109
of China’s campuses each year in search of employment. all, it is much more difficult to make an argument for market
That 8% target will be met, because in China directed objectives are economies when they are under siege.
always attained, and often exceeded. after all, political careers depend The real danger of the new stimulus package is not
on acceding to the demands of the central government. ideological but environmental. What the figure of 8%
and yet China’s reliance on economic policies that require the heavy signals to provincial officials and industrial managers is
hand of the state to achieve officially decreed targets had been fading. that the emerging promise of green GDp – wherein a
The government’s renewed focus on such a target is thus another local government had to show not only growth, but also
indication that the global economic crisis has strengthened those clean and energy-efficient growth – has been abandoned.
Chinese officials and intellectuals who advocate a socialist system. after Few party officials really wanted to be troubled by the
complexities of
such calculations
anyway, but
either abided
by them or paid
them lip service,
for the sake
of maintaining
patronage
and seeking
promotion. Now,
with the party’s
ability to manage
the economy
seemingly at stake, its stimulus package implies a green
light to bypass environmental regulations if jobs or growth
targets are in jeopardy.
a big loser here is energy efficiency. The proportion of
new outlays devoted to energy conservation and reduction
have been cut almost in half, just when reforms in the price
structure of energy use were beginning to kick in. Some
measures aimed at redistributing the energy load – such
as solar and wind power – have been retained. But the
funding for expanding these efforts will rest largely on
provincial officials, who will be reluctant to compel local
cadres to disrupt production and lay off even more workers.
Much of politics in China is local, but little of environmental
protection is.
There is worse news elsewhere in the new plan. Nearly
every industrial sector that, according to the stimulus
package, deserves direct and immediate government
support is energy-intensive and polluting (cement and
steel, for example) or heavily managed by the state sector,
and therefore missing incentives to balance growth with
environmental protection (as is the case with the oil
industry). political lobbies that oversee these sectors
and overlap with certain factions in the party are simply
too powerful for nascent interests in society and the
bureaucracy to parry.
The recent signal being sent from China’s leadership
is that economic revival rests on decreased regard for
the environment. This retreat also illustrates how little
consensus there is among high-level government officials
for making China green. The danger of the current crisis
Paul Lachine
is not that China’s government is not doing something, but
that what it is doing undermines recent hope that China
could help to save itself by saving the environment.
Exclusive Macau Business / Project Syndicate
april 2009
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