the future. “What we’re seeing now is an entirely new administration with an entirely different outlook on climate change,” writes Greenpeace East Asia’s Li Shuo. China, once reluctant to take a stand on environmental issues and climate change, emerged as a leader in negotiations at the 2015 UN Climate Conference in Paris where 195 countries signed a breakthrough accord. While China deserves due credit for its ambitious efforts to curtail its own environmental crisis, Economy says it cannot be assumed that Beijing will follow through on its promises. “The proof will be on the ground—and of course, in the atmosphere.”
By Eleanor Albert and Beina Xu
CFR
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