How Now Brown Cloud? China as Carbon Culprit No. 1
I can tell China’s Golden Week holiday is over without bothering to consult the calendar. All I have to do is look out the window of my Hong Kong office. After three days of clear skies, The Brown Cloud has returned, signaling that factories across the border in Shenzhen have picked up right where they left off — belching poison into the air. On this particular morning, the noxious fumes swirling around me aren’t the only thing that has me rubbing my eyes. A competing irritant is a guest column in Fortune: “Is China Turning Green? On a clear day in Beijing, you can see a new environmental attitude.”
The article’s author, Daniel Esty opines from New Haven, where he is a professor of environmental law at Yale. I am reliably informed that he’s spent a good deal of time in Beijing this spring exploring Chinese environmental policy, however, so perhaps his vision on this subject is clearer than mine. But from my downwind vantage, his argument that China’s leaders are showing “a new seriousness about environmental protection” seems wildly optimistic. Yes, it’s true that China’s leaders have begun to speak more frankly about their failure to protect China’s environment from the excesses of runaway economic growth. Yes, premier Wen Jiabao confessed after the National People’s Congress in March that China last year failed to achieve its targets for reducing sulfur and carbon emissions. And yes, Beijing has promised to make pollution control a higher priority, shutter dirty industrial plants and impose stricter long-term standards for automobile fuel-economy.
But to conclude from all this, as Esty does, that “these aren’t just empty promises” and that China has finally “gotten religion on the environment” seems to me an extraordinary leap of logic. China’s State Environmental Protection Agency, which Esty lauds for blocking 163 projects worth $99 billion last year, is a toothless watchdog with few resources and little genuine regulatory power. As I’ve argued in earlier posts, the key player in implementing China’s environmental agenda will be the National Development and Reform Commission, but even the NDRC has been overwhelmed by the breadth and speed at which state-controlled enterprises are plundering China’s natural resources. (Ninety-nine billion dollars, by the way, is barely a rounding error on estimates of China’s pharaonic annual fixed-asset investments.)
Esty’s comparison to environmental tragedies in Cleveland and Pittsburgh which led to tougher environmental policies in the U.S. glosses over fundamental differences in the two nation’s political systems. In China, with neither free press nor independent judiciary, it is far more difficult for enviromental crises to provoke popular outrage. Even when they do, citizens aren’t able to vent their indignation at the polls. In the Western media, China’s government is often described as ‘authoritarian,’ but this is only partly true. The Communist Party has shown great skill in squelching dissent and rooting out entities that threaten its monopoly on political power. But it is much less adept at reigning in the nation’s far-flung economy and - as the flurry of recent revelations about its inability to regulate toxic substances like melamine and diethelyne glycol underscore – often fails miserably at the nuts-and-bolts of basic governance.
The result is willy-nilly growth that prizes short-term gains in employment and grandiose infrastructure projects above any long-term costs to the environment. China’s economy is barrelling along at an astonishing 11%. China has eclipsed Japan as the world’s second largest auto market, adding 20,000 new cars to its roads every day. It opens a new coal-fired power plant every week and remains dependent on coal – among the dirtiest and deadliest of fossil fuels – for 70% percent of its energy consumption.
For years, environmental experts fretted China might overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest source of carbon emissions by 2020, or at worst the end of this decade. But the torrid pace of Chinese growth has forced radical recalculation. As Esty notes, the Paris-based International Energy Agency last month issued a stunning new estimate: China may emerge as the world’s worst carbon emitter as early as this year. That China, with an economy only one-fifth as large as that of the U.S., is about to surpass it as the world’s No. 1 eco-villain is a, well, breath-taking achievement.
It’s not that China disputes the theory of global warming, nor do its leaders deny the potential costs. In a “National Climate Change Assessment” issued last month, Chinese scientists acknowledge that warming, if left unchecked, threatens to melt the glaciers that feed China’s largest rivers, swamp its largest coastal cities and ruin its harvests. Even so, Beijing refuses to imperil growth and, almost as a matter of national pride, rejects any proposal for joint action that would require it to eliminate even a particulate more than the U.S. and other polluters who got rich first. The national climate assessment proposes curbing China’s carbon emissions between 2000 and 2020 by 40%. But over the same time frame, the government has vowed to quadruple the size of China’s economy – meaning that even if China manages to meet its own emissions target, it will still double its carbon output.
As Esty suggests, Beijing’s desire for clear skies when it plays host to the 2008 summer Olympic games could prove a catalyst to change. My own guess, though, is that Beijing will opt instead to temporarily close factories and seal off the city to private cars. Indeed, on Saturday, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported China plans a dress rehearsal for this strategy later this fall. On September 22, governments of Beijing, Shanghai and 100 other cities plan a “No Car Day” on which private cars will be banned and residents forced to use public transportation or clamber back on their rusting bicycles. Who knows? This might work – at least for a while. But after they’ve handed out that last gold medal, I’ll be watching for The Brown Cloud’s grim return.
All of these accusations of international concern over China’s environmental problems being the result of white people’s attempts to surpress Asia are ridiculous. First of all it is telling of your ignorance of the ethnic make-up of the United States to say that. Second of all, it is simply reflective of your own racism and xenophobia. If this council of white illuminati or whatever you guys think they are existed they would use better means to surpress you then a few environmentalists raising doubts about the intelligence of spewing carcinogens into the air and rivers of china. This kind of willful ignorance is the power base that fascists love and attempt to cultivate, and while the United States is not much better in principle at least I as a citizen of this country am apologetic for the current trend in environmental policy instead of reacting with anger and attempting to pass the blame onto other countries or racial groups. Racist responsibility-shirkers like you make the rest of humanity look bad.
I adopted a baby from China 2 years ago and was appalled at how filthy the air was. The water was undrinkable in each of the 3 cities we visited (Beijing, Chancha and Guonghou). Having said that, we must let the Chinese address their own pollution problems. All this nonsense about man-made global warming (it is a natural occurrence) and living “greener, like the Euros..ha!) has to stop. This hoax must end so that we can address genuine issues.
The lax pollution controls in developing countries such as China allow manufacturers to produce goods at a low cost because they dont have to pay for the impact to the environment. This in turn promotes overconsumption. Want to improve the environment AND mitigate overconsumption??? Enact pollution controls, increase the price of goods and let the yuan float against the dollar…
I think it should be noted that many here making comments bashing the U.S. are foreigners living in the U.S. Must be nice to occupy both sides of the fence…
Also.. I think it is ironic that the only 2 bashers of the US that I read.. (it’s none if the US’s business) live here!!! I hate it when people immigrate to the US, and then bash it.. before you came here it was the best thing in the world.. people are dying to get here.. and then when they do they bash the US, and tote symbols such as flags of the same country that could not even put a plate of food in their children’s mouths, or a roof over their children’s heads.. if you do not like the US, go home !!!!I have no problem with immigrants.. but it makes me mad when they bash the US.. if only the same people made that much stink in their country, maybe things would change!! But what they don’t say is that they would be killed in their country for the same comments!!!
I think we should all stop blaming each other.. we are all at fault.. we are all humans.. and destroy everything we touch..and we are the most intelligent?? If we would all do something to reduce consumption and live a simpler lifestyle .. things would be better.. because we all ultimately live on the same planet.. and we should take example from some of the european countries like Switzerland, Sweden.. etc. and life a greener lifestyle ..
I agree with the comment posted by Dave Chiang. These westerners are trying to use the environment as a tool to suppress growth in the emerging markets, especially China and India. Both are considered to be threats to the western world (should be read as the white world). How the 2 countries modernize is their business. So you westerners just shut up and mind your own damn business.
Obviously, Clay doesn’t cross the border much to the China side much. If he does, he would instantly understand the factories are only part of the problems.
CO2 is only part of the story. As others have pointed out, the CO2 emission per capita is much lower in China than in US other other developed countries.
However, the discussion with CO2 misses some other bigger air polutions - chemicals and dusts. I suspect the leadership will act to contain the chemical pollution from the factories. The dust is the result of construction everywhere. That is the reason why the sky is gray or brown. Eventually, the construction boom will end (most likely after 200 
and the sky will be naturally clearer.
While I cannot speak for other parts of China, Shanghai has improved a great deal over the last decade. In 2000, the sky was always grey. In 2003, we see some blue skies. I came back to US after 2003, but I have heard it continued to improve. I truely expect the other cities follow the same pattern.
Quite a lack of environmental responsibility from all around the globe…no one is responsible for their own actions if they can point a finger…most children are more educated than this debate. Those who signed Kyoto did nothing for 10 years and should be embarrassed by this but are not. Countries or regions like the Eu producing more CO2 than they convert back to O2 should also be equated to those cities with landfill problems that leave their trash on the street. Essentially, every country creates its own yardstick for its impact on global warming to show that it is someone else at fault. In fact, there is little serious action taking place on this issue, and if the comments I read here this morning are typical of world opinions, little will be done ever.
Funny that western CO2 emissions are blamed for global warming! How about methane emissions from 4000 years of intensive rice farming in east Asia!
It’s interesting how the climate-change debate has started to get framed into a blame-game, or a “this is where we are- let’s all do everything we can to fix this” type of rhetoric. People- especially people who live in the first world- often don’t understand that third world countries are still tremendously poorer than us; and making similar economic concessions to combat climate change, as we should make, would be quite crushing to the (poor) quality of life for people in their countries. China’s economy 1/5 the size of the US? Well, population is 5 times greater, and their economy is still loads smaller. So I let’s do a little more introspection, and find stronger leadership at home to combat climate-change, before we go around pointing fingers, insinuating that others aren’t doing enough, or worse yet- that they are worse than us…because that is real nonsense.
Well the environment is a luxury for rich people. It is kind of hypocritical that the countires which did the damage want the innocent countries to carry the burden of fixing the problem while doing nothing at home. Gas in the US is ridiculously cheap at 3 dollars a gallon. In India at purchasing power parity it is 21 dollars a gallon. In China it is 15 dollars per gallon. USA emits more Carbon with a population one fourth of China and an economy roughly the same size at purchasing power parity (Everyone know Chinas economy seems smaller because the yuan is held down artificially). Whats worse the US has been doing it for a hundred years. Most Americans seem to believe they have the richest country in the world because of some inherent superiority . The real truth is the USA is the richest country in the world because since early 20th century they have had large amount of cheap petroleum which they have burnt like there is no tomorrow . The Chinese as a race are much more intelligent as math scores of Chinese Americans show so if the Chinese can go full ahead on development of course they will be richer than Americans. This is something the White supremacists pretending to be environmentalists cannot tolerate.
No raindrop thinks that it is responsible for the flood…
Hate to be rude, or even abrasive, but I think that Dave Chiang from Holmdel should go back to China. Dave, from Colburn, your opinion is by far the wittiest. The only thing I can add to some already very intelligent comments is that other countries should learn from the mistakes we in the US have made when it comes to the environment, and are trying to correct.
westerners have been polluting the world for over 100 years and now you are telling other people that they are the problem of air pollution? shut up!
by the way, one thing I’ve learned is that if some western right-wing radicals start to attack China for whatever reason, then China must have done something right.
I am always struck by the fact that we want to look at others in the global community as the source of the larger problems with CO2 emissions and global warming. We even want to blame high gasoline prices on the increased demand driven by China’s growing consumption. The US has failed to lead by example for anything other than selfish national interest. Countries like Japan and the European Union embrace initiatives like the Kyoto Protocol, and drive economical fuel efficient cars, while we thumb our noses at them. Why would we be at all surprised when the rest of the world, least of all China, returns our thumb with a single finger salute.
Good comment Clay!
China is propoganda king and they think its unbelievable US dropped in their hands as sole supplier to world. US is just as irresponsible since they could have made conditions, but they are too greedy and stupid.
Before we blame China, which we should, lets’ look at mindless US CEO’s and Administration that let this happen. This is the most significant mistake of the many from this Administration imo.
We will never police China. Never!
We all need to aggree that the developed world has got a lot of benefit from unbrindled growth over the last 100 years. Now the developing world is catching up and we have also got smarter about the environment with new insights and technology to mitigate the environmental challenge.
The question i think is how do we go about it instead of should we. Thus we need to find an equitable solution where all need to participate but the developed world needs to bear a greater burden in terms of capital commitment - else we run the risk of loosing the world? and Can we afford that?
As a British national living in Australia, the highest CO2 producer per capita and main supplier of resources to China, I have little case to grind. But let’s not break down the lack of freedom of speak.
The author has said China may end up as the world largest producer of CO2, and that major pollution problems are occuring in China. The actual Chinese born people I speak to are worried about the fact the water quality is poor and they can’t afford the really fancy filters the rich all use, I repeat again all the rich Chinese use water filter - to get rid of the cancer causing chemicals.
We have a global problem in pollution.
In the West we must understand to live more modestly. If we do this China will shift from export driven growth to internally drive consumer and capital investment. This should help lift the Chinese out of proverty as business seek to build roads (capital) and cafe (consumer) products the local people want.
I am in education and I can say nearly 100% of Chinese students want PR(permanent residency) in Australia - so that tells you how good life in China must be.
I really lke the US and have had great times in the US. But the US, must cut back on excess, it is the main reason many overseas hate the US. They see huge SUVs, so big they have to be registers as trucks to drive to the mall. This over consumption is also the reason behind the US dificit.
Citizens of the US consume less, save more and borrow less from China - it will reduce CO2 and keep a very worthwhile country strong - no nation can fight a major war on credit cards - it needs domestic bonds and if all the credit cards are max out to China - you may find the chinese tail wags the US dog. And with a brother fighting with you guys in Iran in the British Army that situation is not appealing.
How is it the fault of the U.S. that there is a ‘Brown Cloud’ in Beijing? Long has the poison of greed and industrialization killed China’s waterways and natural habitat. No one blamed the U.S. then, only now when you can’t defend your own countries actions does one look for a scapegoat in others. It appears the U.S. goverment has become the scapegoat for all media the worldover. Worldwide corporations are to blame, and like Haliburton, they will slither to the path of least resistance. Solve your own damn problems.
Everyone here is speaking in circles and pushing each other with their own interests at heart. The fair thing to do would benifit us all equally by acheiving a common goal. Justifying actions based upon historic mentalities is counter-productive, both sides have to see the issue from the perspective that we are on the same side.
To immigrate 200m-500m Chinese to US might be a fair solution to this world.
US and China are roughly same size but China has to raise 5 times of the population of the US. While we always advocate about freedom around the world, why don’t we just provide people around the world the basic freedom to choose where they should live. After a re-distribution of population don’t we have more people live in “democracy” and therefore a happier world ?
China is rightly more interested in feeding it’s citizens than placating western environmentalists.
As long as consumers in developed and developing nations buy products made in China, it will be difficult to see substantial improvement in the environmental practices of companies and the government in China.
Hey, didn’t you get the talking points? AMERICA is the bad guy in the world today. We must all applaud the communist way of life.
After all, China’s One Child policy is reducing CO2 from pesky humans. And Humans are like AIDS for the Earth according to college research. If the greedy American parents would just permit forced abortion (which kills fetus - not people!), we would be able to have the same green credentials as our clearly superior eastern adversaries.
I feel this is an issue about equitable allocation of pollution rights. Do you do it on per capita basis, or you do it on per unit of GDP basis?
I find it hard to believe any rational, educated or informed person would support the latter.
What the Western media does best is scapegoat the Chinese for the global emissions problem that are primarily produced from U.S. industry over the past century. On a per capita basis, the average Chinese citizen emits only a small fraction of carbon dioxide of the gas-guzzler SUV driving U.S. counterpart. Since Americans are not willing to make the slightest sacrifice, why should the Chinese. Moreover, the Bush Administration which considers the Chinese to be a “strategic threat” bans the export of high tech pollution control technology. To advocate Al Gore’s emissions caps on China’s Industry would condemn the Chinese people to a permanently lower standard of living than Americans. With millions of rural Chinese still living in poverty, it is disingenuous for the United States to place a double standard burden on Chinese people. The Chinese have never asked nor accepted any foreign aid from the West; how the Chinese modernizes their nation is none of the U.S. damn business.
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As Fortune's Asia editor, Clay Chandler is based in Beijing, but his assignments take him throughout the region, from rural backwaters of China, to India, Japan, Korea and other parts of Southeast Asia.Before joining Fortune in 2002, Clay was Asian economic correspondent and Hong Kong bureau chief for the Washington Post. He opened the paper's first Shanghai bureau in 2000, after serving as chief economic correspondent in Washington, D.C. He was Tokyo correspondent for the Wall Street Journal from 1989 until 1993, when he joined the Post.
Chandler has a B.A. in government and East Asian studies from Harvard.
I was in Shanghai three years ago. The very polite local host mentioned the black cloud. Hazy. We stayed at a 4 star hotel and ate meals there most of the time. We were sick for two weeks when we returned to Florida. Putting aside poilitical bantering: the Chinese people are suffering from pollution which is unabated; the healthcare system there cannot treat the lung problems and resulting cancers, etc. The government will be held accountable for this and there may be another revolution.