Week 2: Environmental Policy Response

China.

It’s a loaded word these days in the US. It’s one that simultaneously evokes images of industrialization and factory labor, of overcrowded cities and displaced peoples, of chemical-laden rivers and smog filled air. And of course, let’s not forget the ubiquitous “national bird” of the country, the crane—ceaselessly at work transforming the landscape. Furthermore, to many Americans, there are even more sinister implications that the word summons: communism, the lack of human rights, and a government that will stop at nothing—sacrificing everything—for the sake of economic progress.
While these same people might scoff at the very idea of “Chinese environmental policy,” we learned this week that the central Chinese government is not, in fact, Evil Incarnate. It does not mandate that the country must spew carbon, sulfur, and other pollutants into the air. In reality, the bulk of China’s environmental problems stem from the fact the central government and the local governments that are ultimately responsible for many of the polluting factories have largely irreconcilable differences in interest. The central government is focused on statistics. They want to decrease carbon emissions and increase GDP, while the process for doing so is secondary. And while their suggestions they do make may be effective in urban settings such as Beijing and Shanghai, the sheer size of the country ensures that in many locales, these approaches simply will not work.
Local leaders want to bring economic prosperity to their region, they want their people to live well, and they want some attention from the international business community. These goals are not necessarily compatible with the central government’s large-scale plans for reducing carbon emissions, and factories subsequently claim that it is too difficult to comply with the Environmental Protection Bureau’s regulations. Moving forward, the differences between the local and central government will always be an issue in the development of China—the country is simply too big to be able to cater to everyone’s needs.
For those still skeptical of the central government’s desire to curb pollution in China, here’s a quote from the New York Times. According to Peggy Liu, chairwoman of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Green Energy: “China’s leaders are mostly engineers and scientists, so they don’t waste time questioning scientific data… China is changing from the factory of the world to the clean-tech laboratory of the world.” As prices rise in China, and foreign companies look to other countries for their source of cheap labor, this vision may well become a reality. But until then, this issue of local government vs. central government may be a problem, like so many others, without a clear solution.