91av

CHINA has a vast appetite for coal. It mines a third of all the coal cut from
the Earth, to satisfy three-quarters of its energy requirements. Its cities
stink of the stuff. Sulphurous fumes from myriad power stations, industrial
boilers and heating plants waft across this vast country, poisoning crops and
causing acid rain as far away as Japan and even, when the wind blows in the
right direction, North America.

Hunger for coal means China is now the second largest source of the
greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, beaten only by the US. And with double-digit
economic growth most years, the world’s most populous nation could
soon—some fear—become a one-nation destroyer of global
climate.

Or maybe not. For it is also engaged in a massive effort to clean up both its
own backyard and, coincidentally, the planet. Can China succeed?

From the top of the Shenyang telecom tower, as the stench of coal dust rises
200 metres from the streets below, it doesn’t seem very likely. Below, in the
sallow gloom of the largest city in northeast China’s heavy-industry “rust
belt”, a rundown power plant and giant metal refineries built by Soviet
engineers in the 1950s belch smoke and sulphur. Shenyang runs on coal—even
down to the steam engines still shunting the stuff into every factory. The snow
being cleared from the streets by gangs of schoolchildren is almost black:
silent witness to a fallout of coal dust estimated at 10 tonnes per square
kilometre each week.

“This is actually quite a good day,” says Jon Bower, who directs a $50
million, five-year European Union project to reduce air pollution in Shenyang
and five nearby industrial towns.

The agreement between the EU and the Chinese government was brokered in June
1998, but is only now being implemented. Called the Liaoning Integrated
Environmental Programme, it has been hailed as the largest clean-up venture
involving foreign help ever undertaken in China. It covers pollution monitoring
and modelling, and draws up strategies for abatement in tandem with “economic
modernisation and social redeployment”, which is jargon for shutting dirty
factories and finding new jobs for those made redundant.

Improving air quality
is a principal aim, though some observers suggest that another, not
insignificant, objective is opening doors to allow European anti-pollution
technology to be sold to factories in the region.

But there can be no doubt that anti-pollution technology is badly needed.
China emits a staggering 9000 cubic kilometres of waste gases each year. And
this pollution kills. Lung disease is the country’s leading cause of death. The
World Bank estimates that cutting air pollution would prevent 180 000 deaths
each year, and reduce annual asthma attacks by 75 million.

Smogs also threaten China’s food production. Researchers at the Georgia
Institute of Technology in Atlanta have estimated that acid rain and hazes that
reduce sunlight have slashed crop yields by up to 30 per cent across a third of
the country.

China’s pollution is nationwide. In daily pollution statistics from 30 cities
published in the press, Lanzhou—a foul industrial city in a gorge of the
Yellow River 1500 kilometres from Shenyang—repeatedly comes off worst,
with pollution on average eight times higher than recommended WHO limits.
Shenyang isn’t far behind. But many smaller cities are left out of the tables
for want of permanent monitoring.

Anshan, home of the world’s largest iron and steelworks, is on Bower’s patch.
So is Benxi, which the World Bank says may have the worst air pollution in the
world.

But all is not gloom. Benxi’s air was twice as bad in the 1980s. More
efficient, cleaner technology is slowly penetrating even this rust-belt
backwater. The technology is hardly novel, says Melanie Slade of the UK Atomic
Energy Authority, who is in Beijing advising the city on how to improve energy
efficiency in industry. It has been standard-issue in Europe since the
1960s.

From an admittedly abysmal baseline, China has markedly improved its energy
efficiency. In the past 15 years, the Chinese economy has doubled in size, while
air pollution has risen a mere 50 per cent. This is a victory of sorts, says
Michael Jefferson of the World Energy Council, which promotes the sustainable
use of energy. It has been won, he says, by halving state subsidies on coal and
launching initiatives like the National Improved Stove Programme, which has
upgraded 160 million domestic stoves.

Since 1996, China has shut down 60 000 smoky, inefficient industrial boilers
across the country and cut coal use by 30 per cent to around a billion tonnes.
In 1999, the State Economic and Trade Commission closed a staggering 31 000 coal
mines, many of them in the hills east of Shenyang. Next, hundreds of small,
inefficient power stations over 25 years old will be shut down.

In places, the gains are visible in clearer skies. Air pollution on an
average day in the capital Beijing would still trigger draconian controls on
commuter vehicles in European cities. But for citizens of Beijing it smells
good. In the past year the city has converted 28 000 boilers and stoves to run
on natural gas. In 1999, it had fewer than a hundred days of dangerously filthy
air.

And the reforms are having a global impact. In 1998, China’s economy grew by
7.2 per cent, but its CO₂ emissions dropped by 3.7 per cent. This is a
dramatic departure from past predictions.

In all, China spends $4 billion a year on environmental clean-up, or
0.8 per cent of GDP. This is close to European levels, though the World Bank
says it should be tripled simply to prevent gross inefficiencies in production.
But there is uncertainty among international agencies about how to get the
technology applied across a country where most industrial managers put achieving
production targets above efficiency, profitability or a cleaner environment.

If central government doesn’t take the lead in cutting pollution, the gains
made in recent years will falter—and may even be reversed. In this respect
at least, the gradual reduction in state control may be seen as unfortunate,
says the UN Development Programme in its China Human Development Report
1999: “Excessive decentralisation has significantly weakened the central
government’s capacity to perform its appropriate functions.” But it’s possible
less state control and stronger market forces will do the job. Some officials,
such as Liu Wen, deputy director of the Foreign Economic and Trade Department of
Liaoning province, believe that when China joins the World Trade Organization,
within the next year or two, free trade will blow away many of the inefficient,
polluting state industries.

But there must be question marks over how much priority Beijing will attach
to pollution monitoring and control when factories are hanging on by their
fingernails and thousands of workers are being laid off.

Further improvements in industrial efficiency, however achieved, would
certainly cut pollution. But they will also cause massive lay-offs in a country
where the Communist social security systems are breaking down. And that could
undermine the central government. Already the winds of change are blowing
through Shenyang. In recent weeks, down in the smog beneath the Shenyang telecom
tower, hundreds of workers thrown out of local coal mines and Dickensian
factories have demonstrated in front of the parliament building. If free trade
blows away the pollution, it could also blow away the jobs of thousands more
like them.

The questions remain: how far will China go in adopting the free market? And
will this curtail its vast pollution? The answers have a vital bearing on the
health of our planet.