Absurdist Republic

荒诞者共和

Let us now praise Hu Jintao

Abuses Belie China Pledge on Rights, Critics Say

"China Threat" or a "Peaceful Rise of China"?

Beijing dips its toes in troubled waters

Beijing's 'Green Olympics' test run fizzles

China Blames Global Warming for Recent Weather Woes

China Postpones Release of Report on ‘Green’ GDP Accounting

China’s Economic Engine Forced to Face Environmental Deficit

China’s Environmental Crisis Catalyzes New Democracy Movement

China's Next Cultural Revolution

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Wednesday, 15. August 2007, 04:27:52

Michael Chang
Asia Times
27 July, 2007

When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held its 14th National Congress in 1992, among other things, it duly elected the so-called third-generation leaders to fill the then-seven-member Standing Committee of the Politburo, the real power center that rules China.

As suggested by Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of China at the time, Hu Jintao was elected into the Politburo Standing Committee. At the age of 50, Hu became the youngest member elevated to the Standing Committee, with the full understanding that he would eventually succeed Jiang Zemin when the latter retired.

Hu's elevation to national prominence was greeted throughout China with puzzlement. The question, "Who is Hu Jintao?" instantly dominated conversations inside and outside the government apparatus, but few had answers.

For the next 11 years, Hu served in different capacities, each with increasing duties and responsibilities, seemingly going through a tailor-made training program for this future supreme leader. But he largely remained a shadow behind Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin. Rarely were his pictures or activities conspicuously displayed on Chinese news media, let alone printed and reported outside China. In the eyes of the Chinese people, Hu was a non-entity.

Tuesday, 14. August 2007, 17:02:51

Human Rights, Civil Society

JIM YARDLEY
New York Times
August 8, 2007

BEIJING, Aug. 7 — Human rights groups on Tuesday accused China of failing to improve its record on civil liberties, and of harassing lawyers, dissidents and journalists, despite official promises to make human rights a centerpiece of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Meanwhile, a group of Chinese scholars, journalists and lawyers wrote an open letter to President Hu Jintao and other national leaders calling for the release of political prisoners, including jailed Chinese reporters and inmates convicted on religious grounds. The group wrote that China’s Olympic slogan, “One World, One Dream” should instead be “One World, One Dream, and Universal Human Rights.”

Tuesday, 14. August 2007, 16:47:05

Political Economy, China-US Relation

MING XIA
College
New York Times

"China's rise" can be seen as a quintessentially political process—through which the ruling Communist Party has sought to shore up its legitimacy after the Cultural Revolution irreversibly changed the nation and caused three crises of ideological belief, faith in the CPC, and confidence in the future. As the Party realized that the performance-based legitimacy was the only hope for prolonging its rule, economic development became the highest politics. Consequentially, the success of economic development would have to cause political implications—the external ones are carefully monitored and evaluated by China's neighbors and the only superpower of the world—the United States.

Tuesday, 14. August 2007, 16:11:05

Environment

Pallavi Aiyar
Asia Times
August 8, 2007

Pallavi Aiyar is the China correspondent for The Hindu.

BEIJING - For millennia, China's great rivers have snaked their long, meandering courses across the country, providing the life-blood for Chinese civilization: water. Along the banks of the Yellow River to the north and the Yangtze to the south, 5,000 years of history and culture have unfolded, with agriculture flourishing in an otherwise inhospitable terrain and trade bringing prosperity and dynamism in its wake.

But the effects of severe pollution, large-scale damming and climate change are combining to spell catastrophe for the rivers, with deeply worrying implications for the millions of Chinese who continue to depend on them.

Ten percent of the Yellow River today is sewage, little surprise when, according to the government, the volume of wastewater flowing into the river increased from about 2 billion tonnes in the 1980s to 4.3 billion tonnes by 2005. Experts say that since the 1950s the volume of water in the Yellow River has decreased by 75%, so that the once-mighty river has been reduced to a more or less seasonal body of water that usually dries up 800 kilometers before reaching the sea.

Tuesday, 14. August 2007, 16:01:14

Environment

Edward Russell
Asia Times
August 10, 2007

BEIJING - August 7 dawned a typical, hazy Beijing morning. The last headlights of night were reflecting off the light-grayish gloom that held the city, obscuring buildings and short-shifting the horizon to 100 meters at best. One year out and Beijing's promise of a "green Olympics" is looking hazy at best.

Last month, the official state news agency Xinhua announced a plan by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) to remove "about 1 million vehicles between August 7 and 20". Both the US Embassy and the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau (BEPB) confirmed plans for a temporary car ban this month as a "test-run" for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Monday, 13. August 2007, 15:47:13

Environment, Economy

Monica Liau
Worldwatch Institute
August 9, 2007

China Watch is a joint initiative of the Worldwatch Institute and Beijing-based Global Environmental Institute (GEI) and is supported by the blue moon fund.

Chinese authorities say global warming is to blame for the extreme weather conditions that have afflicted the country this year, Reuters reports. Summer floods have killed more than 700 people across 24 provinces and displaced an estimated 5 million more. In other provinces, drought has left more than 8 million people short of water. Because China has both limited water resources and a large population living in reclaimed flood zones, droughts and flooding are annual problems. But experts say sustained weather events like those experienced this year are abnormal and likely to worsen in the coming years.

“One of the reasons for the weather extremes this year has been unusual atmospheric circulation brought about by global warming,” said Song Lianchun, head of the China Meteorological Administration’s Department of Forecasting Services and Disaster Mitigation.

Sunday, 12. August 2007, 15:41:16

Environment, Economy

Ling Li
Worldwatch Institute
July 31, 2007

China Watch is a joint initiative of the Worldwatch Institute and Beijing-based Global Environmental Institute (GEI) and is supported by the blue moon fund.

The release of a landmark 2005 Green National Accounting study that calculates the environmental costs of China’s rapid economic development has been “postponed indefinitely,” according to Wang Jinnan, the head of the study group. Wang told China Youth Daily last Monday that disagreement between the two government departments that authored the report—China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)—over what to include and how to release this information was a major reason for the report’s delay. He noted that several participating local governments had also expressed reluctance in publicizing the data.

The goal of Green National Accounting, also known as Green Gross Domestic Product (Green GDP) accounting, is to measure the “true cost” of economic growth by deducting the costs of natural resources depletion and environmental degradation from traditional GDP calculations. But economists in China and elsewhere have faced a variety of methodological challenges in developing this approach, which has made the concept more attractive in theory than in practice.

Starting in 2004, SEPA and NBS launched a series of pilot projects in green GDP accounting in some 10 provinces and municipalities across China—at a time when no country in the world was using such an accounting system. According to the first official report, released last September, China’s economic losses from environmental pollution in 2004 totaled some 511.8 billion yuan (US$67.7 billion), or roughly 3.1 percent of GDP. But this represented only part of the true cost of environmental damage, the authors noted, due to limitations of technologies and data. A complete green GDP accounting system requires calculating costs of resource depletion and ecological damage that cannot typically be monetized, they said.

Earlier this month, NBS head Xie Fuzhan announced that the so-called “green GDP accounting system” in fact does not exist because there is no international standard available for the measurement. Xie also stressed that the Chinese government will continue with efforts to develop the accounting system. Wang, the study’s leader, however, believes that despite the deficiencies of the existing system, the reported results still provide a useful indication of China’s current environmental situation. He says the report’s publication would help local officials better understand the “hidden” costs of environmental degradation behind the nation’s rapid economic growth.

Saturday, 11. August 2007, 15:35:55

Environment, Economy

Wang Jiaquan
Worldwatch Institute
July 26, 2007

China Watch is a joint initiative of the Worldwatch Institute and Beijing-based Global Environmental Institute (GEI) and is supported by the blue moon fund.

For years, eastern China’s Jiangsu province has proudly led the rest of the country in economic production. With a population of 74 million, the province’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) leapfrogged from US$1,000 in 1996 to US$3,038 in 2005, making it the first province to exceed the US$3,000 mark, five years ahead of schedule. With merely 1 percent of China’s total land area, Jiangsu claims 15 percent of the country’s overall industrial output and 10 percent of its GDP.

But the country’s leading economic powerhouse is now forced to face its own environmental woes following a sudden outbreak of algae in Taihu Lakein southern Jiangsu. The algae bloom cut off the tap water supply to more than 2 million people in Wuxi City in late May.

In early July, a top provincial official called on the industrially booming region to sacrifice its GDP growth in order to balance the “green” deficit it owes to China’s third largest freshwater lake. After a series of intensive, high-profile efforts by the central government to address the lake’s pollution, Jiangsu Provincial Communist Party Secretary Li Yuanchao urged local officials to spare no efforts in cleaning up the water body, even at the cost of economic growth.

Friday, 10. August 2007, 15:27:27

Environment, Civil Society

Jianqiang Liu
Worldwatch Institute
June 19, 2007

China Watch is a joint initiative of the Worldwatch Institute and Beijing-based Global Environmental Institute (GEI) and is supported by the blue moon fund.

China’s worsening environmental crisis is catalyzing a growing environmental movement in which the public is resisting special interest groups and opposing the government’s environmentally “unfriendly” behaviors. More significantly, this movement represents a push toward greater democracy in the country, with the public fighting for its civil rights through protecting the environment.

Although citizens, NGOs, and journalists suffering from China’s deteriorating environment did not set out to turn their environmental efforts into a democracy movement, they have found more democratic space in the “green” realm. They are able to write articles, hold open forums, launch grassroots groups, and educate the public, influencing the behaviors of both the government and special interests. Rather than ideology, they have paid more attention to protecting individual environmental rights—breathing fresh air, drinking clean water, protecting the homeland, and conserving nature. Citizens also have more political space in the environmental arena because the government is undertaking parallel efforts to improve the environment.

Thursday, 9. August 2007, 17:59:45

Political Economy

By Lisa Margonelli
Wired
Issue 13.04 - April 2005

The People's Republic is on the fast track to become the car capital of the world. And the first alt-fuel superpower.

The Challenge Bibendum is the anti-Nascar, a road rally where dozens of cars, two-wheelers, and buses vroom the straightaways like a pack of DustBusters, cough out water vapor instead of sooty exhaust, and corner at peak speeds of 35 mph. Named for the morbidly obese mascot of Michelin, which sponsors the event, Bibendum is the proving ground for alternative-fuel and low-emissions vehicles.

For the first five years of its existence, the rally was staged in rich cities with bohemian tendencies - San Francisco, Heidelberg, Paris. But last fall Michelin brought the Bibendum to Shanghai. The booming Chinese auto market, which grew by 76 percent in 2003, is an obvious lure. It's a market still under central control - for the moment, anyway - which means that if Beijing wants to go green, it can go in a huge way. And so in Shanghai, Bibendum lost its utopian vibe. The stakes were simply too big: What will 1.3 billion people drive?

The answer, believes professor Huang Miao Hua, is an electric car prototype made by her students at the Wuhan University of Technology. The Aspire (not to be confused with the Ford compact car) is a giddy marriage of tadpole and pickup truck. The $12,000 target price includes a Linux OS, GPS, and an onboard bicycle. A bike? If you get stuck in gridlock, Huang explains, you can park the car and pedal instead. Think of it as a concept car for traffic jams. She pushes up the Aspire's door (it opens vertically, for parking in tight spots) and smiles. "Get in," she says. As it lumbers to a start, engine whining under the strain, my driver shouts, "It's got a few problems, but it feels good, doesn't it?"

In the West, clean cars mostly have been the toys of wealthy worrywarts - too expensive to be economical and too technically challenged to be cool. China's feeling an urgency that slower-growing countries don't face. The demand for oil is skyrocketing, rising even faster than the price. And here's the eye-opening stat: In the absence of new regulations, pollution-related illness will suck up as much as 15 percent of the country's gross domestic product by 2030.

China's central planners are throwing everything at the problems of fuel and pollution - hybrids, electric cars, propane taxis - all while building conventional cars and infrastructure at a furious pace. "There's a controversy about 'Green GDP' and how to grow," says He Dongquan, a transportation expert at the Energy Foundation in Beijing. "China's in a transition where everyone's mind is changing." Amid the hurly-burly, the only thing that's clear is the future, where hydrogen beckons.

China is already taking bold steps toward an alt-fuel future. In late 2003, Beijing mandated some of the world's toughest fuel-efficiency standards. China is even now one of the largest markets for alternative fuel vehicles, with 200,000 in service. In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing officials plan to convert their entire bus fleet of nearly 120,000 vehicles to run on compressed natural gas (CNG).

All this opens up vast opportunities for automakers. The major car manufacturers (with the exception of Honda) have come to Bibendum to show that they're ready to play China's game, whatever it turns out to be. Toyota will begin producing hybrid Priuses in Changchun by the end of the year. GM, which made 15 times more profit per sale in Asia than at home in 2003, will manufacture hybrid buses for Shanghai. "This will be the biggest market in the world by 2010," says Dongfeng Citroen chief Gilles Debonnet, standing beside a CNG car his company designed for Bibendum. "If we don't bring a [low-emissions] solution to the taxi market, then we can't stay."

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