Russell Leigh Moses, dean at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies, wrote the following about prospects for China’s recent economic stimulus project for Project Syndicate, via Taipei TImes:
The real danger of the new stimulus package is not ideological but environmental. What the figure of 8 percent signals to provincial officials and industrial managers is that the emerging promise of green GDP — wherein a local government must show not only growth, but also clean and energy-efficient growth — has been abandoned. Few Party officials really want to be troubled by the complexities of such calculations anyway, but either abide by them or pay 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 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.
