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More on China’s stimulus plan: Mixed messages, doubts and…at least a little hope?

As a follow-up to my previous post, I wanted to point out a few more blog posts and articles that I think are worth a read.

First of all, most people might not even know this, but the 4 trillion yuan stimulus has been tweaked. Props to Charlie McElwee from China Environmental Law for noticing the changes. And he’s right that there are “mixed signals,” as obvious from a recent Reuters story. On one hand, vice-environment minister Zhang Lijun said the money will be invested in phasing out pollution; but on the other hand, he supports more car purchases, which we all know will only spew more smog into the air. But, Zhang insists, “If people can’t drive cars, they’ll have to go back to the time of everyone riding bicycles. I don’t think this is realistic, and it is not possible.” Here he is quoted in another story, saying, “Cars are a modern means of transportation and are essential for convenience and business.”

McElwee suggests that China should not be so narrow-minded to only think of cars vs. bicycles, and he advocates for other “progressive” transport alternatives, like “mass transit and electric bikes.” I totally agree, and as I’ve learned at EMBARQ, the solutions don’t stop there. You can curb private car use through other things like transit-oriented development, pedestrianization, congestion charging, bus rapid transit, metro and high-speed rail (ideally, operating on a clean “smart grid“), etc.

Zhang tried to reassure the public that increased car sales will not trash the environment, pointing to policies like banning “huangbiaoche” (or highly polluting yellow-tagged cars) in Beijing, which I wrote about on TheCityFix. But let’s get real - the truly sustainable solution isn’t just about manufacturing cleaner cars and banning dirty ones to ameliorate pollution; it’s about getting rid of cars to begin with. Hey, it worked during the Olympics…

And this brings me to my second point: The stimulus should be used wisely, not widely.  China is prepared to spend more of the total stimulus money on infrastructure projects. But as Andrew Batson of China Journal writes, “Expanding public housing gets 10% of the total, up from 7% previously, and other infrastructure projects somewhat less. That seems to be a gesture to growing concerns that China is preparing to build a lot of infrastructure that it doesn’t really need,” and this could lead to harmful environmental consequences. Again, it’s about building less, consuming less and wasting less. Not just building tons more of something a little better or cleaner or more efficient (although, that’s better than business as usual, of course.)

Reuters reported that China environmental NGO, Friends of Nature, issued a letter to the National People’s Congress, urging delegates to “use the 4 trillion yuan investment to pioneer a green, low-carbon economy… Don’t sacrifice the long-term objectives of conserving energy and reducing emissions for the sake of protecting high energy-consuming industries that have no future.”

Experts are worried this will be hard to achieve since China still remains so focused on growth (soon after the stimulus took effect, industrial output rose by 11%, according to Bloomberg)

Finally, I just wanted to point out this one more article that explains how the government can’t go at it alone, using the clean energy sector as an example:

The economic-stimulus plans rolling out everywhere from the U.S. to Europe to China seek partly to breathe new life into the global clean-energy campaign. But because the global energy system is so huge, even billions of dollars of short-term government money won’t matter much unless it’s able to get hundreds of billions of dollars in long-term private investment flowing into clean energy again.

So, I’m not trashing China’s stimulus plan. I’m just hoping the stimulus plan doesn’t trash whatever potential China has left to use this global economic slump to its advantage and emerge from it as a role model for transformative environmental policy and regulation, as well as a pioneer of new public-private business models (which could also involve cross-national cooperation.) Is that too much to wish for?

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