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However, China has a large population and big economic output, and people’s living standards are quite low. There is an urgent need to lift many people out of poverty and increase people’s income. Add to this the fact that the world’s capacity to absorb environmental damage is less than it was, and it all poses a formidable environmental challenge for China.

We are in no position to “develop first - clean up later”. Instead, we have to explore a new way to achieve sustainable development so as to ensure rapid economic growth at lower environmental cost. Some Chinese officials may still think that China can repeat the Western model, but I say China’s only possible road is sustainable development. Fortunately, the Chinese government has designated environmental protection as a top priority in the coming five to 20 years.

Q: Do you regard calls by developed countries for China to protect the environment as sincere and helpful, or as hypocritical?

A: I’d say both are true. Increased environmental awareness in the West is a relatively recent phenomenon. It took massive events like London’s Great Smog in 1952 to make people environmentally conscious. In later decades, the depletion of the ozone layer and acid rain further increased concerns about sustainability. And now there is climate change, which really helps to focus people’s minds. So I understand why Europeans, Americans and others are asking China to take environmental protection seriously.

However, people in developed countries should not forget that their own countries are responsible for 80% of greenhouse gases emitted through human activity over the past two centuries. And today, emissions of greenhouse gases per person are still much higher in Russia, Australia, America and Europe than in China. Moreover, one of the reasons Europe and America have become cleaner is that they transferred many of their heavy industries to China. China has become the workshop of the world.

So the first responsibility of people in developed countries is not to ask China to slow down its development for environmental reasons, but to reduce their own environmental footprint – especially through energy conservation and more sustainable consumption. 

Q: On several occasions the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) – recently upgraded to become the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China – has issued warnings about the cost of air and water pollution to the Chinese economy. What was SEPA’s latest assessment?

A: In September 2006, SEPA and the National Bureau of Statistics of China jointly issued a report showing that in 2004 the economic losses caused by environmental pollution amounted to 511.8 billion Renminbi (RMB) ($72 billion), or 3.05% of China’s GDP.  Of this, the cost of water pollution reached RMB 286.28 billion (over $40 billion), or 55.9% of the total; air pollution RMB 219.8 billion ($31 billion), or 42.9%; solid waste and pollution incidents RMB 5.74 billion (over $800 million), or 1.2%.

Q: How can China avoid repeating the environmental mistakes that others have made?

A: Environmental protection is one of the key priorities in the government’s 11th five-year plan. In that spirit, we have issued new environmental laws.  
For instance, environmental performance will be on the job scorecards of local and regional officials. If the environmental evaluation is poor, it will negatively affect their political career. Local officials will also be held accountable for the wrongdoings of local companies. And the Ministry of Environmental Protection will only endorse new construction projects if they comply with its environmental standards.

Another law allows the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Commerce to withdraw export permits for companies that do not meet environmental standards. The Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Central Bank have also announced they will compile public pollution blacklists – if a company is on it, it will affect its share price. As a next step, commercial banks could be instructed not to lend them money. Some companies have already found themselves unable to obtain loans. Ultimately, a company may have its listing removed from the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock exchange. Hopefully this will make other companies think twice about ignoring the environmental side of their business operations.

Q: Why is conventional coal-fired power growing so fast in China, despite its environmental drawbacks and regulations to promote power from nuclear and renewable energy sources?

A:  Compared with developed countries, electricity consumption per person in China is rather low. From the perspective of lifting people out of poverty, it is a moral obligation to help Chinese people, especially those in the poor western region, to gain access to electricity. On the other hand, the starting point for China’s economic growth is rather low. To become a mid-level developed country, China needs to maintain fairly fast growth. One of the prerequisites for this is to build more power plants and increase the power supply.

Nevertheless, the Chinese government has fully realised how important it is to develop renewable energy for environmental protection and to alleviate climate change. To this end, China has made it a top priority to encourage and support the construction of power plants using renewable resources. In 2007, China issued a host of investment, taxation, grid connection and price policies in favour of the development of renewable energy. As a result, China saw one of world’s most rapid growths in investment in wind power generation.

However, compared to the proportion of power generated with renewable sources in the total of our newly-added capacity, coal-fired power plants remain the norm. As China’s electricity consumption remains on a fast growth track, this phenomenon will last a long time.

Consequently, China became the target of criticism from Western countries, which think that China is saying more than it is doing to develop renewable energy. In fact, this criticism is unfair. Firstly, the growth in China’s power generation capacity is mainly aimed to meet the needs of “existence and development”. It is morally wrong for Western countries to criticise others for increasing power consumption while their own consumption per person is more than 10 times higher than others. Secondly, the capacity of existing renewable energy facilities in the world is rather limited. Increasing production from renewable energy globally will encourage the development of renewable energy in China. However, this calls for concerted efforts from all countries.

Q: Is there a sense of urgency in China about the need to tackle environmental pollution?

A: Until around 1970, the Chinese saw environmental pollution as a Western phenomenon. We thought pollution was the result of capitalism. We believed that capitalists did not mind sacrificing the environment so long as they made money. Our government, on the contrary, looked after us from cradle to grave, which is why we thought we simply had no need to exhaust the environment.

It took time for us Chinese to realise that pollution is not the product of capitalism as an economic model, but of industrialisation itself. And now suddenly people are waking up to the fact that we are in a serious situation that is getting more serious by the day.

So the current generation of Chinese is almost certainly more environmentally conscious than people whose countries were in the same stage of development in the past as China is today. However, the urgency to find solutions has also become much greater – and so we need to increase awareness further.

Q: What is your centre doing to increase environmental awareness in China?

A: Our centre was established in 1996. According to Western criteria, it is a non-profit organisation engaged in improving environmental communication, education and public awareness. Before 2003, our funds mostly came from foreign governments, international organisations and multinational companies. As the Chinese government pays more and more attention to environmental protection, the portion of our funding from the Chinese government is on the rise, usually for carrying out government contracts. For example, we train the chiefs of environmental protection authorities from some 300 cities each year. In 2007, government funds accounted for 48% of our total revenue.

We also provide environmental education and training to teachers and students. We have set up a programme that now involves 35,000 schools and 35 million pupils and students. Similarly, we have set up renewable energy projects in 3,000 communities. For local and regional leaders we create tailor-made training and education programmes. Last year, we trained 3,000 senior officials from the inner-Mongolia region.

We’re also responsible for campaigns on national television, using videos that we’ve made to explain how other parts of the world are tackling environmental pollution. In 2007, we made study tours of nine European countries where we visited and filmed the projects of governments, non-governmental organisations and enterprises on energy conservation and climate change. The 10 episodes that we filmed were aired by China Central Television four times a day for 10 days in a row, which greatly improved the environmental awareness of the Chinese people and their understanding of how important it is to alleviate the climate change. Our centre possesses China’s only public library devoted to environmental issues – it attracts researchers from China and abroad.

Q: In some parts of the world, there is concern over the air quality in Beijing during the Olympic Games. How can Beijing ensure good air quality for the athletes?

A: I believe the air quality in Beijing will be good during the Olympics. The city’s municipal government has prepared an environment-friendly traffic plan that will reduce the number of cars on the road. This will be tough for commuters, but because they are eager for the games to be an international success, I think they will accept it. What’s more, the inconvenience will be alleviated by better public transport – including several new metro lines opening before the games begin. Also, I expect that the most-polluting industrial production in the vicinity of the games will be reduced or even stopped. Enterprises based in Beijing and the neighbouring Tianjin municipality and Hebei province will sacrifice their profits to ensure air quality during the Olympics. This also demonstrates Chinese enterprises’ commitment to their social and environmental responsibilities.

Q: So far, China has refused to commit itself to firm emissions targets. How should developed and developing countries share the responsibility of tackling climate change?

A: You have to start by comparing the challenge of climate change with the challenge of providing food for the poor. In Africa and here in China’s rural areas, raising living standards is a priority. China lifted 250 million people out of poverty during the past 30 years – that’s not far off the entire population of the United States! And the reality is that if you become wealthier, you begin to consume more energy. This is why countries like China cannot set carbon dioxide (CO2) emission targets today: it would stop the growth of energy consumption and economic development itself. 

It is expected that China will soon overtake Germany as the world’s largest exporter. A lot of our emissions take place during the production of consumer goods for people in developed countries. I have heard academics suggesting the world should adopt a new worldwide system, whereby consumers, not the producers, pay a CO2 tax linked to the CO2 intensity of the goods they buy. I don’t know whether it will ever come to that, but I do know that all of us as consumers should start thinking more critically about what we consume and why, and how much we consume. There can be no sustainable development without sustainable consumption.

In my view, we are all in the same boat and climate change is the ocean. The boat is dangerously overloaded and unstable. It is slowly sinking. On board you have the developed countries – they take up more space and weigh more than the second group, the developing countries. And the first group says: “We have the technologies to prevent this boat from sinking, but if you want to use them, you must pay me first.” So they see climate change as a problem and as a commercial opportunity at the same time. The question all of us have to ask is this: are we really in the same boat, or are we only pretending to be, with some countries quietly thinking they are on a better, safer boat than others? 

* Jia Feng spoke to Norbert Both