Of all the constraints facing China, environmental constraints to growth may end up looming even larger than the absence of rule of law. But that may be cold comfort, given the damage being done. Neal Asbury in "China's Environmental Meltdown: On it's Way to America" [sic, subscription only]:
"Recently I stood on the 23rd floor of a downtown Seoul office building. In the middle of the day I could barely see the silhouettes of buildings nearby. The sun was blotted from the sky. The people outside scurried about with white masks covering their faces as if attacked by biological weapons. A thick grimy dust coated everything. No matter how hard and often you scrub you can never make it go away."
Remember Cicero's picture from China in "Wish You Happy"? This phenomenon is called "Yellow Dust" - and it comes from China. On average, the Chinese are bringing 1 coal-fired power plant on line per week, each with a 75 year lifespan, generally using 1950s technology rather than anything like new clean coal tech, and often burning high-sulfur coal. Neal adds that China's emissions rise over the next 10 years will surpass by 5x the decreases that the Kyoto Protocol seeks from the rest of industrialized world (and will not get). Nor is that all:
"Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra are undoubtedly one of the most important habitats of wildlife in the world. There is believed to be thousands of plant and animal species still undiscovered. It is unthinkable but many of these species will become extinct before we ever knew they existed. Since the mid 90's when China's economy kicked into high-gear, nearly five million acres per year of Indonesian tropical rainforests have been destroyed for their timber. This is an area about half the size of the Netherlands..."
And of course, massive fires are now an annual feature there, sending smoke clouds over Indonesia's neighbours. Neal suggests a remedy - though that remedy will not alleviate China's biggest environmental issue, which is neither of these things:
It's water, of course. Get used to hearing that word a lot this century.
"The deforestation of China's north and northeast provinces has created a large, desert wasteland. Decades of timber exploitation, slash and burn farming techniques and population growth has resulted in desiccation or the elimination of water resources as plant life disappears, rainfall shrinks and lakes disappear. More than fifty percent of China's land is either arid or semi-arid, mostly the result of man-made activities."
I'm not sure I'd say "mostly"... but they have certainly been a big contributor. Industrialization exacerbates this problem, because it requires more water than farming.
If supplies are limited, and clean supplies are even more so, but an influx of migrants from the country to the cities is the biggest political risk factor for a socialist dictatorship... who gets priority? Right. And so the environment goes to hell, and people are beaten and tortured for complaining, until the problem is so bad that it gets in the way of other state goals. That has certainly been the usual pattern in Marxist economies. Eventually, it comes to a crunch, of course. Though tactics like food imports (which can be a less bulky way to import water) can and will be used along the way.
Before we feel too smug, it's worth noting that we aren't entirely blameless in these little dramas. Where does the appetite for Chinese furniture come from, that has driven deforestation in China and beyond? For industrialized goods?
Now, we could say that managing these things is China's problem, but there are a couple of issues with that.
One issue is that China will export these problems. Actively, vid. the bribes to Indonesian officials that doom a rainforest environment whose importance matches the Amazon's. Passively, via the "yellow dust" that chokes South Korea and Japan; some scientists believe it will eventually reach to Hawaii and the West Coast of the USA. So it becomes a problem for others.
Now add the fact that China is also right up top of the "world's most corrupt" list, and current trade relationships ensure that even a mythical Chinese government with good intentions will be powerless to do much about this sort of thing.
American influence can't solve every problem. It's not that powerful in a world of real constraints, and just because a problem exists does not necessarily mean that America is positioned by geography, resources, or human capability to solve it. Having said that, it is China's biggest trading partner. And if China begins importing food, North America is its most likely source.
As such, Neal Asbury suggests a free trade agreement with China - but one with environmental conditions and requirements, and external monitoring, in order to deal with the corruption issue:
"The answer must be enshrined in a comprehensive U.S.-China Free Trade Agreement. Trade with the United States must be conditioned on environmental protections that are strictly enforced and monitored by American scientists. Our most recent Free Trade Agreements negotiated with Colombia, Korea and Peru include strong language on the environment. We must go much further with China."
The trillion-dollar question is whether China would ever accept that sort of monitoring, even for the carrot of a Free Trade agreement with America. I tend to think not - and without that, any agreement with China isn't worth the paper they print it on. It's also worth noting that the US State Department and/or Commerce Department would be very quick to try and negotiate that verification away, unless faced by very strong pressure over that exact issue. It's part of their basic natures, and of course we can see the effects of their "deal for deal's sake" mentality in security-related situations as well.
Meanwhile, the Democrats would have to choose between the global environment/ carbon emissions and cries for protectionism from US workers. The GOP would also have some choices to make, though they'd be less acute because its Hamiltonian/realist wing would sell out the environmental angle in a heartbeat, in return for the lure (real or imagined) of a business deal. Meanwhile, other parts of the GOP coalition would see security risks, leading to a fracture in that party as well.
Those are very high hurdles to cross. If they can be crossed - which is not at all certain - Neal's suggestion would have strong merit, as the approach that would be most likely to make enough of a dent in these trade/environmental issues to matter.
I'm not holding my breath, personally. Not unless I find myself in China...
Additional Readings
- Winds' China future scenarios post, which looks at the challenges China faces - and poses - in several dimensions.
Joe, FYI, the URL you used for Mr Asbury's article leads to a page which reads
You might mention it's a subscription site in the body of your entry...
China is a mess and getting worse. I remember looking at the Olympics and thinking (_please forgive the metaphor, I couldn't resist it._)this is like putting lipstick on a pig.
I have always felt that China's collapse, and it will be a collapse, will be sudden and will be much more rapid than that of the Soviet Union and much more violent. More over, I think it can happen at any moment.
I have read that over the past few years, China has imported 200,000 people a day from the provinces to man its industrial expansion. That is the equivalent of a city the size of Chicago every month. If China's growth slowed to a respectable 3%, how many jobs would be lost in China? Ten million, twenty, thirty...? Get off the escalator any time you want.
China's ability to mount anything other than their long held hegemon strategy seems not likely to change any time soon. I do not see them having any ability to project force conventionally. I think the blue water navy that we are warned about, periodically, is something that we will be warned about, periodically for the next 20 to 50 years. It is not going to happen. Remember the Soviet carrier fleet?
Our policy towards China should be focused on our reaction to the inevitable evolution of China into a failed state and its break up into a sort of amalgam of warlord states dominated by local strong men, something that we are seeing beginning to happen here in Mexico with the rise of the drug cartels. The pattern is woven into the political and social history of both countries.
I have always felt that India was the better strategic choice for the U.S in Asia . The speak English, dominate the east west sea lanes are a democracy and have the political and institutional framework in place that gives them at least some chance to deal with the problems that both they and China are facing. Conversely, I don't think China has that framework or that chance.
China has burned a lot of cultural bridges since it opened to the world and embarked upon a policy of rapid and uncontrolled economic expansion over the past 20 years. I think in the future this period will be seen as a second Great Leap Forward, ill-conceived, overly idealistic in a warped kind of way, destructive of nurturing cultural norms and in the long term a disaster.
I would go even further and say that the present Chinese regime reminds me of that dominated by the eunuchs at the end of the Han, which was also a period when China witnessed rapid decline in the power of the central government and war for the better part of 2 centuries.
There is a reason that The Three Kingdoms begins with thusly,
"Here begins our tale. The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide."
I think we are on the verge of witnessing the cycle come to pass, yet again, in the near future.
Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink...
I do not think the repression of the Chinese people on these environmental issues will be as extreme as you think. One of the things the Olympics were good for is it forced the PRC to deal w/ the air pollution issue. Two or more weeks of clear air in Beijing made the leadership tremendously aware of how bad it is.
I suspect, that unlike us, they will begin an recycling and environmental cleanup program fairly shortly. It will be successful because as a manufacturing power they can use the material regained from such a program-this is the reason recycling does not work as well here. Recycling provides jobs in refitting smoke stacks and is going to benefit the US and Europe as much of the technical work has been done already.
As a regional power it will benfit the PRC to change their export market focus to the region. India and Asia want to grow as much as China. Unlike China their agricultural land is intact and in need of improvement. The potential pro quid pro is likely to be tremendous.
A solid pair of very thoughtful perspectives, each grounded in history and trends. Thanks, guys.
A big effect of the pollution is the high rate of disease you see in the middle age and older. There are gigantic hospitals here that just specialize on liver ailments (a major problem). To pay for the medicine, surguries, hospital stays, etc., millions of young people flow to the cities to find jobs to pay off the debts. My good friend just had to borrow over $10,000 for an operation to remove a tumor from her mother's head. So you have all these youth unable to save for their future or do anything else for years.
The desertification and water shortage in China can actually alert the Communist leadership to their environmental problems, and spur them to do something about it.
The Chinese Empire got its start from public irrigation system on the Yellow River to control its annual floods, 5000 years ago. Since then, the annual floods, and control of the rivers, have been seen as a proxy to government ability and heavenly consent to the Emperor/gov't. If the Emperor/gov't is good and annointed by the Heavens/gods, then there won't be a flood. If the Emperor is bad (and in need of a revolution), then there will be floods and disasters.
The expanding deserts is worsening the annual floods in China. The vegetation along the rivers help to control the spring melt, and without them, the floods are getting worse.
Historically and culturally, this means to the Chinese people that the Communists are not fit to govern. This is a signal that most Chinese people can understand. So, either the Communists will get w/ the program, or we can expect ever more popular discontent.
#3 from Robert M at 2:38 pm on Sep 15, 2008
Robert, I would love to be as optimistic as you are, but I think that revolutions are always preceded by the loosening of the reins on free thought. I doubt that the government has the power any more to put the genie back in the bottle. They will not be able to control the forces that work against environmental clean up. I fall more to the perspective of
#6 from Jimmy at 5:08 pm on Sep 15, 2008
It is very hard to push back against 5000 years of tradition and it does not appear that this post Mao regime has "aligned itself with heaven."
To further stir the pot, I think present day China will be remembered as globalisation's Frankenstein.
TOC, I don't know that it's necessarily free thought. Indeed, I would argue that thought suppression is a key ingredient of sparking a revolution. I have, however, figured that China was doomed for some time now — or more to the point, that China's Communist government was doomed. I figured this out the moment that I realized China was experimenting with private ownership of property. It seems to be the case that any time private property rights get stronger, the desire to use that property to the owner's advantage gets stronger. And when that desire gets stronger, the pull towards free exchange of property gets stronger, because it allows maximization of the owner's personal benefit from the property. And as free exchange of property kicks in, there is a need to be able to determine the provenance of the property, and that leads to a need to be able to freely talk about the property's history. And when that history involves the government, which it inevitably does somewhere on something, that leads to demands for free expression and other rights. In other words, as shown by both S. Korea and Taiwan, private property ownership makes dictatorships very difficult to sustain. I think that's why right-wing dictatorships (which tend to fascism and thus some measure of private property) fall faster than left-wing dictatorships (which tend to communalization of resources and thus public property ownership). But once China started allowing private property, I figured they had about 50 years at most before they became a representatively governed system. Tienanmen Square was just too early.
For those who have not read it yet, please see :
Why the US will still be the only Superpower in 2030
China has not fully estimated the difficulties present at the higher rungs of the ladder to superpowerdom.
#8 from Jeff Medcalf at 7:33 pm on Sep 15, 2008
I do not think we at in disagreement at all. I mentioned free thought in the broadest of terms, ie. that people could begin to peek out from behind a totalitarian curtain. For the Chinese it was the introduction of any form of capitalism, especially Private Property. They took the ball and changed the country overnight. This is the genie cannot be put back in the bottle.
I also agree that the Communist Party, will not survive. What worries me is the effect of that inevitability which from my point of view will be tremendous social unrest.
We won the lottery when the Soviet Union collapsed in the relatively peaceful way that it did. Collapse in China will not be so benign. Will the Red army still suppoort this government of technocrats against its own people? I do not think so. They have none of the heroic aura that the revolutionaries had. Army take over? Widespread Insurrection? Open ethnic war? Famine? I do not think that anything is off the table.
I remember talking to an old Chinese professor when I was in College about Mao and the Communists. He told me not to worry since the Chinese had had many stern emperors. I mention that because it always gave me a long perspective on history and a belief that it runs in great cycles.
We are living in interesting times.
TOC
Political embarassment is something the leadership in China is bringing on itself. When you make the fuss you did for the Olympics it is hard to put that genie in the bottle when you have alternatives like particle prevention equipment for smoke stacks. I also suspect they lke the clean air as well.
By the way I thought you were an American. You know the optimistic people :>)
#11 from Robert M at 4:58 am on Sep 16, 2008
I don't understand your post. could you please elaborate.