Can China Be a Clean Tiger?: Growth Strategies and Environmental Realities

Abstract

C HINA S ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES are of interest to the rest of the world for at least three reasons. First, since roughly one in five people on the planet is a citizen of the People's Republic, China's environmental policies will have a major influence on phenomena such as global temperature trends which may have impacts far beyond China's borders. Second, the enormity of its environmental challenges will make China a vast market for environmental technology, services and products. Third, the fact that China is facing population and resource constraints far sooner than most of the rest of the world offers the opportunity to learn from China's approach to dealing with these challenges. This paper begins with a review of Chinese environmental problems, their origins, and the policies which have been adopted to address them thus far. These policies show fairly rapid evolution from denial through an emphasis on post-hoc clean-up to prevention-based strategies. Actual results have lagged behind these good intentions, however, largely due to the twin problems of uncontrolled growth and weak enforcement resulting from inadequate resources and insufficient incentives. Current plans for economic reforms are based on industrial restructuring, privatization, and downsizing of the bureaucracy. Each of these policy planks presents risks to the environment, but if carefully implemented could address the regulatory shortcomings which have until now led to often catastrophic environmental degradation.