Policymakers in China are thrashing out the details of the next five-year plan. Will it set the country on the path toward a green economy?
For years now, China has been at the receiving end of stinging criticism from the West over its environmental policies, with critics describing it variously as one of the most polluted countries, an insatiable, consumer-driven energy guzzler, and the world’s worst emitter of greenhouse gases.
These labels have been prompted by China’s rapid industrialization and urbanization over the past 30 years, which has allowed it to achieve blistering economic growth, but at enormous cost to its environment. Given the widespread criticism, it’s understandable why many in the West might find it hard to imagine this ‘dirty’ giant ever getting clean.
Yet these difficulties shouldn’t overshadow an encouraging reality—China’s top decision makers are planning to take a more holistic approach to the quest for greener growth that could transform the country’s image.
China’s central government is currently thrashing out details of how best to steer towards greener growth as part of closed-door discussions aimed at finalizing the country’s 12th Five Year Plan (2011-2015), which will be announced in March. The plan is expected to become China’s first national plan to shift the development agenda decisively toward a pattern of green growth, accelerating the country’s efforts at green modernization. Expect ‘establishing a low carbon society’ to be a key political slogan over the next five years.
With a limit to the amount of fossil fuel it can access, and with these fuels anyway creating significant environmental damage and associated socioeconomic problems, China’s top leadership seems to be realizing that the old ‘growth at all costs’ model that has previously been followed threatens not only the country’s energy security, but its very survival. A green development pathway based on low energy consumption and low carbon emissions is essential if China is to find a sustainable path to growth.
The environmental aspects of the plan are likely to be boiled down to five key points that will be presented to the public and used to measure China’s success in achieving its ambitious targets.
First, the government is believed to be considering using green indices as a yardstick for evaluating the performance of local officials. Water consumption per unit of GDP, proportion of clean coal consumption utilized, and the proportion of GDP invested in environmental protection will all be integrated into the indices. The idea is that this will force local governments to strengthen resource efficiency and improve ecofriendliness in key sectors such as heavy industry, construction, and transportation. Gone will be the days when the rate of GDP growth is the sole determinant of success.
Second, China aims to gradually establish a carbon trading system to help it meet its 2020 carbon intensity target of reducing CO2 emissions as a proportion of each unit of GDP by 40 to 45 percent of 2005 levels. Policymakers are expected to view carbon trading as a market-oriented, cost-effective way of supplementing current administrative measures to reduce emissions and genuinely shift the country’s ‘brown’ economy to a ‘green’ one. A cap-and-trade market is also expected to be up and running by 2014, while over the next couple of years, carbon trading programmes will most likely focus on pilot schemes in economic zones and/or industrial sectors such as the coal-fire power generation sector.
Photo Credit: Flickr / Land Rover Our Planet
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Anton
It would be good to see a non-western economy make strides in being an example to the rest of the world. Though western governments have led the world in green rhetoric, and despite having populations savvy enough to understand the need for a green revolution, they have done poorly in developing follow up policy. What may be needed is a wake-up call that will make us realise it is possible to grow economically while pushing a green agenda and if the US and the EU are not brave enough to take the risk, let China do so. Good luck, I say, to the Chinese. Besides, unless China does clean up, we really will have a serious problem….
JIM
Central planing from the unelected few is not democracy. The people praising china, are no different from those prasing stalin before. If you forget your past, you are condemened to your future. Tanks, or thugs, in a square? What’s the difference? We forget at our peril. “Inspiration to the world”? Can u say mao, and millions dead? That is central planing for u mikey!
megakids
Boy boy…you are in a bad dream…and still not waking up! I feel sorry for you it must be torturous! Sleep tight. This is the 21st century already, and 10 years have passed. Wake Up!
Johnny at Work
Cap & Trade in China? Carbon trading in China? All promoted by the Commie/Capitalists? What are you smoking?
China is going green so it can cut it’s demand for mid east oil and be top dog of future tech. Period. It has nothing to do with carbon and CO2 emissions. China is all about what is best for China. Something the US could learn from.
The US has food, the rest of the world including China doesn’t. Been that way for decades, but the US gives it away for free. Not exactly free, on the backs of US taxpayers. If the US had all the oil and the rest of the world didn’t we’d be giving that away for free too.
Claiming China is creating a Cap and Trade system is just another jackwipe trying to create a new push for Cap and Tax in the US.
Bill
You see when it comes to China, the West always find something to complain about. When China becomes green, they will simply complain about something else. There is always the pesky human right thing too to fall back on. Anything to keep up the self-riotousness attitude really. So don’t worry about it, China is becoming green not because the West want China to, being green is in one’s self interest of having a better environment and a brighter future.
Keith
Here is the next thing they will complain about. As China gets richer, it will start demanding the same out of season fruits and veg that gets imported into the west now. The complaint will be that China is ’stealing’ all the food.
Michael
Say what you will about the Chinese government however when they put their minds to something, it gets done! Not surprising considering that these are the people who built the Great Wall! Red China to Green China, good for them and an inspiration to the world!
captainjohann
Indians have to learn from this Chinese experiment instead of aping the west and wailing
Ben Gee, Edmonton, Canada
I was in Gongzhou China in October,2010 for 10 days, on 7 days, I saw blue sky and the sun, I was surprised. I was in the same city numerous times in the past, I almost never saw blue sky. 10 years ago, the water in the Hwangpo River was so polluted it smell. It may still be poluted, but it no longer smell. China is cleaning up, its had to, polution was killing 500000 people per year up to 2007. China is taking steps in the right direction.