China, still poor though it may be, will not have the option of postponing until the time it has achieved rich-country status two of its most pressing environmental issues. Willy-nilly, it will be obliged by cost pressures to shift towards less resource-intensive technologies. With the price of oil likely to increase considerably, at least in the medium term, China has already begun to seek ways of limiting its consumption of oil by, for example, imposing heavier taxes on gas-guzzlers and encouraging the development of alternative car technologies: [491] in Shanghai, which is China’s environmental leader, it now costs around £2,700 to register a new car. [492] Chinese economist Yu Yongding is certain the country will take action: ‘A billion Chinese driving gas-hogging SUVs is just a fantasy. Believe me, the Chinese are not so stupid. China has to and will reduce its reliance on oil imports.’ [493] The other irresistible environmental challenge is global warming. This will in due course oblige China to seek ways of limiting its production of CO 2 in the same manner that, in time, it will force every other country to seek alternative forms of growth. [494] Like India, China has resisted the idea that it should be subject to the same constraints as rich countries, on the grounds that the latter have been pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for much longer and therefore bear a much greater responsibility for global warming. The major contributor to China ’s energy consumption, moreover, is not the domestic consumer, whose needs are minimal, but the export trade. The reality is that 40 per cent of China ’s energy goes into producing exports for Western markets: in other words, the West has, in effect, exported part of its own greenhouse emissions to China. [495] The minimal historical contribution made by the developing world to global warming was recognized in the Kyoto Protocol, which excluded them from its provisions, but the refusal of the United States and Australia to participate rendered the accord largely ineffectual. But with China having overtaken the United States as the biggest emitter of CO2 in 2007 [496] (even though its per capita CO2 emissions remain one-seventh of those of the US), [497] the idea that countries such as China and India can be excluded from any future agreement is no longer plausible, especially as the effects of global warming – already very evident in China itself, with accelerating desertification, reductions in agricultural yields, changing patterns of precipitation, the increased incidence of storms and droughts, and extreme weather like the prolonged snowfalls in central China in 2008 [498] – grow ever more serious. The environmental impact of energy use in China is particularly adverse because its dependence on coal – of a particularly dirty kind – is unusually high (60 per cent compared with 23 per cent in the US and 5 per cent in France) and carbon emissions from coal are proportionately much greater than from oil and gas. [499] Although the Chinese leadership has resisted the idea that the country should be subject to internationally agreed emission targets, it has accepted the scientific argument concerning global warming and, in both speeches and the growing volume of new environmental regulations, is displaying a heightened awareness of the problem. [500] In fact on paper China already has some of the most advanced laws in the world on renewable energy, clean production, environmental impact assessment and pollution control, though these still remain widely ignored in practice. [501] The government continues to resist the idea that environmental considerations should detract from the priority of rapid economic growth, but there is, nonetheless, widespread recognition of their urgency at the highest levels of the Chinese leadership. [502] The need for China to embrace a green development strategy, rather than relying on the old intensive model, has been powerfully argued by the influential Chinese economist Hu Angang. [503]
Figure 15. CO2 emissions compared.
Figure 16. Growing concern over environmental problems.
