Part of Thomas Friedman’s opinion piece (in The New York Times) on China and Energy is reported below –
“As a result, there is a dawning awareness that if China is to break its own addiction to oil, it will take a much more fundamental shift from the growth model that powered its first 30 years. That model was based on two linked ideas: 1) energy was inexhaustible, inexpensive and benign; and 2) China could count on raising its living standards by forever being the world’s low-cost manufacturing workshop, based on cheap energy.
In recent years, though, fossil-fuel energy has become expensive, exhaustible and toxic, and rising wages — to some extent because of rising environmental considerations and social security requirements — have meant that the workshops of southern China are no longer the low-cost producers in Asia. Vietnam and Western China now beckon.
The only way forward, say officials, is for China to gradually develop a cleaner, knowledge-based, service/finance economy. It has to move from “made in China” to “designed in China” to “imagined in China.” In short, the economy here has to become greener and smarter. (Sound familiar?)
In 1992, China’s coastal economic powerhouses hit a similar wall when they found they could not grow further without the government loosening travel restrictions to attract workers from all over China. So, more personal freedom to move around China was unleashed then. Now, these same provinces need to allow more “mind movement” to get to the next level.
The problem for the ruling Communist Party is this: China can’t have a greener society without empowering citizens to become watchdogs and allowing them to sue local businesses and governments that pollute, and it can’t have a more knowledge-intensive innovation society without a freer flow of information and experimentation.
What surprised me is how much the party is thinking about all this. I actually came here at the invitation of Wang Yang, the Communist Party secretary, i.e. the boss of Guangdong Province. He had read one of my books on globalization in Chinese.”
Tags: China, Energy and Environment, Energy needs, Energy security, Energy sources, The New York Times
