roundtable

China’s Air Pollution ProblemsBY S T E VAN HAR R ELL , ISAB EL H ILTO N, AN D B RYAN T ILT

Published: April 28, 2014

In January 2014, NBR published a two-part interview with Daniel K. Gardner (Smith College) titled “China’s Off-the-Chart Air Pollution and Why It Matters (And Not Only to the Chinese).” The interview touched on a number of issues related not just to pollution and environmental quality in general but also to trade, technology, and quality of life in China, other parts of East Asia, and even the United States. For this roundtable, NBR asked several scholars who work on China and

its environmental problems to comment further on the issues raised by Professor Gardner.

China’s International Air Pollution: Is the United States Part of the Problem?

Stevan Harrell

Addressing the Gap between Rhetoric and Reality in China’s Air Pollution Control: Why Civil Society Is Essential

Isabel Hilton

Hydropower as an Alternative Energy Source in China: Costs and Benefits

Bryan Tilt

the national bureau of asian research1301 pennsylvania avenue nw, suite 305washington, d.c. 20004 • 202-347-9767

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About the Authors

Stevan HarrellStevan Harrell is Professor of Anthropology, Professor of Environmental and Forest Sciences, and Adjunct Professor of Chinese at the University of Washington. He has conducted research on national and local aspects of China’s forests and the people who live near them and is now writing a book tentatively titled An Eco-History of People’s China.

Isabel HiltonIsabel Hilton is the editor of chinadialogue.net, which is an independent, noncommercial, bilingual website devoted to high-quality research and debate on the environment. She began her career in journalism with Scottish Television and later worked for the Daily Express and the Sunday Times before joining the launch team for the Independent in 1986. In 1992, Ms. Hilton became a presenter of the BBC’s The World Tonight and a columnist for the Guardian. In 1999, she joined the New Yorker as a staff writer. She has

reported from China, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe and has written and presented several documentaries for BBC television. Since 2001, she has been a presenter of the BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves. She has authored and co-authored several books and holds an honorary doctorate from Bradford University.

Bryan Tilt Bryan Tilt is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Oregon State University. His research focuses on sustainable development, pollution control, and water resources in China and the United States. A former Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Beijing, Dr. Tilt is the author of The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China: Environmental Values and Civil Society (2010). He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Washington.

CENTER FOR HEALTH AND AGING The mission of the Center for Health and Aging (CHA) is to facilitate constructive dialogue between science, industry, and policy and conduct research that highlights unique opportunities to improve health through creative policy and cross-sector collaboration.

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China’s International Air Pollution: Is the United States Part of the Problem?Stevan Harrell

China’s air pollution is a horror story that has captivated readers and viewers around the world. Many observers have pointed out that it is a major contributor to pollution in Japan and Korea, and even blows across the Pacific to affect air quality up and down the coast of North America. A recent study estimated that on the worst days, Chinese emissions accounted for 12%–24% of the sulfate, 2%–5% of the ozone, 4%–6% of the carbon monoxide, and up to 11% of the black carbon particulate over the West Coast of United States.1

But there is another side to the story. Some of that pollution is caused by emissions from the factories that produce goods for the United States and other foreign markets. Given that about 24% of China’s GDP consists of manufacturing for export, and that the United States accounts for about 20% of China’s total exports, then around 5% of China’s GDP comes from goods manufactured for the U.S. market. We must also keep in mind, that manufacturing generates more emissions than do other sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and services. Thus, perhaps 6% or 7% of China’s air pollution is attributable to the U.S. export market. In other words, the percentage of China’s pollution attributable to trade with the United States is about the same as the percentage of pollution in the Western regions of the United States attributable to China on a bad day. But remember that we are only talking about the West Coast and that pollution levels in California, Oregon, and Washington are much lower than those in the highly populated areas of China. The Chinese, in other words, are getting the worse end of the deal.

1 Jintai Lin et al., “China’s International Trade and Air Pollution in the United States,” PNAS, February 4, 2014, 1736–41.

Part of the reason behind China’s pollution is that the energy intensity of the Chinese economy—the amount of energy that it takes to produce a certain volume or value of goods—is still very high compared with that of the United States and other wealthy countries. Estimates vary widely, but according to the International Energy Agency, China’s energy intensity per dollar value is about 58% higher than the United States.2 Although exports to the United States account for 3%–7% of China’s emissions of various pollutants, if those products had been produced in the United States, they would have added only 1%–2% to U.S. pollutant emissions. The U.S. economy is more energy efficient, because it depends less on coal and includes more stringent emissions controls.3

Because over 60% of China’s energy is produced by burning coal, which produces more pollutants than other forms of energy generation, when we talk about the energy intensity of the Chinese economy, we are primarily talking about its coal intensity. Coupled with less stringent emission controls, China’s economy simply generates a lot more pollution for the buck than does the U.S. economy. But in fact, this coal intensity is not primarily due to manufacturing, much less to export manufacturing. About 52% of the coal burnt in China goes to power generation—some of it for industry to be sure, but large amounts also for residential and commercial heating. In the biggest cities, for example, several times as much coal is burned in the wintertime as in the summer,

2 International Energy Agency, Key World Energy Statistics 2013, http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/KeyWorld2013.pdf.

3 Lin et al., “China’s International Trade and Air Pollution in the United States.”

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indicating that heating accounts for the great majority of coal consumption.4

It is not surprising that manufacturing is not the primary source of air pollution. In Los Angeles in the 1950s, when cars were the main cause of pollution, going downtown meant stinging eyes and a scratchy throat. Although the levels of particulate matter in Los Angeles at that time were below those experienced in China’s recent severe pollution episodes, they were still well above current world standards. And ozone, the main component of Los Angeles’s famous smog, was several as times as high as levels recently measured in Beijing.5 Now no one would say that Los Angeles’s air is wondrously clean, but it no longer hurts the eyes or the throat even on the worst days, and measured pollutant levels have in fact fallen dramatically. This bodes well for China’s cities in the long run as China continues to decrease the energy intensity of its economy, switch to alternative sources, and install pollution-control equipment. But it will be a while before we see dramatic improvements.

Meanwhile, China has recently embarked on a massive effort to move coal-derived pollution away from the cities, in addition to replacing coal with clean energy sources. The government has announced the construction of sixteen coal bases near their largest coalfields in Shanxi and Inner Mongolia. Large quantities of coal will be gasified and transported by pipeline to the major cities, where it will burn much cleaner and cause less smog than if it had been burned as coal.6 Yet while this policy may bring relief to the cities, it shifts the burden of pollution onto the poorer people living in the coalfield areas, who are fewer in number and less powerful politically.

Already people living near one of the first coal bases are complaining of respiratory diseases. In addition, the total greenhouse gases emitted by coal gasification plus combustion of the gas to generate energy are

4 Mei Zheng et al., “Seasonal Trends in PM2.5 Source Contributions in Beijing, China,” Atmospheric Environment 39, no. 22 (2005): 3967–76.

5 Lauren B. Hitchcock and Helen G. Marcus, “Some Scientific Aspects of the Urban Air Pollution Problem,” Scientific Monthly 81, no. 1 (1955): 10-21.

6 William J. Kelly, “China’s Plan to Clean Up Air in Cities Will Doom the Climate, Scientists Say,” InsideCimate News, February 13, 2014, http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140213/chinas-plan-clean-air-cities-will-doom-climate-scientists-say.

approximately twice the amount that would be released if the coal were burned directly. In other words, we are trading air pollution for global warming, which is hardly the kind of trade most of us would want to make.

Further, more coal than ever is coming out of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and other rich coal seams of North America; the United States is estimated to have a 200–250 year supply of coal reserves.7 Since the United States is burning less coal and China’s demand seems to be growing, there have been plans to build coal terminals near Bellingham and Longview, Washington, to ship a projected 108 million tons of coal per year to China, beginning in the 2020s.

But the trajectory of China’s economy counsels caution. As recently as summer 2012, well after China’s recovery from the effects of the world financial crisis, China experienced a coal glut. Warehouses were full and ships importing coal were waiting offshore to unload, and the government took advantage of the glut to shut down some of the smallest and most dangerous mines. The glut is over for now, but it may well have signaled a leveling off of China’s coal demand as China moves aggressively to increase the amounts of power generated from alternative energy sources. In fact, economic projections forecast that China’s coal consumption will peak before 2020 and decrease fairly rapidly after that.8 This not only contributes to medium-term optimism about air pollution but also calls into question the idea that the proposed Pacific Northwest coal terminals will ever be profitable. Given that coal transport to the terminals by train brings the risk of increased air pollution near the railroad routes, massive traffic congestion at railroad crossings between Wyoming and the Pacific Ocean, and coal spills at the ports, it seems wise to scrap the coal terminals and help China ameliorate its air pollution problems.9 •

7 U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Coal Explained: How Much Coal Is Left?” May 28, 2013, http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=coal_reserves.

8 “The Unimaginable: Peak Coal in China,” Citi Research, September 4, 2013, https://ir.citi.com/z5yk080HEXZtoIax1EnHssv%2Bzm4Pc8GALpLbF2Ysb%2Fl21vGjprPCVQ%3D%3D.

9 Eric de Place, “Running ‘Off the Rails’: ForestEthics’ New Report on the Northwest Fossil Fuel Blow-Up,” Sightline Daily, March 13, 2014, http://daily.sightline.org/2014/03/13/running-off-the-rails.

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Addressing the Gap between Rhetoric and Reality in China’s Air Pollution Control: Why Civil Society Is EssentialIsabel Hilton

Every industrial revolution in history has produced toxic effects. China’s industrial revolution is the most recent—and the most significant—case. Not only is it the biggest and fastest industrial revolution in history, with pollution on an unprecedented scale, but we also now understand how close we are to dangerous and unstoppable climate change, to which China is now the largest contributor by volume. We all have an interest, therefore, in rapid and effective action in China. Are there lessons in the experiences of other countries that might help Beijing clean up, while continuing to develop?

One obvious lesson is that no government has succeeded in cleaning up the environment without the assistance of its citizens. In most countries, the pressure to address pollution originated with people who suffered its effects directly. Active citizens formed campaigning groups and enlisted the help of the press, the public, and the law to work for the necessary regulation and legislation. To mobilize effectively, such groups benefitted from funding, access to information, a robust legal system, and a relatively responsive government.

Some of these conditions apply in China: environmental NGOs now number in the tens of thousands, there is legislation and regulation on access to information and public participation, and there is increasing pressure on the authorities to publish environmental data, particularly on air quality. More than 170 cities in China now publish real-time

air quality data online, a huge jump from just two years ago.1

But despite these advances, China’s environmental conditions continue to deteriorate. The gap between rhetoric and reality is partly explained by some key weaknesses across a range of factors, which, if not addressed, will continue to impede the government’s effectiveness.

The first is that its laws, regulations, and speeches notwithstanding, the Chinese government itself does not yet prioritize environmental protection over other policy objectives. 2013 brought repeated episodes of severe air pollution and growing public concern over water and soil pollution, but despite Premier Li Keqiang’s recent declaration of a “war on pollution,” government spending on environmental protection fell by almost 10% from 2012 to 2013. The budget report, delivered in March 2014 to China’s parliament, shows that in 2013 China spent 30 billion yuan ($4.9 billion) less than was budgeted for conservation and environmental protection. Spending in these areas declined from 199.84 billion yuan ($33 billion) in 2012 to 180.39 billion yuan ($30 billion) in 2013.2 Many experts regard the full budgeted sum as already too little to achieve the government’s stated objectives, but underspending on environmental protection raises

1 “179 Chinese cities agree to real-time disclosure of air quality,” Chinadialogue, January 16, 2014, https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/6657-179-Chinese-cities-agree-to-real-time-disclosure-of-air-quality/en.

2 “Report on China’s central, local budgets.” Xinhua News Agency, March 15, 2014, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-03/15/c_133188601.htm.

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concerns about the government’s political will or capacity to implement policy.

Even a fully committed government is severely hampered in the design and execution of environmental protection without the support of a robust legal system, a vigorous press, and an active civil society. While some of these institutions nominally exist in China, all are severely constrained. China’s laws tend to be vague, and the legal system is both weak and limited by political control: a recent draft of the proposed environment law, for example, sought to restrict the right to litigate on environmental issues to one government-controlled organization, thereby depriving more independent civil society groups and individuals of access to the courts.

At the same time, Chinese civil society is weak and fragmented, largely as a result of government policies. While important work is being done in China by both international NGOs and a few world-class Chinese NGOs, grassroots environmental organizations are mostly small, under-capacitated, insecure, and short of funds.

They are also up against some extremely powerful vested interests. Grassroots activists are frequently targeted when they seek to constrain the behavior of local companies and local officials: cases such as that of Wu Lihong, an activist who campaigned peacefully for years to protect Lake Tai, only to be jailed in 2007 on charges of extortion, are not unusual. One notorious and typical recent case was that of Liu Futang, a retired official who drew attention to the destruction of the mangrove forests in Hainan Island. Liu was charged with “illegal business activities” after publicizing a protest against the construction of a coal-fired power station on the island; he was fined and given a three-year suspended sentence.3

Just as individuals can be intimidated, so too can vulnerable grassroots organizations. Most are not allowed to register officially and thus must operate without formal legal status or under the guise of

3 Liu Jianqiang, “Environmentalist Liu Futang Found Guilty of ‘Illegal Business Activities,’” December 5, 2012, https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/5429-Environmentalist-Liu-Futang-found-guilty-of-illegal-business-activities-/en.

businesses. They are not allowed to solicit funding from the public, and receiving foreign support can expose them to the risk of official sanction. While NGOs that help the government achieve specific objectives, such as the delivery of services to the elderly or hard-to-reach groups, are encouraged and funded through government contracts, organizations that challenge vested interests or highlight pollution problems that officials might wish to conceal can easily be subject to official pressure or closed down.

The problem this poses for the effective implementation of government policy was well illustrated recently by the complaints of China’s parliamentarians, who demanded to know why official figures seemed to show that China’s air quality was improving, when the lived experience suggested that it was getting worse.4 The answer, they suggested, was fraud: an investigation by the Shandong Environmental Information and Monitoring Centre, covered in the Chinese press, discovered fraud both in the reporting and the collection of data. Big companies and public officials routinely falsify information to conceal pollution and avoid sanctions, but serious violators are rarely prosecuted or shut down.

Even when violators are caught and action is taken, the fines are derisory. China’s Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law has not been updated since 2000, and the maximum penalty that it sets for faking pollution data is only 50,000 yuan ($8,100). At that price, continuing to pollute and falsify figures is a more profitable course of action for major companies than cleaning up. Until the Chinese government gives enforcement agencies and the law real powers and backs them up with a confident civil society and a robust media, progress on environmental protection is likely to be disappointing. •

4 Li Keyong and Luo Bo, “China’s Parliamentary Delegates Attack Air Quality Fraud,” March 11, 2014, https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/6806-China-s-parliamentary-delegates-attack-air-quality-fraud.

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Hydropower as an Alternative Energy Source in China: Costs and BenefitsBryan Tilt

The rapid rise of the Chinese economy has lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty and transformed an agrarian nation into a manufacturing powerhouse. But economic growth is always constrained by biophysical limits, and electricity production—needed to power everything from industrial factories to consumer goods—is proving to be one crucial limit. Approximately two-thirds of China’s electricity demands are met by coal-fired power plants, giving China the dubious distinction of being home to some of the world’s most polluted cities, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and mounting economic losses.1 Yet this trend has implications beyond the nation’s borders, as China has become the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, which is one of the primary culprits of global climate change.

This is not an easy problem to solve, particularly without compromising economic growth. Chinese leaders, like their counterparts in developed and less-developed countries, are often forced to choose from a set of bad options when it comes to electricity production. Policymakers in Beijing are actively discussing alternative energy sources, sometimes referred to as “clean energy” (qingjie nengyuan) or “green energy” (lüse nengyuan), in the push to establish a “low-carbon economy” (ditan jingji).

A major part of this discussion focuses on hydroelectricity produced by large-scale dams on nearly all of China’s major river systems. Government documents report (with a measure of pride) that

1 Elizabeth C. Economy, “The Great Leap Backward? The Costs of China’s Environmental Crisis,” Foreign Affairs 86, no. 5 (2007): 38–59.

hydroelectricity output, which currently accounts for 16% of the nation’s electricity portfolio,2 grew at an annual rate of 12.9% throughout the eleventh five-year plan period (2005–10) and will continue on a similar pace for the foreseeable future.3 This means that China now has another yardstick by which to measure its progress: home to half of the world’s 50,000 large dams, China has far outpaced all other countries and continues to add dozens of dams to its portfolio each year. While such projects bring considerable benefits—reliable electricity irrigation water, enhanced navigability, flood protection, and the prospect of decreased reliance on fossil fuels—they also entail a unique set of environmental and social costs.

First, the distribution of hydropower supply and demand poses significant geographic and technical challenges. Most hydroelectric dams provide power to large coastal cities, such as those in Guangdong Province, that have grown into global manufacturing hubs. But the requisite conditions for hydropower production—high-volume rivers with steep gradients—are found far inland. Since the tenth five-year plan (2000–2005), the central government has promoted a policy called Send Western Electricity East (xi dian dong song). This policy put in place high-voltage direct-current transmission lines, which is a cutting-edge technology that Chinese engineers helped develop that allows electricity to travel long distances with minimal

2 Zhenya Liu, Zhongguo dianli yu nengyuan [Electric Power and Energy in China] (Beijing: China Electric Power Press, 2012).

3 State Council of the People’s Republic of China, “Guowuyuan guanyu yinfa nengyuan fazhan shi’er wu guihuade tongzhi” [Notice on Energy Production in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan], January 23, 2013.

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losses. But while the benefits of hydroelectricity accrue to comparatively wealthy coastal cities, the costs are largely borne by inland communities that have long endured economic marginalization.

Second, rapid hydropower development entails complex political, economic, and institutional arrangements. In 2002, amidst economic reforms, the State Electric Power Corporation was dissolved. Its assets and responsibilities were distributed among two groups of newly reconfigured state-owned enterprises: those responsible for electricity generation and those responsible for electricity transmission and distribution. The group responsible for power generation comprises five state-owned enterprises; often called the “big five electricity giants” (wu da fadian jutou), they hold diverse energy portfolios including coal, wind, solar, and hydropower. Several are Fortune 500 companies with major subsidiaries publicly traded on the Hong Kong, Shanghai, and New York stock exchanges. These kinds of public-private ventures present a complex institutional problem in which the entities pushing for hydropower development are often more powerful, and better funded, than the regulatory agencies overseeing them.

The final area of concern relates to the environmental and human costs of hydropower. When a new dam is installed on a major river, it fragments the riparian ecosystem, changing a free-flowing river segment into an expanse of still water. The process disrupts sensitive habitat; alters the temperature, chemistry, and sediment load of the water; and changes the geomorphology of the river itself. The Three Parallel Rivers region of Yunnan Province is a case in point. Dozens of dams are under development on the Jinsha (the headwaters of the Yangtze), the Lancang (Mekong), and the Nu (Salween), even while international NGOs mobilize to preserve the region’s estimated six thousand plant species and numerous rare or endangered animals.

The most pressing human problem associated with dams is the uprooting of communities through displacement and resettlement. In 2004 a Xinhua News Agency report based on research conducted

by the Ministry of Water Resources cocluded that the nation’s displaced population related to dam construction totaled at least fifteen million people, ranking it first in the world.4 Communities displaced by dams often struggle with the loss of farmland, unemployment, social conflict, and inadequate monetary compensation.

Meanwhile, there are a few reasons for optimism about the future of hydropower development. In 2004, then premier Wen Jiabao, citing the newly promulgated Environmental Impact Assessment Law, halted a series of dam projects on the Nu River. A decade of conflict and controversy ensued, and while the outcome of that case is still uncertain, the heightened public scrutiny has caused developers to scale back their plans for the Nu River projects, at least in the short term. Additionally in 2012, the State Council passed a new directive on “social risk assessment,” providing a stronger administrative mandate for considering the social effects of large development projects, including dams, before they are initiated.5 Government agencies are also increasingly calling for public hearings and other forms of participation in the approval process for dams, while working to improve standards of monetary compensation for displaced people.

If urban Chinese residents have cleaner air to breathe a generation from now—and I think they will—such improvements will have been driven by the demands of a rising middle class weary of dealing with the environmental and health consequences of fossil fuels. And it will require public and private investment in renewable energy of all kinds, including hydropower. The question is whether hydropower development can be undertaken with better scientific and legal standards and a demonstrated willingness to address the environmental and social costs. •

4 R.F. Yao, “Shui Li Bu: Wo guo shuiku yimin zongshu 1,500 duo wan” [Ministry of Water Resources: Our Nation’s Dam-Induced Migrants Total at Least 15 Million], Xinhua, 2004.

5 Keith Bradsher, “‘Social Risk’ Test Ordered by China for Big Projects,” New York Times, November 12, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/world/asia/china-mandates-social-risk-reviews-for-big-projects.html.