by Adam Berenstain, SUNY Cortland
Posted in on Sunday, Nov 25
Concern about China and the world’s health has been in the headlines a lot this year, coming to a head in May when the Chinese government put the former leader of its Food and Drug Administration on trial to face charges of corruption. Xiaoyu Zheng ran the Administration for seven years, and admitted that during his tenure he took bribes in return for the approval of substandard products that made their way into the Chinese market and beyond. Zheng’s trial, and the global outcry over tainted Chinese-made toothpaste, dog food, and children’s toys, has forced the Chinese government into action. China has pledged to clean up its food and drug industries—and the procedures that regulate them—and to scrutinize the licenses for more than 170,000 medicines approved during Zheng’s tenure. Global concerns about China’s products aren’t going away anytime soon, but few doubt that China is serious about undoing its image as a toxic nation—especially with the Summer Olympics coming to Beijing next year.
We shouldn’t imagine that China’s environmental concerns begin and end with poison dog food or lead paint in children’s toys here in America. In the 1990s China began to open up to the rest of the world economically and modernize. This modernization, and the rapid industrialization that went with it, has transformed Chinese life. Young Chinese today enjoy opportunities unimaginable only a few decades ago, and they expect those opportunities to last throughout their lives. This means that as big as China is in the global marketplace today, it must continue to grow tomorrow.
This growth will require a careful balancing act of politics and economics, but most of all it will require energy—energy to drive China’s ever-increasing number of factories, and energy to power the urban, middle-class lifestyle that so many Chinese youth crave. You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize winning ex-vice-president to realize that this will put an increased strain on the environment. Chinese officials have responded to the need for energy with projects like the Three Gorges Dam, a 7,661-foot long hydroelectric dam that spans the Yangtze River in Hubei Province. Nothing sums up the environmental costs and challenges of a growing China quite like Three Gorges.
Construction began in 1994, and the dam was only able to start holding back the rushing water of the Yangtze last year. When the dam is finally complete and fully operational in 2009, Three Gorges will supply the energy equivalent of fifteen nuclear power plants, or an estimated ten to fifteen percent of China’s annual energy. All that water will replace a lot of coal. But while hydroelectric power is more environmentally friendly than burning fossil fuels, Three Gorges Dam has already had a significant impact on the environment around it. The dam has completely transformed a huge section of Chinese countryside, and displaced more than one million people and countless plants and animals with its enormous reservoir. Plant life in the waters trapped by giant dams like Three Gorges give off large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that helps trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere. Perhaps most ominously, the dam is built on a seismic fault, and may be severely damaged by a nearby earthquake, causing a catastrophe downriver.
Despite these issues, renewable energy projects like Three Gorges Dam hold a great deal of promise for China. Three Gorges will supply much needed electrical power and allow shipping, industrialization, and jobs to develop deep inside China’s rural heartland. Hydroelectric dams like Three Gorges can help begin to wean China off the coal and oil that currently accounts for more than 70% of its annual energy consumption. Proponents of the project say that if building the Three Gorges Dam comes at an environmental price, it will be balanced by the cleaner electric power provided to the Chinese people for decades to come.
What about the Chinese people? The environmental movement here in America has been a fact of life for decades and is only now truly entering the mainstream. We may well wonder if the same thing is happening in China. I wrote to a few students in Beijing and was pleased to learn that young Chinese students are very much aware of the importance of environmental issues, and are tackling them in ways unique to their nation and needs.
One of the things that make China unique is its enormous population of more than 1.3 billion people. Keeping all those people fed and sheltered demands significant resources, but those same people are also resources in themselves. Student Zhaoru Yu told me that college students, “always serve as volunteers, popularizing the knowledge of environmental protection in communities.” Take, for instance, chopsticks. In Beijing even junior high school students have taken part in efforts to collect the disposable wooden chopsticks used in restaurants and recycle them. Students like Yuan Fang helped to urge people to bring their own chopsticks from home when eating at restaurants to help conserve resources. Other student groups have lobbied for the replacement of wooden chopsticks with plastic chopsticks that can be washed and used over and over.
Zhaoru also let me know that while she and her friends support international measures like the Kyoto Protocol, "developed countries should take into full consideration the situation of developing countries like China.” In other words, poverty reduction and economic development will have to stand on the same stage as the needs of the environment for the foreseeable future. To this end the Chinese government has turned its attention directly to environmental issues. Zhaoru told me that because, “Beijing suffers a lot from environment damage,” restrictions on the number of cars on the street are in place, and similar measures to conserve water and electricity are also in effect. But there is still much to do. Zhaoru writes, “Many environmental indicators [in China] are far from satisfactory, well below the standard of international community. While people advocate that economy should be in line with the environmental protection, there is a different story in the real situation. China is no exception.”
Environmental problems here at home can seem overwhelming, similar problems overseas even more so. As China’s development continues, it will take a larger role as one of the world’s polluters; it’s easy to worry that development will outpace environmental concerns there. But as China grows, so too does its dependence on the global market. China cannot afford—and does not want—any more Xiaoyu Zhengs. China’s mind is set on continued growth, and that growth will come. However, young students like Zhaoru and Yuan have set their minds on environmental responsibility. If young Chinese and their government can work together toward a China where safe products and a healthy environment are good for business, they might just help change the world.
Visit these links for more information about Three Gorges Dam, and China's Food and Drug Scandal.
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