Green China
I saw recently an article in the CS Monitor on an apparent nascent environmental movement: China enforcing green laws, suddenly | csmonitor.com.
Twenty damns and power stations, $14 billion worth of projects
across 13 provinces have been required recently to undergo
environmental review. The author indicates that SEPA - the State
Environmental Protection Agency - is being given political cover to
follow these policies from top leaders. Much of the article
is devoted to figuring out what is to be made of this.
It is a political dynamic spinning out ofPpremier Jiabao's
desire to connect with a core of young and dynamic bureaucrats. An
acknowledgment that the non-governmental environmental movement
is composed of the children of many senior bureaucrats throughout the
government; that is, the nations existing elite. Among whom it is a
popular, even passionate cause. Figuring into this too, are pragmatic
concerns like the need to brake an industry sector that may be
developing too fast.
Still, I saved the article down to my hard drive so I could
read it again. I wanted to understand something about my conventional
wisdom thinking - that returned a feeling of surprise when I first read
the title. Considering the Kyoto agreement, and the arguments that
often sail in its wake, I believed countries still on the upswing of
industrialization would desire not to be captured in such agreement and
follow draconian pollution abatement controls. Certainly not ones that
already industrialized countries never followed during their early
industrialization phase. They would not consider it fair, it may not be
fair. The U.S. for its part - this administration at least - has let be
known it won't put itself in a position of following regulations other
nations are not. Not one iota of competitive disadvantage will be taken
on. One one level I agree. History only happens once. no historical
epoch can be returned to, particularly an epoch of unrestrained
environmental degradation. For any reason, good or bad. Toward the end,
the article says as much: "...Sources in Beijing say many leaders are
genuinely worried about scientific studies and new analyses showing
long-term harm from continuing the pace of unregulated toxic emissions
and waste." There is information available now that was not available
previously. It can be ingnored only at the cost of becoming ascientific
and unreasonsed.
I imagined an outline of forces, for and against an
environmental movement in China. An authoritarian government
makes decisions by fiat and mandate with little or no local or popular
input (think of the three gorges damn project). They remove or quash
dissent. In as many facets as possible they endeavor to control
marketplace of ideas. To a certain degree this does describe the
Peoples Republic of China. However, You can look through the
crack in the wall that this story describes and catch a glimpse
that the opinion of the people can count. I thought back to my
developmental economics course. Successfully industrializing societies
follow a pattern that is more fixed that malleable in many ways.
National output and the work force will transition from agricultural
sectors to labor intensive industry to capital intensive industries and
on to post industrial phases. As it does so the labor force's attitudes
and skill/educational level will transition also. On micro level
decisions about family incomes and family size, responsibilities of all
members will change. Generally this leads to smaller families with more
invested in each child. Of course China already had population control
policies in place, but these policies are likely become less at odds
with the lives of skilled wage earners and post secondary educated.
At this point in a mature industrialized society folks start to take
life quality, education and attendant health and environment
issues far more seriously. The kind of issues that involve air and
water quality. They become keen on when information isn't available, or
when official information doesn't jibe with evident facts. They may
start a grey market on information they are not getting. Astute
leadership in a number of countries may be sensing that a damn the
torpedos approach to catch-up industrialization may not be the best
plan. We can only hope that this is a contageous condition.
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