For the rest, see Ponto Final, April 15 2015 & Ponto Final, April 19 2015
My original text in English:
On March 24th, the Politburo of the Communist Party of China (CPC) espoused the concept of “greenisation” (绿色化) for the first time ever. In a powerful push, at the highest echelon of Party politics, all of a sudden, the need to develop a “conservation culture” is being embedded in the “new four modernisations” (industrialisation, urbanisation, informatisation and modernisation of the agriculture), the alpha and omega of the CPC as defined by the 18th Party Congress of 2012. This is no small feat even though we are still short of pragmatic details and policy-making, and yet it has gone fairly unnoticed.
The very fact that greenisation appears to be meant to cut through the “new four modernisations” should have raised a few eyebrows.
First of all because these revamped magic four are a direct reference to Deng Xiaoping’s own “four modernisations” that launched the “opening up and reform” era back in November 1978. They are thus symbolically powerful and meaningful. For the present leadership, both the ambition and the imperative are of the same magnitude as it was at the end of the 1970s: the survival of China’s model depends on its ability to adapt and several indicators have already shown that the economic drivers of the past three reformist decades are dwindling, hence the need for a vast overhaul that will put both (shrinking) human resources and capital investment (with diminishing returns) to a better use.
Secondly, the crucial need to develop a “conservation culture” is supposed to infuse a new momentum to some of the priorities already defined and appears to be taking overall precedence: the greenisation of China is to be the one of its “production, economy and lifestyles” as a whole. “Green development” implies to go beyond the mere “promotion of sustainable development” as one of the eight tasks for the “deepening of economic reform” as defined by the Third Plenum of the Congress in November 2013. And “green development” is not only being embedded in the general program that ambitions to fix the engine of growth, stabilise the economy and better the quality of life of the citizens, but is also seen as being “part of national soft power and a new advantage in international competition”.
Finally, a decision made by the Politburo itself regarding a shift of that nature should not be downplayed, especially because Xi Jinping’s “strong leadership” style follows a pattern we could ourselves characterise as a shrivelled version of democratic centralism. Mr Xi’s interpretation of Lenin’s “freedom of discussion, unity of action” is quite restrictive and, as already noted by several perceptive observers of Chinese politics, in the two crucial areas of security and economic reforms the Politburo itself is dominated by two “super organs” created in late 2013 and both of them are chaired by President Xi himself: the Central National Security Commission and the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms.
The seriousness of China’s environmental upheavals is now widely acknowledged, both inside and outside of the country, and is proving to be quite challenging as well as extremely sensitive. The success of Chai Qing’s “Under the Dome” documentary at the time of the convening of the National People’s Congress is more than telling. This often very personal 103-minute video detailing the appalling air pollution problem faced by China produced by a renowned investigative journalist and financed out of her own purse had been seen 100 million times in just 48 hours before it was removed from the popular video-hosting website Youku. No doubt that this Ted-talk style report nourished by dreary statistics à la Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and jaw-dropping interviews with admittedly powerless local officials might have proved a (too) perfect enthusing illustration of Premier that Li Keqiang’s own characterisation of pollution as being “a blight on people's lives”.
A World Bank study indicates that the overall cost of China’s degraded environment corresponds to 9% of its Gross Domestic Product, and a recent Tsinghua University study concludes that tiny particulate pollutants were linked to 670,000 premature deaths from strokes, lung cancer, coronary heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 2012 alone! ! No wonder then that the reforming of the “ecological systems” in China appeared in the first sentence of the broad-sweeping economic reform plan of November 2013 issued during the Third Plenum! In one of the few studies that have looked precisely and comprehensively into the substance of all the reforms publicised by the new leadership, Daniel Rosen goes to great lengths in showing that indeed the authorities have been busy making these announcements a reality by setting in motion “populist campaigns against polluting facilities, energy and coal policy reforms, a revamped environmental protection law and [stepping-up] regulatory activism”. But, partly thanks to often self-imposed greater transparency in actual reporting, the fact remains that the situation has worsened, that extremely polluting coal remains king and environmental protection comes a distant second behind the constraints to deliver GDP growth and economic performance, especially at local level.
Since January 1st 2015, China is equipped with regulatory standards widely recognized as being both extremely progressive and stringent. And yet, watchful observers Bo Zhang and Cong Cao warn us in the journal Nature that the brand new Environmental Protection Law could easily be confronted by four kinds of adverse “gaps”: first, being outclassed by other pieces of specific legislation dealing with agriculture, forestry, grassland and water; second, being “hampered by the fragmented and overlapping structure of environmental governance”; third, being crippled by the lack of acknowledgment of “citizens’ basic right to an environment fit for life”; and fourth, because enforcement could easily be contravened “by a lack of capacity and by conflicts of interest”. In conclusion, they argue that this very promising law thus now “requires robust implementation mechanisms, accountability regimes and institutional arrangements”, and they concur with Alex Wang from the University of California (Los Angeles) that environmental protection needs to be raised to “a level of priority previously reserved only for the most important party-state mandates, such as economic growth, social stability, and the one-child policy.” Could the “greenisation” concept vouched by the Politburo be it?
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