China’s economic growth has come at a high price: environmental and natural resource destruction. Presently, China’s legal system is not prepared to protect China’s environmental resources.Inefficient resource use, population pressure and economic growth have put China's environment under severe stress. Inadequate resources for upgrading technology and for enforcing regulations and inadequate incentives for improving environmental performance have resulted in environmental degradation despite progress in establishing environmental policies and administrative structures. Economic restructuring may improve resource allocation and reduce waste, but also poses risks if the need to employ laid-off workers results in continued lax enforcement of environmental regulations. The relationship between economic development and natural environment is shown as follows: first is the impact of economic development on the natural environment, including extortion of natural resources and spaces to enjoy the eco-system services, discharge waste into the environment; second is the counteraction of natural environment on human being, including limitation of resources and environmental on human’s economic development; negative impact of natural disasters, environmental pollution and ecological degradation on the economy.
Statistics from the National Development and Reform Commission show that China's economic development has been very strong in the recent 50 years, particularly in the last 20 years, and is related to growing trade with overseas countries as well. Since 1949, China's GDP has increased by 10 times, which was a remarkable achievement, and consumption of mineral resources has also increased by over 40 times. According to the study Ren Haiping (2007), China's economic growth has gone through an unprecedented 20 years from 1985 to 2004, GDP’s average annual growth rate is about 8.7 percent, and is still growing, a period often called the most glorious history of China. However, China has paid a high price for these achievements, particularly in the ultra-conventional use of natural resources and extraordinary loss of eco-environment. Since 1980, energy efficiency has always been China's national policy. Still, in the late 90's, the rate of increase in energy demand was 1.5 times that of economic growth per year, and China’s energy consumption was more than three times that of the world average to produce per dollar of GDP. And Alice Hams den (1996) point out that the pollution of environment is uncontrollable, especially waterways pollution, include inland and coastal. And it also costs enormous to clean up the pollution. Furthermore, John Warburton and Leo Horn (2007) suggest that China has a bad prospect. The environmental crisis of China’s threatens the domestic growth of future. According to research by the World Bank, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and a team of international experts, the combined economic costs and human health impacts costs of outdoor air and water pollution for China’s economy amounts to around $US100 billion a year, or about 5.8 per cent of the country’s GDP.Other estimates range from 3 to 20 per cent, the comment from China’s President, Hu Jintao, that China’s economic growth is depended on an excessively high cost of resources and the environment.
According to Yang Xingguan (2006), the rapid economic growth has resulted in over- use and over-exploitation of natural resources and destruction of the eco-system. And Xia Guang, Pei Xiaofei and Yang Xiaoming (2008) point out the economic growth in addition interacts with natural environment, population, industrialization, urbanization and energy. And its scale, speed and modes have been closely related to the causes and characteristics of environmental problems. All these cause the severe environmental problems of China. Such problems as destructions of land and forests resources as well as waste of water resources are increasingly serious, plus environmental pollution caused by industrial and agricultural waste water and gas, and the emission of waste residue and the use of chemical fertilizer, are all closely related to the economic development.
Qu Yan (2009) said, in recent years, with the accelerated progress of industrialization and urbanization, more land resources should be objectively offered for industrial manufacturing, infrastructure and urban construction. But in terms of management, some local governments pursue political achievement unilateralism by abuse of land, and take land resources as a local "primitive accumulation" and fiscal resources of government consumption, and also they take much advantages in the transform of land-use and a large number of added values of land capital for their primitive accumulation, resulting in the unreasonable utilization of land resources, especially in grim situation of farmland protection.Only about half of the area in China is habitable. so the most population among 1.3 billion lives around the arable land, which only accounts for 7% of the world. The development of industrialization and urbanization has exacerbated the seriousness of environmental problems. In the past 20 years, about 200 million people migrated from the rural to urban areas. It’s estimated that by 2020, 300 million people will migrate, which will cause increase in demand of residential land and put land resources on unprecedented serious situation.China's current per capita cultivated land is about 1.5 Mu1, less than half of the world average, and the arable land is still in decrease at the speed of ten million acres per year. According to the latest statistics by the Ministry of Land and Resources of P.R.C., during the last 7 years, China's total arable land has been reduced by 1 million Mu, and more than 600 counties and cities have less than 0.8 acres per capita which is below the warning level of the world per capita arable land.
China's industrialization begins after the developed countries. Yang Dongping (2006) point out, as China unilaterally supported economic growth during the traditional process of industrialization, and by long-term use of extensive economy growth mode which requires high material consumption, high energy consumption and high pollution, great damages was caused to the eco-environment. This extensive economic growth mode has resulted in an over-emission of waste and environmental pollution, and even aggravates shortage of energy and resources. In a study of study the relationship between the environment and economic growth, Tao song(2008)using Chinese provincial waste water and solid wastes and GDP data over 1985–2005, finds that economic growth is fast, but the problems of environmental pollution are becoming increasingly severe.
At present, China is paying the fiddler in respect of environment for the rapid development of the economy, and potential contradictions have emerged continuously, including environmental pollution and ecological imbalance. Ecological degradation puts China involved in environmental issues, constraining its sustainable economic development. Even in agriculture, it has done great damage on environment. Liangzhi You (2010) shows that with the increase in grain yields, it results in much environmental degradation. Furthermore, as the increasing demand of grain, it drives the intensive use of physical input. In return, the intensive use also leads to environmental degradation, such as soil degradation, water scarcity and severe pollution.
Water pollution has become the main factor that harms the public health.The water resource per capita is 2140 cubic meters in China, only a quarter of the world's average, ranking 110th among the world’s poorest countries of low water resources per capita. Pang Pengsha (2004) points out that in 2004, China reported 753 incidents of water pollution, for which industrial waste plays the main role, and meanwhile, the non-degradable and toxic chemicals in the agricultural waste, sewage and solid waste have caused serious damage to soil and underground water resources. Small rural industries cause a serious water pollution problem in China. Water pollution and water shortages are"China’s No. 1 environmental problem.”One report indicates that the groundwater aquifers in 90% of Chinese cities are polluted, and more than 75% of surface water in urban areas is unsuitable for drinking and fishing.This leaves hundreds of millions of people without access to safe drinking water.Worse still, the Chinese government has categorized almost thirty percent of the country’s river water as unsuitable to use even for agriculture or industry.These high levels of water pollution result primarily from the use of dirty industrial processes without modern environmental controls combined with rampant industrial irresponsibility.In fact, "water pollution is so widespread that regulators say a major incident occurs every other day".In addition, more than forty percent of China’s cities do not have a sewage treatment plant.The lack of sewers and general scarcity of clean water cause “nearly 700 million people [to] drink water contaminated with animal and human waste.”Major instances of water pollution only exacerbate the country’s increasing water shortages. The country is so large that the availability of water varies depending on the region: the country’s northern region faces profound water shortages, while in the south there is often destructive flooding.The water quality of over half of all river sections monitored for water quality are rated as unsafe for human consumption, and the serious water pollution costs several per cent of GDP in estimation. In 2004, pollution incidents in three cities in Tuojiang Sichuan affected millions of people’s drinking water, and caused economic loss of about 200 million Yuan.
At present, China has entered the stage of heavy chemical industry. One of the features of this stage is that the energy and resources demand will rapidly increase for reason that the fast growing industries like machinery, automobile, iron and steel consume high energy. The energy consumption of industrial sectors accounts for more than 70% of the total, while the energy-consuming industries such as iron and steel, nonferrous metals, chemicals, building materials consume 70% energy of the total, i.e. energy consumption of China’s high-energy industries almost accounts for half of the total. The large-scale expansion of these low-level industry results in the intense situation of China's energy and important raw material supply. In addition to the consumption of energy and raw materials, the current development mode has also caused great damage to the environment. At present, the local GDP growth is at the cost of the sacrificing of natural environment.Considering increase rate of generating capacity, Fan Jitao (2007) said that power shortage in China is the result of extensive use of electricity rather than supply shortage to a large extend. Power consumed by the vast majority of steel companies in China for production of per ton steel is much higher than that in the United States and Japan. Even hydropower plants, thermal power plants and other power supply companies waste a lot of energy themselves during production, for instance, hydro-electric power plant wastes 10% of electricity within the plant. Also, not high average level of quality of the population and low awareness of environmental protection, energy-saving and consumption reduction lead to excessive waste,causing pollution
Air pollution is not just a problem in Beijing; throughout the country citizens breathe unhealthy air. Particulate matter is one major air pollutant that makes China’s air quality unhealthy. Particulate matter is a result of diesel exhaust, coal-fired power plants, and other sources. It is suspected to be the cause of “up to 90 percent of all deaths from outdoor air pollution.” Other problematic air pollutants include nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. The emission of sulfur dioxide, principally caused by coal burning, leads to acid rains,and “China is now the largest source of SO2 emissions in the world.”Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a serious problem both nationally and internationally. One-third of China is affected by acid rain and neighboring countries have blamed China for acid rain occurrence within their borders which caused indirect economic loss.The irrational emission method also exacerbates the severity of air pollution. There is a large amount of greenhouse gas emitted, so if amount of greenhouse gas emitted were to continue to increase, then the temperature will increase even higher, and higher temperature will cause glaciers melting,bringing about flood and risk of freshwater resources shortage. Therefore, the coal-dominated energy structure cost too much considering the environmental and ecological benefits. It is estimated that China's annual economic losses is as high as 95 billion U.S. dollars because of the air pollution which has become a threat to human health. China exemplifies the extreme pollution that comes with industrialization. Also, it is a known fact that 750,000 people in China die prematurely due to air pollution.
The environmental problem is restricting the economic development. The World Bank estimated that China’s air and water pollution caused it lose 8 percent of GDP in 1995; according to Survey Western Ecological report, the ecological destroy caused direct economic loss of 13% local GDP in 2001; experts from Chinese Academy of Sciences estimated that the environmental pollution and ecological destroy caused 15% GDP loss in 2003.Experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences estimated that the pre-development cost of energy, transportation, communications, environmental protection, ecological construction and other infrastructure construction is 1/4 higher than the world average, including 10% for inherent fragility of the environment, 7% for the environmental pollution, 4% for the irrational structure and mismanagement respectively. High development costs will for sure affect the economic development and competitiveness.
Also,environmental problems harm people’s health and social stability. The environment is closely related to human health. According to the international research results, the level of environmental pollution is positively correlated with the cancer and respiratory system diseases. According to the United Nations Development Program 2002 Human Development Report in China, the population dying of lung cancer at the serious air-polluted regions is 4.7-8.8 times than that at good air regions.By the studying of Wen Zongguo (2007), it is 435.2 billion Yuan, 4% of China's GDP that the total loss from air pollution in 2002; and for water pollution, it is 650 billion Yuan, 6.1% of GDP; for noise pollution, it is 1.6 billion Yuan. And the total cost of environmental pollution is 1092 billion Yuan, 10.2% of GDP in 2002.
In conclusion,China’s rapid growth is based on high energy consumption, high pollution emission and perhaps over-reliance on the increase in investment. The relationship between economic development and environmental protection is not only unity but also inverse and contradictions between the two may be solved by a compromising solution.High consumption of resources is the main reason for environmental pollution. In the production process, only parts of raw materials have been transformed into products, with the remaining parts being wasted and discharged into the environment, causing environmental pollution such as air and water pollution.This has also caused the GDP of the country to go down because of these problems.Hence,although having more factories boost the economics growth,it also brings about escalating pollution that has cause the people to suffer from various diseases or factors.Hence China is facing a dilemma in whether to pursue higher economic growth so that the country would prosper or to slower the rate of the pollution for the benefit of the people's health.
Sources:
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:512687/FULLTEXT01.pdf
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brian_Finlayson2/publication/6482897_Rural_industries_and_water_pollution_in_China/file/e0b49529ce47dd010b.pdf
http://www.glica.org/topics/show/53
http://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/522/18PacRimLPolyJ155.pdf?sequence=1
http://www.apcss.org/Publications/Report_China's_%20Internal__Challenges_00.html
Done by:Winnie Ho(19)
2G
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