20101019 China can learn from Taiwan’s model: Watts

China can learn from Taiwan’s model: Watts

CNA, with staff writer

Photo: CNA

That China’s ecosystems are in peril is not breaking news, but the speed of deterioration and the slow pace of attempts at recovery and clean up can shock even watchdogs monitoring the toll of the country’s economic boom. That’s where Taiwan comes in, a British reporter said.

In his new book When a Billion Chinese Jump, Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent for the Guardian newspaper, takes readers deep into China’s environmental abyss. The industrial giant’s sprint up the economic ladder is being made at the expense not only of its ecosystems and climate, but also of the health of its citizens — the very workforce China so desperately needs to power its annual double-digit growth.

‘CANCER VILLAGES’

Regarding the phenomenon of so-called “cancer villages,” with about 100 to 400 spread throughout China, Watts said the disproportional rates of disease among the residents were most likely caused by toxic-waste discharges from nearby chemical factories.

“The fear of a Red China is outdated, but the hope of a green China is premature,” the investigative journalist, who has been based in China for the last seven years, said at a lecture in Taipei on Thursday last week.

“If there is any color to describe China now, it would be gray,” he said.

While China’s industrial explosion has been the envy of many other countries, it is teetering on the edge of both environmental and social implosions, Watts said, giving examples of disappearing species and riotous protests from angry villagers.

Being a late bloomer in terms of its economic development, China is deprived of the option of “outsourcing” its waste as was enjoyed by the UK, the US, Japan and other countries in their takeoff phases. Beijing is therefore forced to “in-source” its garbage, he said.

The bite marks resulting from China eating itself from the inside-out could be best illustrated by the wrong hues seen around the country, Watts said, citing examples of once-green paddy fields that are now yellow, blue rivers that have turned crimson and crystal white glaciers that used to be feared and revered, but are now brown and balding.

Pollution-induced human suffering is another bleak picture in China, Watts said.

In the coal town of Linfen, Shanxi Province, visited by Watts during the research for his book, the birth-defect rate is more than three times the global average, and the death rate of local miners per tonne of coal extracted is 30 times higher than that of their US counterparts.

However, while China’s eco-crisis might be more devastating than most people realize, Beijing’s determination to go green is also much greater than the outside world gives it credit for, he said.

As evidence, he said the Chinese government invested US$34 billion in clean technology last year, a figure that compared favorably with the US$18 billion spent by Washington.

China also has the world’s largest wind-power capacity, and its solar-panel industry is expanding rapidly, he said.

SOCIAL VALUES

However, a top-down strategy led by government policy would be incapable of solving China’s graying problem, and the solution must come from the grassroots level, Watts said.

This would require a complete overhaul of social values of consumption and conservation among the general public.

In fact, Beijing could look to Taiwan as an example of a success story in which both citizens and government officials have an awareness of global warming and the dire need for clean alternative energy.

Watts said that while interviewing Taiwanese officials last year in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot, many acknowledged the unprecedented rainfall that left more than 700 dead or missing was likely a result of climate change and that the country needed to accelerate its defenses against extreme weather in the future.

Although Taiwan’s carbon footprint per person is “very high” and more should be done to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, Watts said he was “extremely impressed” by Taipei City’s recycling program.

“I think it is a good model for China. The recycling situation in China is appalling, frankly. There is so much waste and it is not used properly. In a sense, it is not about techniques, but about the values — wanting to recycle used things, and I think that [awareness] is stronger here and can be carried over to the mainland,” he said.

Watts added that multinational conglomerates, including China-based Taiwanese companies, could contribute by cleaning up their supply chains and increasing their efforts to amplify environmental protection as part of their corporate social responsibility.

“In the 19th century, my country, Britain, taught the world how to produce. In the 20th century, the US taught the world how to consume. And I think in the 21st century, we really need China to teach us how to sustain,” he said.