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【英国 Spiked 北京2008系列 之二】 中国人:从黄祸到绿祸?
【标题】The Chinese: from Yellow Peril to Green Peril? 中国人:从黄祸到绿祸?
【来源】http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4837/
【翻译】dakelv
【声明】本文翻译仅限Anti-CNN使用,转载请注明译者及出处。
【译注】本文是Spike Online 的 “2008北京:挑战对中国的污蔑”系列文章之二。全系列一共有二十篇文章。
【原文】
The Chinese: from Yellow Peril to Green Peril?
The slandering of China as a sooty, smoggy ‘destroyer of the planet’ overlooks the sweeping historic benefits of Chinese growth.
Try to visualise a huge city with a heavily polluted river runningthrough it. Flushing toilets have only recently become widely availableand as a result huge volumes of raw sewage are finding their way intothe river. Unfortunately the river is also the city’s main source ofdrinking water. Water-borne diseases, such as cholera and typhoid, arecommon.
Then one summer it is particularly hot. The smell from the river is sofoul that people begin to talk of what they call ‘the great stink’ intheir native language. Politicians decide the situation is so bad thatsomething must be done.
Any idea of where I’m talking about? Perhaps one of the 16 cities inChina that ranks in the world’s top 20 polluted urban centres? (1) Ormaybe somewhere in India or sub-Saharan Africa?
As it happens, my description is of London. Not London today but Londonin the mid-nineteenth century. Precisely 150 years ago, in 1858, Londonsuffered what was called ‘the great stink’ (2).
I am not suggesting there is a precise analogy between London in 1858and Chinese cities today. My point is that the prevailing culturalclimate has a key influence on how we perceive problems and how werespond to them. The reaction of Victorian Britain to pollution in theThames was to construct what at that time was one of the biggest civilengineering projects ever – London’s sewerage system. It was a hugeambitious project that reflected the self-confidence of the times.
London’s pollution problems also provided an impetus to the developmentof the germ theory of disease. Dr John Snow, a British physician,showed that water had carried the disease after an outbreak of cholerain Soho in 1854. Before that, the link between polluted water anddisease was not understood. Many thought it was ‘miasma’, bad air,which played a key role in the transmission of disease. The keybreakthrough in medical knowledge came about through a confidentengagement with the problem of London’s pollution.
If Victorian Britain had been imbued with today’s culture of caution,it is hard to imagine what the response to these problems would havebeen. Perhaps flushing toilets would be banned or their use limited.Londoners would have to return to using cesspits rather than beingconnecting to the main sewers. Maybe strict curbs would be put on thegrowth of London as a city. Or perhaps strong-smelling substances wouldbe used in an attempt to curb the miasma.
My counter-factual scenario on Victorian London’s response to the‘great stink’ is, of course, imaginary. But my point is serious. Today,particularly in the West, we do not live in a world of self-confidentresponses to challenges. On the contrary, ours is an era of excessivecaution. The typical response to problems is one of anxiety andrestraint. For example, in relation to climate change, the most commonarguments are about curbing individual behaviour and limiting carbonemissions. Proposals to adapt to the effects of climate change, forexample by building modern flood defences, generally receive a lowpriority. Developing more high technology solutions, such asgeo-engineering to modify the climate, is viewed with outright alarm(3). The implication is often that economic growth should be curbedrather than using the resources of a richer society to tackle theproblems.
It seems to me that the same outlook informs the Western response toenvironmental problems in China. The problems that China has withpollution are viewed in an excessively fearful and cautious way. Thefact that China’s population is so large, and its economy is growing sofast, makes the anxiety even greater. Instinctively, the reaction isthat somehow China should curb its development rather than find boldsolutions to its problems. The possibility that China could become afully industrialised and urbanised society, with living standards akinto those in the West, has become the ultimate environmentalistnightmare. Whereas China under Mao was sometimes called the ‘redperil’, and before that was sometimes referred to by Western racists asthe ‘yellow peril’, contemporary China is often viewed as a ‘greenperil’.
As a consequence, the impact of economic growth is also viewed in aone-sided way. There is an over-emphasis on the problems that it cancreate, including pollution and inequality. Meanwhile, the immensebenefits of growth in China tend to be under-stated. The fact thatgrowth can and does lead to a better life for the mass of thepopulation is virtually forgotten in the popular discussion. And thecapacity of a growing, more prosperous society to solve the problemsthat are thrown up by its growth is also neglected.
In this essay, I want to:
* Outline the problems that China faces in relation to pollution.
* Note some of the key welfare benefits of economic growth for the Chinese people.
* Discuss the relationship between economic growth and theenvironment. In particular, I want to outline the idea of the‘environmental transition’.
* Examine what I consider to be the mistaken notion that China will use up the world’s ‘scarce resources’.
Pollution problems
The key problems that China faces in relation to pollution are wellknown. They are discussed widely in the Western media and within Chinaitself. Numerous reports have also studied the subject. Perhaps themost authoritative is the 2007 report produced jointly by the WorldBank and China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA)(4).
* Air pollution: A combination of heavy coal use and a transportationboom are said to be devastating China’s air quality. Concentrations ofparticulates are increasing and these in turn are leading to a greaterincidence of respiratory diseases such as asthma. Air quality inBeijing has also received particular attention in the run-up to thissummer’s Olympics (5).
* Water shortages and quality deterioration: China’s heavy use of waterfor agricultural, domestic and industrial use is said to be leading todwindling supplies. Ground water is rapidly running out and China’swealthiest cities are said to be sinking as a result of subsidence.Water is also becoming increasingly polluted through hazardous wastes,fertilisers and pesticides (6).
* Desertification: Much of the country’s land is rapidly turning intodesert. To quote one study by an environmentalist: ‘Desert expansionhas accelerated with each successive decade since 1950. The Gobi ismarching eastward and is now within 150 miles of Beijing. Some desertshave expanded to the point where they are starting to merge. Satelliteimages show the Bardanjilin in north-central China pushing southwardtoward the Tengry desert to form a single, larger desert, overlappingInner Mongolia and Gansu provinces. To the west in Xinjiang province,two much larger deserts – the Taklamakan and the Kumtag – are alsoheading for a merger.’ (7)
* Acid rain: Sulphur dioxide emissions from coal use are leading to anincrease in the acidity of rain. Agricultural land is being damaged andbuildings eroded. Not only China but also its neighbours, includingJapan and Korea, are suffering as a result (8).
* Climate change The alleged environmental impacts of China’s rapidgrowth are not confined to East Asia. China’s rapid industrialisationis said to be threatening the planet. Not only is China blamed forusing vast quantities of natural resources – it is also said to be asubstantial contributor to global warming.
The common conclusion from all this is that it would be better for theplanet if China simply stopped growing. Environmentalists often putthis argument explicitly. For example, Lester Brown, a veteranenvironmentalist commentator, recently argued: ‘The Western economicmodel – the fossil-fuel-based, auto-centered, throwaway economy – isnot going to work for China. If it does not work for China, it will notwork for India, which by 2031 is projected to have a population evenlarger than China’s. Nor will it work for the three billion otherpeople in developing countries who are also dreaming the “Americandream”.’ (9) In other words, he is arguing that China, and indeed thewhole of the developing world, should not be allowed to enjoy Westernliving standards.
Most commentators do not put the case so explicitly. Sometimes they usewords such as ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ as euphemisms forlimiting growth. At other times they simply link economic growth tonegative environmental effects, and let the reader draw his ownconclusions. For example, in the latter part of 2007 the New York Timesran a 10-part series – complete with audio, video and interactivegraphics – on how China was ‘choking on growth’ (10). The first pieceargued: ‘China is choking on its own success. The economy is on ahistoric run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. Butthe growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, froma staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanisation that requirescolossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readilyavailable, and dirtiest, source.’ (11)
At other times more explicit conclusions are buried in the midst of amass of empirical material. For example, Elizabeth C Economy, one ofthe leading Western experts on China’s environment and a senior fellowat the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, has argued explicitlyin Foreign Affairs that China needs to sacrifice economic growth infavour of environmental protection: ‘Why is China unable to get itsenvironmental house in order? Its top officials want what the UnitedStates, Europe and Japan have: thriving economies with manageableenvironmental problems. But they are unwilling to pay the political andeconomic price to get there. Beijing’s message to local officialscontinues to be that economic growth cannot be sacrificed toenvironmental protection - that the two objectives must go hand inhand.’ (12) (Emphasis added.)
But are such arguments right? Should China sacrifice economic growthfor the greater good of the environment? I would argue not. In fact,curbing growth is probably the worst thing that China could do rightnow.
Welfare benefits of growth
Before going on to the relationship between economic growth and theenvironment, we should remind ourselves of the benefits of growth tothe Chinese people. Economic growth has brought huge gains to theChinese people. China has gone from a society where the vast majoritywere dirt poor and rural in the late 1970s to one that is much moreurbanised and wealthy today. Such a rise in living standards is anhistoric good in itself. And it also brings what economists callwelfare benefits. To give a few examples:
- Extreme poverty has fallen tremendously: According to a joint studyby the World Bank and China’s National Bureau of Statistics, extremepoverty fell from 53 per cent in 1981 to eight per cent in 2001. (About$102 per year in rural areas and $145 in urban areas at 2002 prices.)Mercifully the most extreme forms of poverty seem to be a thing of thepast in China (13).
It should not be forgotten that such poverty had terrible consequences.For example, from 1959 to 1961, China suffered a great famine in whichup to 30million people starved to death. I do not here want to go intothe debate about the exact causes of the famine; but it is hard toimagine such a calamity occurring in contemporary China, since it isimmensely richer than it was back then (14). The problems then were ofa different order than those of today.
Although famine was perhaps the most terrible incarnation of poverty,it should be remembered that even routine poverty was tragic. Asrecently as 1978, China’s State Statistical Bureau estimated that250million people, or 31 per cent of the rural population, lackedadequate food and clothing (15).
- Life expectancy has risen by several years: In 1975 the average lifeexpectancy was 65.5 years for Chinese men and 66.2 years for women. By2007 it had risen to 71.1 years for men and 74.8 years for women. Sothe average Chinese person lives several years longer than threedecades ago (16).
- Infant mortality has halved: Infant mortality was between 40 and 50deaths per thousand live births in 1980. By 2007 it had fallen to 22.1per 1,000 (17).
From these relatively few statistics alone it should be clear thatChina has made enormous strides forward during the period of rapideconomic growth since the late 1970s (18). Extreme poverty – includingthe scourge of famine – seems to be a thing of the past. The averageperson lives several years longer than before, and infant mortality hasroughly halved. And all of this has happened despite the negativehealth effects of pollution.
Of course problems remain. China’s widening inequalities are oftendiscussed – and they are certainly real – but it should not beforgotten that absolute living standards have risen. China is stillrelatively poor compared with the West. For example, America’s GDP perhead is still about eight times the Chinese level. China is at about$5,500 per head versus $46,000 for America (19).
China needs to develop a lot more to be as rich as the West.Nevertheless, the Chinese economy has taken some huge, positive stepsover the past 30 years, and the welfare of the Chinese people hasimproved enormously as a result.
The environmental transition
If we can agree that the Chinese people have benefited from economicgrowth, does it then follow that the goal now should be some kind ofbalance between the environment and economic growth? No; this is thewrong way to see things.
There is a common misconception that the more an economy industrialisesthe more polluted it becomes. It may be true that in the early stagesof industrialisation pollution increases. But typically what happens isthat as a society becomes richer, it also builds up more resources todeal with its environmental problems. It also tends to develop bettertechnology than it had in the past.
This pattern has been called an ‘environmental transition’ (20). In theearly stages of industrialisation, things get worse, but as timeprogresses the damage to the environment lessens. That is why thericher countries are typically less polluted than they were in thepast. Britain is a good example of this trend. The Thames is farcleaner than it was 150 years ago, even though output has risenenormously since then.
There is no doubt in my mind that China can go through such atransition. More modern factories can reduce air pollutionconsiderably. Cleaner energy can play a positive role. And technologiessuch as desalination can overcome any water shortages.
Admittedly, many concede there can be a transition in principle, butthey remain worried about the scale and rapidity of Chinese growth. Forexample, in its ‘choking on growth’ series the New York Times arguedthat: ‘Britain, the United States and Japan polluted their way toprosperity and worried about environmental damage only after theireconomies matured and their urban middle classes demanded blue skiesand safe drinking water. But China is more like a teenage smoker withemphysema. The costs of pollution have mounted well before it is readyto curtail economic development. But the price of business as usual –including the predicted effects of global warming on China itself –strikes many of its own experts and some senior officials asintolerably high.’ (21)
I would argue that, on the contrary, these factors could work toChina’s advantage. The more rapidly China develops, the more resourcesit will have with which to tackle pollution. In addition, the fact thatthere are already lots of developed countries around should work inChina’s favour. Much clean technology has already been invented, andChina can utilise this. The question, then, is: how can such technologybe transferred from the West to China?
Scarce resources
The argument about China using up the world’s resources is alsomisplaced. No doubt it is true that if China succeeds in developing toWestern levels, it will use a huge volume of resources. But it islikely that, for several reasons, new resources will emerge to replacethose that are used up (22):
* As countries develop they tend to become more resource efficient:Fewer resources are needed for each unit of output. The developednations, most notably Japan and Western Europe, use resources far moreefficiently than China does. There is no reason why in the futureChina’s resource efficiency cannot match Western levels;
* New sources of raw materials tend to be found: The commonlyexpressed idea that there are only a certain number of years ofreserves of a given resource is misleading. As resources are used up,this generally provides an impetus for more exploration to find newsources of the necessary resource;
* Substitute resources can be used: If a resource is becomingscarce it is often the case that a substitute resource can be found.For example, if oil is used up it can be substituted by other forms ofenergy;
* New resources emerge: Perhaps the least understood point is thatnew resources emerge as society becomes more developed. Things thatwere not resources in the past become resources as a result of economicand technological development. For instance, uranium was not a resourceuntil the mid-twentieth century. Before then, humans had no way ofexploiting it; now it can be an immense source of energy.
No green peril
To conclude, it is clear that economic development has thrown upsubstantial environmental problems for China – but it is essential thatthese problems are discussed and dealt with in a balanced way. Economicgrowth has brought higher living standards and enormous welfarebenefits for the Chinese people. It should also provide the means forChina to go through an environmental transition in which theenvironment is reshaped to benefit its inhabitants.
The one-sided reaction to China’s economic development amongst Westernobservers says more about the West’s contemporary insecurities than itdoes about China. Western societies lack the confidence that they oncehad in dealing with the challenges they face. The portrayal of China asa threat to the global environment, a ‘green peril’, is a reflection ofthe West’s anxieties rather than an accurate description ofcontemporary Chinese society.
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2008-9-3 23:36
[ 本帖最后由 dakelv 于 2008-9-3 23:42 编辑 ] |
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