China’s economic boom leads to major climate woes

China may have realised damage to its climate and steps it needs to undertake to address the issue.
Recently, the Chinese government created an ‘Environment and Resources Group’ to underscore the importance to environmental protection and resource utilization. It is deemed to be a necessary step towards achieving the "Double Carbon" policy goal of reaching peak carbon use by 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2060, as well as guaranteeing arable land and energy security.
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the largest source of marine debris, the worst perpetrators of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing; and the world’s largest consumer of trafficked wildlife and timber products.

While the Chinese citizens have suffered the worst environmental impacts of its actions, Beijing also threatens the global economy and global health by unsustainably exploiting natural resources and exporting those through its One Belt One Road initiative.

Despite claims of international environmental leadership, China’s energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are rising. It has been the world’s largest annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter since 2006. China’s total energy-related emissions are twice that of the United States and nearly one third of all emissions globally.

Beijing’s energy-related emissions increased more than 80 per cent between 2005-2019, while the US energy-related emissions have decreased by more than 15 per cent. In 2019 alone, China’s energy-related CO2 emissions increased more than 3 per cent, while the United States’ decreased by 2 per cent. Beijing claims “developing-country” status to avoid shouldering more responsibility for reducing GHG emissions–though its per capita CO2 emissions have already reached the level of many high-income countries.

From deforestation and droughts to air and plastic pollution, these are just several factors that are exacerbating climate change and its consequences are felt everywhere in the world. China is certainly not spared by the effects of global warming and is experiencing more frequent natural disasters, which lead to destruction, great human suffering, and biodiversity loss.

As of 2021, China is ranked the world’s fourth among countries that experiences the most natural disasters worldwide. On track to becoming the world’s largest economy, China’s extremely rapid industrial expansion in recent decades has also contributed to record levels of air and water pollution.

Wang Yukai, a professor at the Central Party School (National School of Administration), told China Newsweek recently that the group’s establishment indicates that environmental and resource issues have become a focal point of the country's development. " This has a lot to do with the transformation of China's economic development mode. For quite a long time, China focused on scale and quantity-based economic growth. To achieve a shift to development with quality and efficiency, environmental resource protection has become extremely important."

Wang suggests that at the beginning of the reform and opening up, people were not aware of the severity of damaging the environment and over-consumption of resources, but now both the highest decision-making level in China and the public have increasingly recognized the significance of environmental protection and resource conservation.

China has emerged as a manufacturing giant. However, much of this economic success has been built on a foundation of ecological destruction, leaving China with smoggy cities, black rivers, growing desertification, and degraded coastal waters. Today's environmental problems seriously threaten China's economy, human health, and social stability.

Driving China's pollution problems are its dependence on coal for energy and a weak environmental governance system-—clearly illustrated by the poorly funded State Environmental Protection Administration. Further hampering environmental governance is local government protectionism and the still-limited, albeit improving, empowerment of public and civil society.

Millions of rural and urban citizens in China suffer from health problems primarily due to air pollution and water contamination. Every year, air pollution in China causes as many as 400,000 premature deaths and 75 million asthma attacks. Meanwhile, 25 percent of the Chinese population, mainly in rural areas, is drinking unclean water. Anecdotal evidence indicates that cancer, tumor, and miscarriage rates in many of China's heavily polluted river basins are on the rise. Pollution also threatens the safety of food products, from excessive pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables to the high concentration of heavy metals in fish products.

Sixteen of the world’s top 20 most polluted cities are in China. Beijing's efforts to clean up the city's air before hosting the 2008 summer Olympics have highlighted China's broader challenge in addressing the serious urban air pollution from cars, coal, and dust from desertification and construction. Cars are the largest source of urban air pollution, but they also are a major impetus for economic growth, attracting investments from nearly all international automobile companies.

The mainland and Hong Kong may not share democratic principles, but they do share one environmental danger. There is a possibility that Hong Kong could lose its status as the economic hub of Asia if the city does not clean up its skies, which would require collaboration with neighboring Guangdong Province. One sign the financial sector may already be fleeing smoggy Hong Kong was Merrill Lynch's recommendation that investors switch their real estate investments from Hong Kong to Singapore, a city with significantly cleaner air. Both the governments of Hong Kong and Guangdong now recognize the dangers of unabated pollution and have undertaken joint studies to find solutions, such as a planned cross-border SO2 emissions trading program.

So grave is the problem of air pollution in Hong Kong is that low air quality annually causes at least 1,000 deaths, 64,200 hospital admissions (176 per day), and 6.9 million trips to the doctor. These serious health outcomes result in annual losses of more than HK$2 billion in direct health care costs and productivity losses of HK$19 billion.

The pollution has now spread to the rural areas too where indoor air pollution affects the lives of some 700 million people. Last year, surveys of Guizhou Province showed that while most of China's rural population cooks indoors with highly inefficient stoves, health problems in Guizhou are more severe because residents burn coal briquettes that contain high levels of naturally occurring arsenic and fluoride. Indoor air pollution contributes significantly to the leading cause of death among children in rural China—pneumonia. Health problems are particularly acute in rural areas where many lack any form of health coverage and medical care has become prohibitively expensive as the industry is increasingly privatized. A recent WHO survey has ranked China 187th out of 191 countries in terms of access to medical treatment. Two environmental health issues the government is currently focusing on are solving safe drinking water challenges in southwest China's limestone karst regions and monitoring emissions from coal burning on the urbanized east coast.

The government is being forced to realize the lack of widespread coal-washing infrastructure and scrubbers at Chinese industrial facilities and power plants. Notably in China, data on carbon dioxide (CO2) and mercury emissions from coal burning have not been released since 2001. Based on unconfirmed data, Pan estimates that China releases 400 to 600 tons of mercury each year (U.S. emissions are approximately 48 tons each year).

Not only does China produce immense quantities of plastics each year, but it also consumes at least a fifth of the world’s plastics and up until recently, it was also the largest importer of plastic, acting as the dumping ground for nearly 600,000 metric tons of trash from foreign nations each year. The rapidly growing amount of plastics the country had to deal with prompted the government to introduce an import ban on solid waste including several types of plastics and other recyclable waste, which came into effect on January 1, 2018. Within just a few months, the decision halved imports of solid waste and nearly ceased imports of scrap plastic.

In 2021, China also launched its fourteenth five-year plan to facilitate the phase-out of manufacturing and circulation of single-use plastics – which are almost entirely made from fossil fuels – while promoting alternatives and boosting recycling.