Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (69 page)

almost all the raw material for the paper and pulp industry and also the panels and lumber for the construction industry. But a growing gap has been developing between China's increasing demand for wood products
and its declining domestic supply, especially since the national logging ban went into effect after the floods of 1998. Hence China's wood imports have
increased six-fold since the ban. As an importer of tropical lumber from
countries on all three continents that span the tropics (especially from
Malaysia, Gabon, Papua New Guinea, and Brazil), China now stands second
only to Japan, which it is rapidly overtaking. It also imports timber from the
temperate zone, especially from Russia, New Zealand, the U.S., Germany,
and Australia. With China's entrance into the World Trade Organization,
those timber imports are expected to increase even more, because tariffs on
wood products are about to be reduced from a rate of 15-20% to 2-3%. In
effect, this means that China, like Japan, will be conserving its own forests, but only by exporting deforestation to other countries, several of which (including Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and Australia) have already reached
or are on the road to catastrophic deforestation.

Potentially more important than all of these other impacts is a rarely
discussed consequence of the aspirations of China's people, like other peo
ple in developing countries, to a First World lifestyle. That abstract phrase
means many specific things to an individual Third World citizen: acquiring a house, appliances, utensils, clothes, and consumer products manufactured commercially by energy-consuming processes, not made at home or locally
by hand; having access to manufactured modern medicines, and to doctors
and dentists educated and equipped at much expense; eating abundant
food grown at high production rates with synthetic fertilizers, not with ani
mal manure or plant mulches; eating some industrially processed food;
traveling by motor vehicle (preferably one's own car), not by walking or bi
cycle; and having access to other products manufactured elsewhere and ar
riving by motor vehicle transport, not just to local products carried to
consumers. All Third World peoples of whom I am aware
—even those try
ing to retain or re-create some of their traditional lifestyle—also value at
least some elements of this First World lifestyle.

The global consequences of everybody aspiring to the lifestyle currently
enjoyed by First World citizens are well illustrated by China, because it com
bines the world's largest population with the fastest-growing economy. To
tal productions or consumptions are products of population sizes times
per-capita production or consumption rates. For China, those total produc
tions are already high because of its huge population, and despite its per-

capita rates still being very low: for instance, only 9% of per-capita consumption rates of the leading industrial countries in the case of four major
industrial metals (steel, aluminum, copper, and lead). But China is pro
gressing rapidly towards its goal of achieving a First World economy. If
China's per-capita consumption rates do rise to First World levels, and
even if nothing else about the world changed
—e.g., even if population and
production/consumption rates everywhere else remained unchanged—
then that production/consumption rate increase alone would translate (as multiplied by China's population) into an increase in total
world
produc
tion or consumption of 94% in that same case of industrial metals. In other
words, China's achievement of First World standards will approximately
double the entire world's human resource use and environmental impact.
But it is doubtful whether even the world's current human resource use and
impact can be sustained. Something has to give way. That is the strongest
reason why China's problems automatically become the world's problems.

China's leaders used to believe that humans can and should conquer Na
ture, that environmental damage was a problem affecting only capitalist
societies, and that socialist societies were immune to it. Now, facing overwhelming signs of China's own severe environmental problems, they know
better. The shift in thinking began as early as 1972, when China sent a dele
gation to the First United Nations Conference on the Human Environment.
The year 1973 saw the establishment of the government's so-called Leading
Group for Environmental Protection, which morphed in 1998 (the year of
the great floods) into the State Environmental Protection Administration.
In 1983 environmental protection was declared a basic national principle
—
in theory. In reality, although much effort has been made to control environmental degradation, economic development still takes priority and
remains the chief criterion for evaluating government officials' perfor
mance. Many environmental protection laws and policies that have been adopted on paper are not effectively implemented or enforced.

What does the future hold for China? Of course, the same question
arises everywhere in the world: the development of environmental prob
lems is accelerating, the development of attempted solutions is also acceler
ating, which horse will win the race? In China this question has special
urgency, not only because of China's already-discussed scale and impact on
the world, but also because of a feature of Chinese history that may be
termed "lurching." (I use this term in its neutral strict sense of "swaying

suddenly from side to side," not in its pejorative sense of the gait of a drunk person.) By this metaphor, I am thinking of what seems to me the most dis
tinctive feature of Chinese history, which I discussed in my earlier book
Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Because of geographic factors
—such as China's relatively smooth coastline, its lack of major peninsulas as large as Italy and
Spain/Portugal, its lack of major islands as large as Britain and Ireland, and its parallel-flowing major rivers—China's geographic core was unified already in 221
b.c.
and has remained unified for most of the time since then, whereas geographically fragmented Europe has never been unified politi
cally. That unity enabled China's rulers to command changes over a larger
area than any European ruler could ever command—both changes for the
better, and changes for the worse, often in rapid alternation (hence "lurching"). China's unity and decisions by emperors may contribute to explain
ing why China at the time of Renaissance Europe developed the world's best
and largest ships, sent fleets to India and Africa, and then dismantled those
fleets and left overseas colonization to much smaller European states; and
why China began, and then did not pursue, its own incipient industrial
revolution.

The strengths and risks of China's unity have persisted into recent times,
as China continues to lurch on major policies affecting its environment and
its population. On the one hand, China's leaders have been able to solve
problems on a scale scarcely possible for European and American leaders: for instance, by mandating a one-child policy to reduce population growth, and by ending logging nationally in 1998. On the other hand, China's lead
ers have also succeeded in creating messes on a scale scarcely possible for
European and American leaders: for instance, by the chaotic transition of
the Great Leap Forward, by dismantling the national educational system in
the Cultural Revolution, and (some would say) by the emerging environ
mental impacts of the three megaprojects.

As for the outcome of China's current environmental problems, all one
can say for sure is that things will get worse before they get better, because of
time lags and the momentum of damage already under way. One big factor
acting both for the worse and for the better is the anticipated increase in
China's international trade as a result of its joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), thereby lowering or abolishing tariffs and increasing exports
and imports of cars, textiles, agricultural products, and many other com
modities. Already, China's export industries tend to send manufactured fin
ished products overseas and to leave in China the pollutants involved in
their manufacture; there will presumably now be more of that. Some of

China's imports, such as garbage and cars, have already been bad for the en
vironment; there may be more of that too. On the other hand, some coun
tries belonging to the WTO adhere to environmental standards much
stricter than China's, and that will force China to adopt those international standards as a condition of its exports being admitted by those countries.
More agricultural imports may permit China to decrease its use of fertiliz
ers, pesticides, and low-productivity cropland, while importation of oil and
natural gas will let China decrease pollution from its burning of coals. A two-edged consequence of WTO membership may be that, by increasing
imports and thereby decreasing Chinese domestic production, it will merely
enable China to transfer environmental damage from China itself to over
seas, as has already happened in the shift from domestic logging to im
ported timber (thereby in effect paying countries other than China to suffer
the harmful consequences of deforestation).

A pessimist will note many dangers and bad harbingers already operat
ing in China. Among generalized dangers, economic growth rather than en
vironmental protection or sustainability is still China's priority. Public
environmental awareness is low, in part because of China's low investment
in education, less than half that of First World countries as a proportion
of gross national production. With 20% of the world's population, China
accounts for only 1% of the world's outlay on education. A college or uni
versity education for children is beyond the means of most Chinese par
ents, because one year's tuition would consume the average salary of one
city worker or three rural workers. China's existing environmental laws
were largely written piecemeal, lack effective implementation and evaluation of long-term consequences, and are in need of a systems approach: for
instance, there is no overall framework for protection of China's rapidly vanishing wetlands, despite individual laws affecting them. Local officials of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) are ap
pointed by local governments rather than by upper-level officials of the
SEPA itself, so that local governments often block enforcement of national
environmental laws and regulations. Prices for important environmental
resources are set so low as to encourage waste: e.g., a ton of Yellow River wa
ter for use in irrigation costs only between Vio and Vioo of a small bottle of
spring water, thereby removing any financial incentive for irrigation farm
ers to conserve water. Land is owned by the government and is leased by
farmers, but may be leased to a series of different farmers within a short
time span, so that farmers lack incentive to make long-term investments in
their land or to take good care of it.

The Chinese environment also faces more specific dangers. Already un
der way are a big increase in the number of cars, the three megaprojects,
and the rapid disappearance of wetlands, whose harmful consequences will
continue to accumulate in the future. The projected decrease in Chinese
household size to 2.7 people by the year 2015 will add 126 million new
households (more than the total number of U.S. households), even if
China's population size itself remains constant. With growing affluence and
hence growing meat and fish consumption, environmental problems from
meat production and aquaculture, such as pollution from all the animal
and fish droppings and eutrophication from uneaten feed for fish, will in
crease. Already, China is the world's largest producer of aquaculture-grown
food, and is the sole country in which more fish and aquatic foods are ob
tained from aquaculture than from wild fisheries. The world consequences
of China's catching up to First World levels of meat consumption exemplify
the broader issue, which I already illustrated by metal consumption, of the current gap between per-capita First World and Third World consumption and production rates. China will of course not tolerate being told not to as
pire to First World levels. But the world cannot sustain China and other Third World countries and current First World countries all operating at
First World levels.

Offsetting all of those dangers and discouraging signs, there are also im
portant promising signs. Both WTO membership and the impending 2008
Olympic Games in China have spurred the Chinese government to pay
more attention to environmental problems. For instance, a $6 billion "green
wall" or tree belt is now under development around Beijing to protect the
city against dust and sandstorms. To reduce air pollution in Beijing, its city
government ordered that motor vehicles be converted to permit the use of natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas. China phased out lead in gasoline
in little more than a year, something that Europe and the U.S. took many
years to achieve. It recently decided to establish fuel efficiency minima for automobiles, including even SUVs. New cars are required to meet exacting
emission standards prevailing in Europe.

China is already making a big effort to protect its outstanding biodiver
sity with 1,757 nature reserves covering 13% of its land area, not to mention
all of its zoos, botanical gardens, wildlife breeding centers, museums, and
gene and cell banks. China uses some distinctive, environmentally friendly,
traditional technologies on a large scale, such as the common South Chi
nese practice of raising fish in irrigated rice fields. That recycles the fish droppings as natural fertilizer, increases rice production, uses fish to control