REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Ironies of our China policy (Philippines)

By: Raul C. Pangalangan
Philippine Daily Inquirer

On June 9, 1975, President Ferdinand Marcos signed with Chinese Premier Chou En Lai the joint communiqué wherein we embraced the One-China policy. While they were toasting each other over maotai, Ninoy Aquino was in prison. Barely a month earlier, he had just ended a 40-day hunger strike to protest his trial before a military tribunal. He had instructed his lawyers to withdraw all motions pending before the Supreme Court, and he had to be forcibly dragged by soldiers into the military courtroom for his trial.

What a difference 36 years can make. Today Ninoy’s son is President of the Republic, and is the guest of the Chinese government. Then the Chinese were die-hard communists and Marcos’ aim was to neutralize their open support for the Maoist rebels in the countryside. Today the Chinese are capitalists and only the local rebels still believe in Chairman Mao, and Mr. Aquino’s aim is to increase Chinese investments in the Philippines and lessen the tensions in the Spratlys.

Those two goals entail radically different strategies. We must distinguish when a Chinese policy statement is directed at us and when it is directed to someone else. On economic matters, say the Chinese hunger for our vast mineral deposits, China is talking to us and indeed needs to talk to the native lords, both elite and mass-based, who hold the levers of access to local mining. But on political matters, China might actually be talking to a global audience, chief among them the United States, to demonstrate how far China will go to advance its interests.

China’s interest in our mines is a mixed blessing. In one sense, we can have them eating off our hand. China’s search for mineral deposits has taken it to places as far and as alien to them as Africa. Whatever they extract they have to ship across several oceans just to bring them to China’s shores. We, on the other hand, are right across China’s eastern coast, and in a land where Chinese engineers will live in what is at least a more familiar culture. This alone should yield significant savings in transport and managerial costs.

But the fly in the ointment is the environmental risk—not because we are dealing with mining but because we are dealing with China, a country whose environmental record is, to say the least, far from exemplary.

Read more at Philippine Daily Inquirer

Nuclear or Coal?

HONG KONG — Twenty five years ago a million people here signed a petition opposing a plan to build a nuclear power station with two reactors a few miles across the China border to provide power for Hong Kong and Guangdong Province. Some eminent citizens promised to emigrate if the plant was built.

But built it was and they had to eat their words. Operating since 1993, it has since attracted little attention from the Hong Kong people even though it sits by the sea, close to a fault line.

In fact, many people today wish that much more of the territory’s power would come from nuclear sources, which currently account for only about 15 percent of local consumption, rather than from the coal-fired stations, which contribute a great deal to Hong Kong’s serious air-pollution problem.

Premature deaths in Hong Kong caused by air pollution are now estimated at around 2,800 a year, and the air causes 90,000 hospitalizations a year. Air pollution has also driven away businesses to cleaner cities like Singapore, Sydney and, indeed, Tokyo.

Read more at The New York Times

Hu’s visit is over, but China’s ecological footprint lingers

The Chinese flags have disappeared from Washington’s wide avenues after China’s President Hu Jintao’s visit this week, but one statistic is still in the air: the rapidly expanding size of the Chinese ecological footprint, compared to the huge but slowing impact U.S. consumers have on global supplies of food, water, fuel — everything, really.

China and the United States are generally considered to hold the top two spots in the world for emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases. But how do they compare when consumption of all goods is taken into account?

A report by Global Footprint Network indicates both countries are living beyond their means, ecologically speaking.

The Ecological Footprint measures the land and sea area needed to produce the resources a population consumes and absorb its carbon dioxide emissions. By this measure, it would take just under 3 billion global hectares (about 7.4 billion global acres) to produce what China’s people consume. If everybody on the planet lived as the Chinese do, it would take the resources of 1.2 Earths.

Read more at  REUTERS

King Coal: Old-school fuel gains new life

Old-school fuel gains new life in growing markets, especially from steelmakers in China

Coal might seem old school, a last-century fuel, but it is once again king on British Columbia's waterfront, with miners and terminals scrambling to fill resurgent demands in Asia, particularly from new customers in China.

Westshore Terminals, for example, has ramped up the capacity at its Roberts Bank coal terminal in Delta in response to expanding production of its key customers and has reached the point of turning away potential new customers.

"If you had asked me this time last year would I have closed the door and be turning away people on a regular basis and have more coal coming at us than we could handle, I wouldn't have anticipated it," Denis Horgan, Westshore's vice-president and general manager said.

The main differences that have been "the big change in our lives" have been increasing U.S. exports of thermal coal -- the fuel for steam-powered electric generating plants -- and China's shift from being an exporter to a big importer of the higher-value coal used in steelmaking.

And the prices for steelmaking coal have shot up some 62 per cent in the past year, to about $209 US per tonne.

Horgan said Westshore expects in 2010 to surpass its previous record for coal throughput at Roberts Bank set at 23.5 million tonnes in 1997, handling both all-time-high amounts of steelmaking coal for its biggest Canadian clients and thermal coal for U.S.-based clients.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/King+Coal+school+fuel+gains+life/3893292/story.html#ixzz16Vv21MJp

U.N. seeks climate progress; deal may be years off

Smoke billows from chimneys of a heating plant near a residential compound in Beijing in this November 23, 2010 file photo.

Credit: Reuters/Petar Kujundzic

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO | Wed Nov 24, 2010 10:18am EST

The world will seek to break a U.S.-China standoff and agree modest steps to rein in global warming at U.N. talks in Mexico next week amid worries that the first climate treaty since 1992 may still be years away.

Most nations have few hopes for the meeting of environment ministers from November 29 to December 10 in the Caribbean resort of Cancun after U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders failed to agree a treaty at last year's U.N. Copenhagen summit.

Sights are lower for Cancun, which will test the ability of the United Nations to reconcile the interests of China and the United States, the top greenhouse gas emitters, and those of 192 other nations in a 21st century world order. All have a veto.

"We have to take a few steps forward or there are people who are going to lose faith in the U.N. system," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. panel of climate scientists.

"I'm a little depressed about Cancun," said Al Gore, the climate campaigner and former U.S. Vice President. "The problem is not going away, it's getting steadily worse."

In new evidence of warming, the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday that concentrations of the main greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached their highest level since pre-industrial times.

And 2010 is on track to match 1998 or 2005 as the warmest year since records began in the 19th century, leading experts say.

Pachauri's panel says warming will bring more floods, heatwaves, mudslides and rising sea levels. Inaction also raises risks of abrupt changes such as a melt of polar ice or permafrost.

The talks will try to agree "building blocks" of a deal such as a green fund to channel aid to poor nations, a mechanism to share new clean energy technologies and a deal to protect tropical forests that soak up greenhouse gases as they grow.

Read more at REUTERS    

China-fuelled surge could mean decades-long pressure

KEN Henry reckons the mining boom could be "the largest external shock ever to hit the Australian economy".

The Treasury secretary told a Senate hearing this week the China-fuelled surge in the nation's terms of trade (the ratio of export prices to import prices), could be structural rather than temporary, and could impose intense adjustment pressures on the Australian economy for "many decades".

After the nation shrugged off the global financial crisis, many people are now talking again about a "stronger for longer" mining boom.

This shows up in the Australian Bureau of Resource and Agricultural Economics' latest six-monthly list of major minerals and energy projects.

Resource companies have committed to or have begun construction on 72 major projects, from iron ore, coal and rare earths to rail lines, ports and pipelines. These "advanced" projects are worth $132.9 billion -- 21 per cent higher than six months ago and six times higher than in 2004.

Read more at The Australian

China Sets Tough Line in Climate Talks

BEIJING — Senior Chinese officials said on Tuesday that next week’s climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, would succeed only if the West agreed to transfer technology to developing countries like China and to take the lead in cutting emissions.

The comments by one of China’s senior officials in charge of climate issues, Xie Zhenhua of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, were mirrored by two other senior Chinese climate officials who earlier this week published a report saying China was willing to make concessions — if developed nations put money into a $30 billion fund aimed at helping poor nations cope with global warming.

Western countries pledged to set up such a fund but details have yet to be worked out. Mr. Xie said it would be the key to securing a deal to the 1997 Kyoto treaty, which is due to expire in 2012.

The positions reflect a long-standing view by developing countries, led by China, that they are largely not responsible for climate change — which they say was caused by decades of western pollution — and thus should not play a leading role in reversing it. Stated forcefully by China’s chief climate officials, the comments reemphasized the challenge facing negotiators in Cancun as they try to reconcile the positions of the two camps.

Read more at the New York Times

'China may be a threat to Indian acquisitions'

In the past two years, China has become a net coal importer from a net exporter. How big a concern should it be for India, given the rising domestic coal demand.

China has the ability to swing from a net buyer to a net seller. India should remain aware of projections of what China's coal-fired power will be in the next 5-10 years.

Their forecasts against domestic production should also be looked at. In the short-term, Chinese imports are going to go through the roof. So it is going to be an interesting battle between the two nations over the next 3-5 years.

Read more at rediff

Society Miners gunned down before mine blast in SW China (Xinhua)

KUNMING - Some of the nine miners previously thought to have died in a shed explosion last week in Southwest China's Yunnan province were killed by gun shots, local police said Monday.

A shed of Xiaosongdi Coal Mine exploded after explosives in it were detonated at 9 am last Thursday when Zheng Chunyun, boss of nearby Yuejing Coal Mine, arrived with more than 80 people armed with knives and steel bars.

Nine people were killed and 48 others injured in the incident, most of them were with Zheng.

"Autopsies show some of them were gunned down before the blast," said Lu Qingwei, head of the public security of Luxi County, where the mine is located.

But Lu declined to give more details about the case. Investigations are underway and the results may be announced Tuesday, Lu said.

The blast was deliberately triggered, according to a police statement last Friday.

The police have detained Wang Jianfu, boss of Xiaosongdi Coal Mine, Zheng Chunyun and eight other suspects, Lu said.

Read more at China Daily

Both Wang and Zheng's companies were mining the same deposit of coal and a dispute had arisen over their share of it. Both companies have an annual production capacity of 90,000 tons, according to previous investigations.

Nations That Debate Coal Use Export It to Feed China’s Need

In Australia, environmental groups have repeatedly halted trainloads of coal headed to the export docks at Newcastle this fall.

Even as developed countries close or limit the construction of coal-fired power plants out of concern over pollution and climate-warming emissions, coal has found a rapidly expanding market elsewhere: Asia, particularly China.

At ports in Canada, Australia, Indonesia, Colombia and South Africa, ships are lining up to load coal for furnaces in China, which has evolved virtually overnight from a coal exporter to one of the world’s leading purchasers.

The United States now ships coal to China via Canada, but coal companies are scouting for new loading ports in Washington State. New mines are being planned for the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. Indeed, some of the world’s more environmentally progressive regions are nascent epicenters of the new coal export trade, creating political tensions between business and environmental goals.

Traditionally, coal is burned near where it is mined — particularly so-called thermal or steaming coal, used for heat and electricity. But in the last few years, long-distance international coal exports have been surging because of China’s galloping economy, which now burns half of the six billion tons of coal used globally each year.

As a result, not only are the pollutants that developed countries have tried to reduce finding their way into the atmosphere anyway, but ships chugging halfway around the globe are spewing still more.

And the rush to feed this new Asian market has helped double the price of coal over the past five years, leading to a renaissance of mining and exploration in many parts of the world.

“This is a worst-case scenario,” said David Graham-Caso, spokesman for the Sierra Club, which estimates that its “Beyond Coal” campaign has helped to block 139 proposed coal plants in the United States over the last few years. “We don’t want this coal burned here, but we don’t want it burned at all. This is undermining everything we’ve accomplished.”

Read more at The New York Times

When a Billion Chinese Jump (Book by Jon Watts)

Image from Faber & Faber

Jonathan Watts's book about the environment When A Billion Chinese Jump (published July 15 by Faber & Faber), focuses especially on China and how its realities and policies will affect the rest of the world.

Isabel Hilton's review for the paper Watts works for is here, a Chinadialogue feature here, and his interview with Danwei during the Copenhagen summit here.

Below is an excerpt about the coal industry in China.

When a Billion Chinese Jump; excerpt

by Jonathan Watts

The Carbon Trap

Cold, dark, silent. Close to death. Buried in the depths of a collapsed, illegal coal mine, Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou knew they had been given up for dead.

The rescue effort had been abandoned. The two brothers could no longer hear the sound of mechanical diggers, drills and spades above their heads. Dismayed and exhausted, they had stopped yelling frantically for help.

How long had it been? Hours, days, weeks? There was no way of knowing. When their mobile phone batteries died, they lost all track of time.

And place. With the silence and the darkness came disorientation. They were unsure which way led to the surface and which led deeper into the mountain. They had little evidence that they were even still alive. It was like being lost inside a tomb.

Above ground, their families were already preparing a funeral. In accordance with tradition, relatives had started burning 'ghost money' for the two brothers to spend in the other world. Negotiations had begun with the local authorities about compensation. Yet down below, the Mengs stubbornly refused to die.

Read more at DANWEI

Dirty Coal, Clean Future

To environmentalists, “clean coal” is an insulting oxymoron. But for now, the only way to meet the world’s energy needs, and to arrest climate change before it produces irreversible cataclysm, is to use coal—dirty, sooty, toxic coal—in more-sustainable ways. The good news is that new technologies are making this possible. China is now the leader in this area, the Google and Intel of the energy world. If we are serious about global warming, America needs to work with China to build a greener future on a foundation of coal. Otherwise, the clean-energy revolution will leave us behind, with grave costs for the world’s climate and our economy.

By James Fallow

 Image credit: Bryan Christie

Through the past four years I’ve often suggested that China’s vaunted achievements are less impressive, or at least more complicated, seen up close. Yes, Chinese factories make nearly all of the world’s consumer electronic equipment. But the brand names, designs, and most of the profits usually belong to companies and people outside China. Yes, China’s accumulated trade surpluses have made it the creditor for America and much of the world. But the huge share of its own wealth that China has sunk into foreign economies ties its fate to theirs. Yes, more and more Chinese people are very rich. But hundreds of millions of Chinese people are still very poor. Yes, Chinese factories lead the world in output of windmills and solar-power panels. But China’s environmental situation is still so dire as to pose the main threat not just to the country’s public health and political stability but also to its own economic expansion.

This report will have a different tone. I have been learning about an area of Chinese achievement that is objectively good for the world as a whole, including the United States. Surprising enough! And China’s achievement dramatically highlights a structural advantage of its approach and a weakness of America’s. It involves the shared global effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, of which China and the United States are respectively the No. 1 and No. 2 producers, together creating more than 40 percent of the world’s total output. That shared effort is real, and important. The significant Chinese developments involve more than the “clean tech” boom that Americans have already heard so much about. Instead a different, less publicized, and much less appealing-sounding effort may matter even more in determining whether the United States and China can cooperate to reduce emissions. This involves not clean tech but the dirtiest of today’s main energy sources—coal.

Read more at The Atlantic

China: turning restaurant waste into a commodity

While China reaches ever further overseas to secure energy supplies, some Chinese businesses at home are coming up with increasingly creative ways of tapping into new energy sources. Take the story of one small company in Fujian province that has captured a local niche market: collecting waste oil from restaurants and factories and turning it into biodiesel and chemicals that can be sold at a handsome profit.

The five-year-old biodiesel business of China Clean Energy has got a big boost from the government’s vows to cut carbon emissions. According to its chief financial officer, William Chen, the New York-listed company has seen its revenues quadruple this year compared with 2009.

“Recently there was a government policy that requires power generators to reduce emissions, so some of the power generation plants have started shifting their regular petroleum diesel to biodiesel,” explains Chen.

Read more at The Financial Times

Pollution levels in Chinese cities getting better: survey

BEIJING, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- Pollution levels in many Chinese cities improved last year, as the quality of the overall environment remained "stable," according to a survey released Monday by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

Figures show that an average 66.7 percent of the days last year in 655 cities surveyed saw fair and good levels of air quality, and water quality in 89.84 percent of urban groundwater areas reached acceptable standards, up 4.44 percentage points year on year.

Also, more than 63 percent of domestic sewage in urban areas was properly disposed of last year, up 8.03 percentage points year on year. Further, some 72 percent of urban garbage was treated, up 1.04 percentage points.

However, the survey also noted 14 cities where pollution levels left much to be desired.

These cities include Taiyuan, capital of north China's coal-rich Shanxi Province, due to its poor water quality, and Urumqi, capital of northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, noted for only having "slight" improvements in traffic noise pollution.

In addition, some 77.26 percent of China's urban population was satisfied with their cities' environmental protection work, according to the survey.

As one of the latest pollution control regulations, the ministry issued a draft guideline in September requiring listed companies in 16 heavily polluting industries, including thermal power generation, steel- and cement-making business, to annually publish information about their polluting emissions as well as the management of their companies' impact on the local environment.

According to the draft, any listed company that is punished, fined, suspended or shut down by the authorities for environmental violations must inform investors of these violations, punishment and remedy measures within one day upon receiving the penalty. 

XINHUANET

China drafting law on dealing with climate change

TIANJIN, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- A senior Chinese legislator on Saturday said China is drafting a law to act to combat climate change, a move that signals the country's proactive role in honoring its commitment to curtailing emissions, among other measures, in tackling climate change.

"The responsibility of lawmakers is to urge the government to take concrete steps to meet its promises," Chen Zhili, vice chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), told experts attending a two-day forum on climate change legislation being held in Tianjin beginning Saturday.

Chen said despite a broad range of government issues, China is taking serious measures in dealing with climate change and has achieved remarkable progress.

Chen said lawmakers will particularly base China's climate change legislation on a resolution passed by the NPC last August.

The resolution says China will adhere to "the basic framework" set up in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed by more than 150 countries in 1992, and the Kyoto Protocol, agreed to in 1997 by the majority of the international community, to set binding targets for developed countries to reduce CO2 emissions, along with the principles of UNFCCC-endorsed "common but differentiated responsibilities" as well as "sustainable development."

Read more at XINHUANET

China's hunt for resources stops for Peru copper

The Chinese entrepreneur and the Peruvian shopkeeper have never met. Yet Li Shiping's dream of riches and success in China is uprooting Victor Raul Ancieta's village 11,000 miles away in the Andes.

Their lives are joined by a thread of copper stretching from Dao County in southern Hunan province to a $50 billion deposit of ore underneath the 103-year-old mining town in Peru.

Li, 47, owns a smelting company that is about to fire up a new electric furnace made with 110 tons of copper, one of thousands of industrial projects in China's developing interior. To stoke them, a Chinese state-owned mining company will tear down the peak in Peru and ship home the copper. It plans to relocate the town of Morococha, population 5,397. Many, including Ancieta, don't want to leave.

The project is part of $11 billion in Chinese mining investments planned for Peru, a quarter of the country's total, according to Fernando Gala, the Peruvian vice minister of mines. China is prospecting for mineral treasures around the world as it develops faster than any major economy in history. Its copper use is growing so quickly that by 2035 global demand for the metal may outstrip supply by 11 million tons, according to CRU, a London-based mining and metals consulting firm.

That's equal to 55 times the planned annual output in Morococha, where a crater 800 meters (2,600 feet) deep and a third larger than New York City's Central Park will be left behind. The copper supply gap is driving up prices and foreshadows more conflicts in places like the mountain village.

 "What China wants is wealth and power," says Stapleton Roy, U.S. ambassador to China from 1991 to 1995. "What we have to fear from China is that as it gets stronger and wealthier, it does not develop a commensurate sense of responsibility to the global system." Roy, 75, was born in China and witnessed the Communist revolution. He heads the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States in Washington.

Great powers have always reached beyond their borders for wealth and resources, including the U.S. as it built the world's largest economy. Today, China's purchases of copper, iron, oil and other materials pour cash into resource-producing countries like Peru, while its exports hold down prices for consumers around the world.

"A lot of countries are benefiting" from China's demand, says Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington and an author of the 2008 book, "China's Rise: Challenges and Opportunities." "You don't hear so many complaints from the countries that are the recipients of the Chinese investment."

Read more at The San Francisco Chronicle

Coffee break offered in China's coal mine

BAISE, Guangxi, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Tired? How about sitting down and having a cup of coffee in a cozy cafe some 150 meters underground in a real coal mine?

This is not day dreaming on the part of China's miners who usually toil down in the mine for meager wages and sometimes have to risk their lives.

A coal mine operator in Baise city, southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, has set up a cafe in the Donghuai Coal Mine as a part of the measures taken to improve underground working conditions, Xinhua reporters saw.

Miners now can enjoy light music, crack a joke with loved ones through a walkie-talkie, or simply take a nap in the cafe. There are also sets of desks and chairs, potted plants and even a fish bowl.

"We have left no loop-holes in safety checks and try to do more," said Yi Peiyi, a deputy director of the local mining administration.

He said the city plans to spend 80 million yuan (12 million U.S. dollars) to make mines modern and safe beginning in 2005.

China's coal mines were notorious for accidents in the past few years as mines, including many with inadequate safety measures, were pushed to run at maximum capacity to meet the massive energy needs of a fast growing economy.

More than 2,600 miners were killed in China's mining accidents last year. However, the death toll was already significantly less than those recorded in previous years.

Last month, China's mine workers and bosses joined the world in cheering the successful rescue of 33 Chilean miners and were awed at the professional and modern working conditions of their Chilean counterparts.

Additionally, industry authorities and safety watchdog officials have ordered mine bosses to double their efforts to improve safety measures and underground working conditions.

XINHUANET

Liang Congjie: The Godfather of China's Green Movement

In March 1994, a soft-spoken historian registered China's first legally recognized nongovernmental organizations ever, the environmental group Friends of Nature. Earlier that year, a subtle change in Chinese law authorized citizens to form their own NGOs, albeit with government permission and oversight, opening the door to a new era of citizen participation in China.

Today there are more than 3,000 registered environmental groups in China. And that soft-spoken historian, Liang Congjie, is acknowledged as the godfather of modern Chinese environmentalism. Liang died Thursday in a Beijing hospital from complications from a lung infection. He was 78.

Liang was a reluctant crusader. The grandson of a famous Qing dynasty reformer exiled for 14 years after proposing the imperial throne make way for a constitutional monarchy, and the son of prominent architect who angered Mao and was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, Liang knew from his earliest days the heartache and personal sacrifice that could accompany taking a stand in China. His father had campaigned vigorously to preserve the historic city walls of old Beijing - and lost. As a university professor in the turbulent 1980s, Liang kept company with such reform-minded thinkers as Dai Qing, an outspoken journalist who led a campaign for more open and aggressive reporting on geologic problems associated with the proposed Three Gorges Dam; such friends convinced Liang to step into the fray.

Read more at the Atlantic

China: Beijing in the running to take crown for wind turbines

When the world’s largest offshore wind farm, in the English Channel off Kent in south-east England, started producing power in September, it was a rare moment in the spotlight for the popular retirement destination. But it is likely soon to have to share its crown with somewhere more accustomed to grabbing headlines.

Next year, work begins on a plant in the waters off Jiangsu province in southern China which, like the Kent one, will boast a capacity of 300 megawatts. This marks a new turn in the story of China’s runaway windpower build-out: so far the country has only one offshore wind farm. But it has plenty of the terrestrial variety.

China’s appetite for wind power equipment more than doubled in each of the past four years and it is on course to beat its official target of 30 gigawatts installed wind power by 2020 this year and may surpass the US to have the world’s largest wind power capacity.

On optimistic assumptions, it could have 230GW by 2020, concluded an October report by the Global Wind Energy Council, Greenpeace, and the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association.

The turbines towering over the windy northern reaches are only the most visible symptom of a centrally mandated push into greener energy. This began cranking up in 2006, when the Renewable Energy Law came into force, aiming to raise renewable energy’s share of total consumption to 15 per cent by 2020.

Internationally, China has come in for much criticism over its role in stalled talks about a climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto treaty. But, Thibaud Voita, a Beijing-based energy efficiency specialist with the Institute for Industrial Productivity, a non-profit organisation, says that observers should not conflate events on the global stage with the situation on the ground.

“China is making huge efforts to green its energy production and become more energy-efficient,” he says. “There is a strong commitment in the central government.”

Read more at Financial Times

Canada agrees with China to cut pollution

 

Canada's Minister for the Environment, Jim Prentice (L), wears a safety helmet as he talks with an official during a tour of a coal-burning power station in Beijing October 29, 2010. Photograph by: DAVID GRAY, REUTERS

BEIJING - Canada's environment minister is pledging greater co-operation with emissions giant China on meeting grittier environmental goals, with both countries agreeing to an action plan to better protect land, air and water.

During a visit to Beijing, federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice signed a memorandum of understanding with his Chinese counterpart to conduct collaborative projects and sharing of scientific data on water, mercury emissions, biodiversity and environmental emergencies.

Prentice is also hoping to broaden the bilateral agreement to national parks, protected areas, and environmental assessment and monitoring on heavy oil developments - including the oilsands. Chinese officials are quite interested in learning from the environmental technologies being deployed in the oilsands, and using it on heavy oil projects in China.

The two countries, which are celebrating their 40th anniversary of diplomatic ties, have promised to adopt an action plan on co-operation and have an associated joint environmental committee oversee the work. Chinese Minister of Environmental Protection, Zhou Shengxian, is expected to visit Canada in mid-November to sign the action plan.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Canada+agrees+with+China+pollution/3745889/story.html#ixzz13lEEp6ks

China Lithium Technologies Unveils New Lithium Magic Cube Product Series at the China Import and Export Fair in Guangzho

NEW YORK and BEIJING, Oct 28, 2010 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) --

China Lithium Technologies Inc. (OTCBB: CLTT | PowerRating), a leading lithium-ion battery module, lithium-ion battery charger and lithium-ion battery management system manufacturer and distributor, today announced that on October 14-19 it participated in the annual Import and Export Exhibition in Guangzhou, the largest consumer products exhibition in China. The company unveiled its newly developed Lithium Magic Cube product series, which includes battery modules, battery management systems, and charging systems for lithium-ion batteries, all of which received high accolades at the event.

The Lithium Magic Cube product series includes a range of products with varying voltage and capacity. The 60Ah/80Ah products from the Lithium Magic Cube series can be used in electric automobiles through parallel connections. This technology makes it possible to seamlessly upgrade a battery system from lead-acid batteries to Lithium-ion batteries, and represents a major advancement in electronic vehicle technology. Additionally, the company's 10Ah and 20Ah products from the Lithium Magic Cube series weigh 1/3 of a comparable lead-acid battery and are becoming popular in electric bicycles and motorcycles.

Read more at Trading Markets

Tracking Ageing Population Woes

IN 1979, China embarked upon an ambitious programme of economic reform, following the stagnation of the Cultural Revolution. At the time, it was home to a quarter of the world's people, and two- thirds of the population were under the age of 30.

The government saw population containment as a necessary condition for economic growth and an improvement in living standards, prompting the introduction of the one-child policy.

The immediate effect of the one-child policy was, as desired, a fall in fertility rates and the slowing of population growth, which was supportive of economic growth. Another outcome of the policy, however, has been the impending rapid ageing of the population likely to have far-reaching consequences for the country over the next few decades.

Today, China is still a relatively young country. The median age is around 30, more than 70 per cent of the population is of working age (15-64 years), and the dependency ratio is among the lowest in the world. As its policymakers anticipated, falling fertility has been a boon for the Chinese economy, with abundant labour a key factor in the spectacular economic performance over recent decades.

Yet the long-run implications of falling fertility are more troubling. China is ageing extraordinarily fast; even faster than Western Europe, and the speed of China's ageing pattern will also surpass Japan's, which is currently the oldest country in the world. The necessary corollary is that elderly dependency will rise to unprecedented levels.

Cheap labour has been central to China's growth model. As labour becomes scarcer and more expensive, it could put downward pressure on future economic growth. Given the high level of growth that China experienced during the past 15 years, this is not necessarily negative.

It also helps to explain the shift in Chinese economic policy away from low value-add manufacturing- and export-driven growth towards higher- value industries and domestic consumption in its most recent, and forthcoming, five-year plans.

While many will see the government's effort to increase wages as negative - especially for labour-intensive service industries - we believe it will achieve the goal of increasing domestic consumption, diversifying China's sources of growth and helping to alleviate wealth inequality.

One of the reasons for the relatively low share of consumption in GDP in China is linked to the nation's high savings ratio, but this too could change as a result of demographics. Older people are thought to have a lower savings ratio as they run down their assets in retirement, so an ageing population tends to reduce national savings.

However, if this 'dissaving' occurs in response to a lower retirement income, older consumers also spend less. If this is the case, a decline in the savings ratio does not actually increase aggregate demand.

Read more at Business Times

 

 

China's Global Dominance in Green Jobs Growing, Report Says

China is prevailing in the global race for green jobs in sectors from solar panels to advanced lighting, and appears to be on an unstoppable upward path, an annual report by cleantech research firm Clean Edge said on Wednesday.

Rob Pernick, managing director of Clean Edge and a report author, called the economic giant's "meteoric" surge "very striking." But, he said, it is "not a fait accompli that China will dominate" across the entire industry.

There is "serious competition on the global playing field," Pernick told SolveClimate News.

The report said clean energy is spawning millions of high-paying green jobs worldwide, even as the global economy continues to sputter.

Total jobs surpassed three million in 2009, recent data from global research group REN 21 finds. China accounted for 700,000 of that amount, due in large part to measures that promote solar heating.

But Brazil, South Korea, Germany, Japan, the U.S. and other nations are still very much in the game, as clean-energy manufacturing grows and becomes more complex.

Clean Edge identified more than two dozen top cleantech job sectors, including solar energy storage, green building materials and smart-grid devices.

Read more atREUTERS

China and US clash at climate talks

US negotiating stance deemed 'totally unacceptable' by China after American climate envoy accuses delegates of trying to renegotiate Copenhagen accord

 

American climate change representative Jonathan Pershing, deputy special envoy for climate change with the US State Department, during the opening session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bangkok, Thailand, 28 September 28, 2009. Photograph: Barbara Walton/EPA

The world's two biggest carbon emitters clashed at UN climate talks in China today as the United States' top climate envoy accused his counterparts of trying to renegotiate last year's global climate agreement, and threatened to pursue alternatives to the United Nations negotiation track. China retaliated by calling the US's overall negotiating stance "totally unacceptable."

Jonathan Pershing, the US deputy special envoy for climate change, said the first three days of talks in Tianjin had yielded disappointing results because participants were revisiting old arguments over procedure rather than building on the Copenhagen accord.

"What is frustrating in these negotiations is to see countries not using that as the basis, but relitigating things that we more resolved over the course of the Copenhagen negations," he said.

His comments underline the wide differences between nations despite efforts to try to identify common ground this week so that a partial agreement can be signed at a ministerial level meeting in Cancún later this year.

Read more at The Guardian

The Nestlé example: how responsible companies could end deforestation

The NGO, The Forest Trust (TFT), made international headlines this year after food giant Nestlé chose them to monitor their sustainability efforts. Nestlé's move followed a Greenpeace campaign that blew-up into a blistering free-for-all on social media sites. For months Nestle was dogged online not just for sourcing palm oil connected to deforestation in Southeast Asia—the focus of Greenpeace's campaign—but for a litany of perceived social and environmental abuses and Nestlé's reactions, which veered from draconian to clumsy to stonily silent. The announcement on May 17th that Nestlé was bending to demands to rid its products of deforestation quickly quelled the storm. Behind the scenes, Nestlé and TFT had been meeting for a number of weeks before the partnership was made official. But can TFT ensure consumers that Nestlé is truly moving forward on cutting deforestation from all of its products?

"Our goal is to help businesses bring Responsible Products—those that respect the environment and improve people’s lives throughout the whole supply chain—to market," the creator and director of TFT, Scott Poynton, told mongaby.com recently. With an education and background in forestry, Poynton has years of inside knowledge into the challenges and opportunities for big companies securing 'responsible forestry' products. Poynton says his brainchild, TFT, works differently than most NGOs concerned with social and environmental issues

"We focus on products—period. We don’t spend a lot of time in workshops; we don’t work on global policies. We work on the ground, up to our neck in dust, mud, flies, mosquitoes, right at the coal face to make things better," Poynton says, adding that "if you accept that it is the product supply chains causing the world’s problems—see the [popular on-line video] the Story of Stuff—then we think ours is a logical approach."

In fact, with its on-the-ground work with supply chains for big and small companies, TFT works closely with the private sector—rather than protesting it—to make their products more environmentally and socially responsible.

"We have private sector backgrounds, we understand supply chains, we're passionate about our members' products and their businesses," Poynton stresses. "But we're passionate about people and the environment too and believe we can be best in the world at helping businesses deliver responsible products. That’s unique I think."

Read more at Mongabay

Many Americans probably think of China as a land of crowded cities (Shanghai) and expansive agricultural areas. In reality much of China, like the United States, is wilderness, with low population density, magnificent landscapes, and cultural diversity. On my recent trip I visited two regions that fit this description: Xinjiang in far western China, near the border of Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan; and northwestern Yunnan, historically and culturally the southeastern-most part of Tibet. These are my pictures

XINJIANG

 

Solar-powered yurt in western China
Image Location: Xinjiang (Silk Road region in western China), CHINA
Photographer/Camera: Photo taken by Rhett A. Butler

Xinjiang, an autonomous province dominated by Muslims, lies in the heart of the ancient Silk Road, a trading route used since ancient times to transport good between East and West. Xinjiang is characterized by rough terrain, with dry deserts accented by some of the highest mountains in the world. Xinjiang is the largest political subdivision of China, accounting for more than one sixth of China's total territory

Read more on China with photos at Mongabay