Perils of China's Explosive Growth

▪ 2008

Introduction

by Dorothy-Grace Guerrero The China of 2007 was indeed a far cry from the country that in the 1950s Swedish Nobel Prize-winning economist Gunnar Myrdal predicted would remain mired in poverty. In anticipation of the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing was undergoing a huge makeover that would show how fast change could happen in a country of 1.3 billion people. New subway lines were close to completion, and more skyscrapers were being added each month to the landscape to replace the fast-disappearing hutongs (“residential alleyways”). As the world's fourth largest economy and third largest trading country, China accounted for approximately 5% of world GDP and had recently graduated in status to a middle-income country. Beijing was also emerging as a key global aid donor. In terms of production, China supplied more than one-third of the world's steel, half of its cement, and about a third of its aluminum.

      China's achievements in poverty reduction from the post-Mao Zedong era, in terms of both scope and speed, were impressive; about 400 million people had been lifted from poverty. The standard of living for many Chinese was improving, and this led to a widespread optimism that the government's goal of achieving an overall well-off, or Xiaokang, society, was possible in the near future.

      The figures that illustrated China's remarkable economic achievements, however, concealed huge and outstanding challenges that, if neglected, could jeopardize those very same gains. Many local and foreign-development analysts agreed that China's unsustainable and reckless approach to growth was putting the country and the world on the brink of environmental catastrophe. China was already coping with limited natural resources that were fast disappearing. In addition, not everyone was sharing the benefits of growth—about 135 million people, or one-tenth of the population, still lived below the international absolute poverty line of $1 per day. There was a huge inequality between the urban and rural population, as well as between the poor and the rich. The increasing number of protests (termed mass incidents in China) was attributed to both environmental causes and experiences of injustice. If these social problems remained, it could imperil the “harmonious development,” or Hexie Fazhan, project of the government and eventually erode the Communist Party of China's continued monopoly of political power.

The Challenge of Environmental Sustainability.

 China consumed more coal than the U.S., Europe, and Japan combined and was about to surpass, or had already surpassed, the U.S. as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Beijing was also the biggest emitter of sulfur dioxide, which contributes to acid rain. Chinese scholars blamed the increase in emissions on rapid economic growth and the fact that China relied on coal for 70% of its energy needs. More than 300,000 premature deaths annually were attributed to airborne pollution. The changing lifestyle of the increasing number of middle-class families also contributed to the problem. In Beijing alone, 1,000 new cars were added to the roads every day. Seven of the 10 most polluted cities in the world were located in China.

      The UN 2006 Human Development Report cited China's worsening water pollution and its failure to restrict heavy polluters. More than 300 million people lacked access to clean drinking water. About 60% of the water in China's seven major river systems was classified as being unsuitable for human contact, and more than one-third of industrial wastewater and two-thirds of municipal wastewater were released into waterways without any treatment. China had about 7% of the world's water resources and roughly 20% of its population. In addition, this supply was severely regionally imbalanced—about four-fifths of China's water was situated in the southern part of the country.

      The Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River delta, two regions well developed owing to recent export-oriented growth, suffered from extensive contamination from heavy-metal and persistent organic pollutants. The pollutants emanated from industries outsourced from the developed countries and electronic wastes that were illegally imported from the U.S. According to an investigation of official records conducted by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), a domestic environmental nongovernmental organization, 34 multinational corporations (MNCs) with operations in China had violated water-pollution-control guidelines. These MNCs included PepsiCo, Inc., Panasonic Battery Co., and Foster's Group Ltd. The IPE's data were based on reports by government bodies at local and national levels.

      China was beginning to realize, however, that its growth path was not cost-free. According to the State Environmental Protection Administration and the World Bank, air and water pollution was costing China 5.8% of its GDP. Though the Chinese government carried the responsibility for fixing the overwhelming environmental consequences of China's breakneck growth, help, if offered, from the transnational companies and consumers from industrialized countries that benefited greatly from China's cheap labour and polluting industries could also be utilized in the challenging cleanup task.

      When the Chinese government in 2004 began setting targets for reducing energy use and cutting emissions, the idea of adopting a slower growth model and the predictions about the looming environmental disaster were not received with enthusiasm at first. By 2007, however, targets had been established for shifting to renewable energy, for employing energy conservation, and for embracing emission-control schemes. The target was to produce 16% of energy needs from alternative fuels (hydro and other renewable sources) by 2020.

The Social Justice Challenge.

 Inside China, people were more concerned about issues related to the problem of widespread inequality than they were about showcasing the upcoming Olympics. The Gini coefficient (which indicates how inequality has grown in relation to economic growth) had increased in China by 50% since the late 1970s. Less than 1% of Chinese households controlled more than 60% of the country's wealth. This inequality was more pronounced when seen in urban versus rural per capita income. In the countryside, life was harsh, and people were poor. The ratio of urban versus rural per capita income grew from 1.8:1 in the early 1980s to 3.23:1 in 2003. (The world average was between 1.5:1 and 2:1.) Added to the problem of low income, Chinese rural residents also shouldered disproportionate tax burdens while having less access to public services, such as education and health care. Recently, the government abolished a number of taxes to help address poverty in the countryside.

      The temporary migration from rural areas to the cities of 100 million–150 million Chinese peasants was not an easy transition. The rural migrant workers who kept factories and construction sites running were denied access to urban housing and to urban schooling for their children. Women migrant workers faced triple discrimination for being poor unskilled labour, female, and rural in origin. The anger and bitterness that set off riots and protests (reportedly more than 80,000 in 2006) in the countryside was not so much about poverty as it was about fairness. Agricultural land in China was communally owned. (In theory, each village owned the land around it, and each family held a small tract of land on a long-term lease.) In the past 20 years, however, urbanization had claimed 6,475,000 ha (about 16 million ac) of farmland; people saw their land being taken from them and then turned into homes that were sold to the new rich for several million dollars, and they witnessed local officials lining their own pockets. Meanwhile, they received little compensation in return and spent years away from home to live tenuous hand-to-mouth existences as factory or construction workers. Many were cheated of their wages by unscrupulous bosses. Given the reports of mass public protests, it was evident that many in China were clamouring for a more equitable distribution of China's bounty from its two-decades-long growth.

Dorothy-Grace Guerrero is a Senior Research Associate of Focus on the Global South, a special project of Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute in Bangkok.

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