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Beijing Air: Better?
Asia Society’s China Green project has posted a slideshow of images of Beijing’s air pollution, which gives a dramatic visualization of good and bad air days in Beijing. After monitoring the air quality for three years, they conclude that there have been minimal improvements. On Twitter, China Green is posting daily comparisons of air quality in Beijing and New York.
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- February 2, 2010 9:55 PM
China Renews Its Commitment to Renewable Energy
On the NRDC blog, lawyer Sara Schuman analyzes China’s Renewable Energy Law, which has just been amended:
The original Renewable Energy Law created an umbrella framework for regulating renewable energy in China. (Here is the text of the original law in English and Chinese). Like many laws enacted in China, the Renewable Energy Law left many of the important details to be determined later by various government agencies through regulation. Since the Renewable Energy Law went into effect on January 1, 2006, numerous regulations have been issued to fill in some of these details. Although the amendments do not alter the underlying policy goals of the original law, they do add additional detail to the existing framework to improve implementation of the law’s underlying goals.
In this blog post, I’ll focus on two significant changes: (1) the addition of measures intended to better implement the Mandatory Connection Policy and (2) the streamlining of the renewable energy fund that provides the financial incentives for the renewable energy industry.
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- February 2, 2010 2:51 PM
China’s Yangtze Dam Displaced
For Al Jazeera, Melissa Chan looks at the impact of 12 planned dam projects along the Yangtze on local residents:
The government says that the local economy has been boosted by the first dam project.
Residents in the area have seen their annual incomes more than double, the government says.
Melissa Chan visits the river communities who say the dam has, in fact, had the opposite affect.
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- February 1, 2010 10:25 PM
Jacqui Dixon: The International Expansion of Chinese Dam Builders
From Probe International:
Historically, Western countries have provided the technology for the bulk of China’s hydropower dams. The first turbines to be installed on a river in China was under the Qing Dynasty in 1909, by German company Siemens. But when the Chinese government decided to build the giant Three Gorges and Ertan dams in the early 1990s, it decided to do things differently.
Western equipment suppliers were still needed, yet this time, the rules were that the leading hydropower companies of the time, including ABB, Alstom, General Electric and Siemens, had to manufacture half of the turbines and generators on Chinese soil in co-operation with Chinese partners. As in the case of other manufacturing sector players entering joint ventures with Chinese suppliers, technology and knowledge of dam building were transferred in the process. From that point on, China became one of the biggest players in the international dam market in the 21st century.
Chinese firms are now building 19 of the 24 largest hydropower plants currently under construction worldwide. Roughly half of all the world’s large dams are within China’s borders. With a capacity of more than 170,000 megawatts, China is now the world’s largest producer of hydropower. Chinese manufacturers had been involved in small dam building in countries such as Burma and Nepal for several decades but it was only in 2003 that they entered the exclusive market for large hydropower projects. Three companies which had picked up the latest technology in the Three Gorges and Ertan projects and soon managed to underprice and outpace their Western competitors were Dongfang Electrical Machinery, Harbin Power Equipment and Sinohydro, China’s leading Beijing-based hydropower contractor. Adapting Western technology to poor-country needs, China’s hydropower companies have ventured into foreign markets en masse.
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- January 31, 2010 11:14 PM
Interview with Liu Jianqiang: Environmental Journalism and Censorship in China
Asia Society interviewed environmental journalist Liu Jianqiang about journalism, new media, and the environmental movement in China. A former investigative reporter for Southern Weekend, Liu is now a columnist and associate editor for China Dialogue:
NS: What are the various impediments to environmental journalism in China and how has this changed over time?
LJ: The environment in China is not politics; politics is very sensitive. Journalists do find it easier to report about the environment. But my question has always been who is really harming China’s environment? It’s not you, me or the common people. It’s the huge interest groups out there. From local governments to companies and corporations, there are huge stakes in maximizing profit.
When we highlight these stories, journalists are threatened by companies and local governments. This one instance, when a colleague and I were reporting about the Tiger Leaping Gorge dam in Yunnan province – my colleague was detained for four hours and when we did publish the article, the hydropower company called us and told me that the report was false and asked us to issue a public apology.
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- January 14, 2010 4:06 PM
Coal Is Linked to Cancer in China Province
Nonsmoking women in one region of Yunnan Province die from lung cancer at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world. The New York Times reports:
A group of scientists now say they have a possible explanation: the burning of coal formed during volcanic eruptions hundreds of millions of years ago.
Coal in that part of China contains high concentrations of silica, a suspected carcinogen, the scientists reported in a recent edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Like others in rural China, the families of Xuanwei County use coal for heat and for cooking. As the coal burns, particles of silica are released with the vapor and inhaled. Women, who do the cooking, face the greatest exposure.
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- January 12, 2010 11:47 AM
China Tries a New Tack to Go Solar
Though China is becoming a leader in renewable energy, its future solar power efforts may see some obstacles in the future. A look at what lies ahead for China’s renewable energy sector, from Keith Bradsher of the New York Times:
As it moves rapidly to become the world’s leader in nuclear power, wind energy and photovoltaic solar panels, China is taking tentative steps to master another alternative energy industry: using mirrors to capture sunlight, produce steam and generate electricity.
So-called concentrating solar power uses hundreds of thousands of mirrors to turn water into steam. The steam turns a conventional turbine similar to those in coal-fired power plants. The technology, which is potentially cheaper than most types of renewable power, has captivated many engineers and financiers in the last two years, with an abrupt surge in new patents and plans for large power operations in Europe and the United States.
This year may be China’s turn. China is starting to build its own concentrating solar power plants, a technology more associated with California deserts than China’s countryside. And Chinese manufacturers are starting to think about exports, part of China’s effort to become the world’s main provider of alternative energy power equipment.
Yet concentrating solar power still faces formidable obstacles here, including government officials who are skeptical that the technology will be useful on a large scale in China.
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- January 8, 2010 8:59 PM
China Oil Spill Reaches Key Water Source
VOA gives an update on the recent massive oil spill, which has now reached the Yellow River, which provides drinking water to millions of Chinese:
State media say the spill in an upstream tributary reached the massive river Monday. Thousands of people in northern China have been told to stop using water from the Yellow River.
The diesel oil spilled last Wednesday from a ruptured pipeline into the Wei River. That pipeline in Shaanxi province is owned by China National Petroleum Corporation. China’s official news agency, Xinhua, says the company immediately closed the pipeline when the leak was discovered, but not before about 150,000 liters had spilled out.
See also a report from BBC.
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- January 4, 2010 10:22 PM
John Prescott Defends China’s Role at Copenhagen Climate Summit
With China receiving much blame for the failure to produce a binding agreement at the Copenhagen climate change conference, former deputy prime minister of Great Britain John Prescott has defended China’s role in the talks. From the Guardian:
The former deputy prime minister helped negotiate the Kyoto protocol in 1997, and was in Copenhagen acting as an informal bridge between the Chinese delegation and others.
As a frequent visitor to China, who knows many of its officials personally, Prescott fears privately that the Chinese will walk away from the talks if they continue to be singled out for blame.
In a letter to the Guardian, Prescott criticises the US climate change special envoy, Todd Stern, who “said at Copenhagen emissions weren’t about ‘morality or politics’, they were ‘just maths’, with China projected to emit 60% more CO2 than the US by 2030″.
In his letter Prescott claims that Stern’s arguments “ignored the more transparent measure of pollution per capita, which shows the US emits 20 tonnes per person every year, compared to China’s six tonnes, whilst America’s GDP per person is almost eight times greater than the Chinese”. He also attacks President Barack Obama for suggesting there had been a period of “two decades of talking and no action. That might have been true in America, which refused to sign up to Kyoto, but not in the case of China or Europe, who followed a lot of that protocol’s policies. Indeed Obama’s offer of a 17% cut is wholly dependent on Congressional approval and will still be less than Kyoto targets.” Prescott is climate change convenor for the Council of Europe, with the role of exploring how to keep the talks on the road.
Danwei interviews Guardian correspondent Jonathan Watts about the Copenhagen conference:
Danwei: What’s your opinion concerning the outcome?
JW: If you consider only the past two weeks, the outcome was disturbing. Very little progress was made in Copenhagen despite all that effort, all those nations, all those leaders and all the political capital invested. From Obama and Wen to Desmond Tutu and Arnold Schwarzeneger, from scientists to civil society, from pop music to the aristocracy, mankind lined up its A-team to solve this problem, yet they only just salvaged a two-page document. Given how close the conference came to complete failure, I wonder whether leaders will ever again dare to sit down and try to thrash out a deal. It will be difficult to get the political stars in alignment again. As one depressed Asian delegate said to me, “We have wasted the opportunity of a lifetime.”
On a broader, more hopeful note, the build-up to Copenhagen focused unprecedented attention on climate change. It has forced nations to set targets. We do have a deal of sorts and a greater commitment of funds. Now leaders need to learn from the chaos of the conference and find a new way forward. Building trust will be essential. There was little of that around in Denmark.
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- December 27, 2009 6:36 PM
Christopher Hayes: The Great Leap
From the Nation:
There is no formal social contract that regulates the relationship between members of this ruling class and the people they rule, but there does seem to be an implicit one. It is roughly this: we (the government) provide you (the citizens) with 8 to10 percent annual GDP growth, 24 million new jobs a year and the chance to win the capitalist lottery of sending your son or daughter off to a prestigious school with the promise of a life of industrialized luxury. In exchange: you don’t question the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
This is not the easiest contract for the government to uphold, and it has already shown some signs of fraying. As recently as 2007, there were 80,000 protests a year in China, and the Internet has given a platform to increasingly rambunctious critics of government policies. The most potent issue is corruption, which captured wide public attention in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, when many blamed corruption for the fact that school buildings that collapsed had dodged building codes. Several Chinese officials told us corruption was the biggest threat the party faces, the “threat from within,” as one put it. Despite high-profile “crackdowns” (such as a trial currently under way in Chongqing involving 9,000 suspects), a recent China News Agency poll shows that corruption remains the number-one issue on the minds of Chinese citizens.
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- December 24, 2009 8:48 AM
Green Efforts Spring From Chinese Desert
From USA Today:
He has never heard of global warming or Copenhagen, where leaders from 193 countries gathered for a major climate change summit last weekend.
But Ulandalai, 43, a farmer in one of China’s most isolated desert regions, says he’s doing his part to help the environment anyway.
As part of a clean energy initiative partly sponsored by the Chinese government, Ulandalai, who uses just one name, planted sand willows three years ago on land where he used to graze sheep.
There are several benefits to the switch, he says.
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- December 23, 2009 1:01 AM
China, U.S. Praise Nonbinding Climate Agreement
AP reports:
China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, on Sunday lauded the outcome of the U.N. climate conference, which produced a nonbinding agreement that urges major polluters to make deeper emissions cuts — but does not require it.
Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said the climate talks that brought together more than 110 world leaders in Copenhagen delivered “significant and positive” results.
The Obama administration on Sunday also defended the agreement as a “great step forward” — despite widespread disappointment among environmentalists, who lament that the pact does not include mandatory targets that would draw sanctions.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Brown has blamed both the U.S. and China for the failure to deliver a more substantive agreement, the Telegraph reports:
Mr Brown invested a large amount of time in the process, but yesterday was forced to admit that the results were far from what had been hoped for after years of lobbying. He said the European Union was prepared to go to cut emissions by 30 per cent, but other needed to follow.
He said: “What we need is not just one part of the world going to higher ranges of ambitions, we need the other parts of the world as well,” Mr Brown said.
“If America and China were able to show that they were doing more, and I believe that they could, then all countries – Australia, Brazil, Japan, Korea – all these countries that have got ranges would be prepared to go to their highest level of ambition.”
Read also: “How China Stiffed the World in Copenhagen” from Foreign Policy. China has rejected accusations by British Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband that it hijacked climate negotiations.
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- December 21, 2009 3:12 PM
Chinese Environmental Group Wins 2 Cases
In a landmark legal victory for public interest cases, the All China Environment Federation has seen success for two of their environmental lawsuits. From the Associated Press:
An environmental group backed by the government said Friday it had won two lawsuits on behalf of residents threatened by pollution, marking the first time such an organization has been allowed to file a public interest case.
Chinese courts have historically barred groups like the All China Environment Federation from bringing such suits as plaintiffs, said Lu Keqin, the organization’s head, but lawsuits filed by individual citizens are often unsuccessful because they lack resources and money. The federation, however, can call on the support of 44 law firms and some 115 attorneys who donate their time, Lu said.
The legal victories pave the way for the group to file lawsuits in the future in cases involving environmental public interest, he said. Though it is affiliated with the Ministry of Environmental Protection and its staff includes government leaders, the federation is considered a nongovernment organization in China.
Read more background on one of the lawsuits, here on CDT.
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- December 19, 2009 10:54 AM
Obama Presses China on Rules for Monitoring Emissions Cuts (Updated)
The New York Times reports on President Obama’s speech at the Copenhagen climate change conference and efforts to reach consensus before the meetings end:
His remarks appeared to be a pointed reference to China’s resistance on the issue of monitoring, which has proved a stubborn obstacle at the talks and a source of tension between China and the United States, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
After delivering the speech to a plenary session of 119 world leaders, Mr. Obama met privately with China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in an hourlong session that a White House official described as “constructive.”
However, in a day of high brinkmanship and seesawing expectations, Mr. Wen did not attend two smaller, impromptu meetings that Mr. Obama and United States officials conducted with the leaders of other world powers, an apparent snub that infuriated administration officials and their European counterparts and added more uncertainty to the proceedings. At 7 p.m. Copenhagen time, Mr. Obama and Mr. Wen met again, joined by Prime Minister Mammoghan Singh of India and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.
Walking into the meeting room, Mr. Obama called out, “Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me? Are you ready?”
Watch Obama’s speech, via BBC. China Dialogue has translated Premier Wen Jiabao’s comments at Copenhagen. Read also “China’s delaying tactics threaten climate deal” from the Independent and “Has a U.S-China agreement on transparency been reached?” from Green Leap Forward.
Also, watch Thomas Friedman on the CBS Early Show saying that the negotiations in Copenhagen are really just a power struggle between China and the U.S.:

Watch CBS News Videos Online
Update: A climate deal has been reached, though it is limited in its scope. From Beth Daley for the Boston Globe:
The United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa last night reached what President Obama called a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough’’ to control climate change, although the agreement will not be legally binding and falls short of even the most timid expectations of what would come out of the much-anticipated talks here.
The last-minute deal, reached on the final day of the two-week climate summit, will set a target of keeping average worldwide temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels – or roughly 2 degrees above today’s average. At current emissions levels, temperatures are expected by leading climate scientists to rise between 3 and 7 degrees by the end of the century. Obama acknowledged that the deal fell far short of most people’s expectations and would not be enough to keep within the temperature target and avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
“This is not a perfect agreement,’’ he said. “No country would get everything that it wants.’’
The agreement requires countries to list voluntary emissions-reduction targets that are not legally binding, and it establishes no deadline for completing a treaty that would require countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Most had expected that the talks would produce consensus to reach a treaty next year.
Emma Graham-Harrison takes a closer look at China in her “snap analysis” for Reuters, via Forbes:
China flexed its growing political muscle to seal a compromise climate deal that protected its national sovereignty, but did little for global warming or Beijing’s international image.
An eagerly-awaited climate summit in Copenhagen nearly collapsed on Friday, with most of the major developed-world players blaming China for its intransigence on the question of how its emissions-cutting commitments would be monitored.
Beijing’s refusal to budge on rich nation demands for greater transparency and checks — in a country not famous for its reliable statistics — was cited by negotiator after negotiator as a key block to reaching a deal.
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- December 18, 2009 11:55 AM
Climate: Does the World Need a China-US Deal?
With the Copenhagen climate change conference wrapping up in a couple of days, there may yet be progress on a deal between the U.S. and China, which has been one of the major stumbling blocks so far. From Reuters:
The Dec 7-18 summit is officially due to wrap up a new deal to tackle global warming on Friday, but rifts between rich and poor nations over everything from funding to which draft deal should be on the table, have made for agonizingly slow progress.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to break the deadlock on Thursday with a pledge to help mobilize the $100 billion a year by 2020 to assist poor nations shift to greener growth and adapt to a warmer world.
China’s He, who had previously said finance was China’s top concern at the talks, said the move was positive.
“I think the financial issue is very important. Whatever initiative these countries will announce is a good step,” He told Reuters when asked about the U.S. announcement.
Meanwhile, Opinio Juris, a site focusing on various perspectives on international law, asks, “Does the World Need a China-US Deal?“:
A China-US deal makes sense for both sides. China has already embarked on an ambitious energy efficiency drive, which forms the basis for its recent undertaking to reduce emissions intensity by 45%. China has economic, political and environmental reasons for its actions. China has much to gain from nationwide energy efficiency, and for some technologies (e.g. renewable energy and power stations) a large domestic market will also provide a springboard for exporting this technology. A deal with the US could bring in welcome infusion of additional capital and know how as well as markets for many Chinese technologies. Politically, China can benefit from showing leadership on a major global issue, and from maintaining access to markets in countries with emissions controls; and the Chinese government is alert to adverse impacts of climate change in China and the accompanying threat of social unrest and political destabilization. Environmentalism too has rising affirmative salience in Chinese public and governmental thinking.
From the US perspective, bringing China into an international limitations agreement would reduce leakage of investment and jobs as well as securing climate benefits and meeting the domestic US political demand for action by China as a condition for the US to undertake strong regulatory limitations on greenhouse gas emissions.
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- December 17, 2009 1:59 PM