Why China cannot fight pollution and climate change

[Simon]

Panos Mourdoukoutas has written this opinion piece on Forbes.com about why he believes China cannot fight pollution. According to him the problem is:

"The problem, however, is, that by contrast to the US where the polluters are private companies, in China, by and large the polluters are government companies—State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and Town Village Enterprises (TVEs). This means that the government as owner and manager of these enterprises is part of the problem it is called to address."

What do you think about this? Is state-ownership of energy companies and factories a problem?

Personally I am a bit skeptical to this argument. I would think that this state-ownership is exactly WHY China can fight climate change and pollution. The Chinese government has direct control, and does not need to implement controls through a painfully slow legislation process. This allows them to respond to changes in their economy much more quickly.

[zararina]

I think they should make fighting for pollution their priority than earning a lot from those businesses in order to see improvement on their environment. Often or might sometimes, major target are to produce revenues and that could mean on any means. Just like even some natural resources are should be used for that goal.

[joeldgreat]

China government are making all its best to fed up more than 2 billion Chinese people. Its making drastic move to boost-up its economy and now making a giant step in the world international community. The problem maybe is that there are some neglect on the government's policy towards environmental protection.

[Simon]

China government are making all its best to fed up more than 2 billion Chinese people. Its making drastic move to boost-up its economy and now making a giant step in the world international community. The problem maybe is that there are some neglect on the government's policy towards environmental protection.

That's a good point. China today is the world's number one polluter. But the country has a huge population and so they still have a low per capita level of pollution, especially compared to countries such as the USA. And the majority of the production that generates the waste and pollution in China comes from factories (many owned by Western corporations) producing products intended for and consumed by the Western markets.

And China is currently investing more in renewable energy than many Western countries. They are spending $12.6 million every hour to green their economy! China is actually investing twice as much as USA to green their economy. And this despite the fact that the US economy is so much bigger than China's.

[greenman]

The only way we can begin to tackle the problem of climate change is to nationalise the key sectors of the economy under workers' control. We can then begin to plan production harmoniously with earth. Resources need to be pooled together and planned on a global scale.

The capitalists love planning, they plan production to the nth degree in their factory, enabling them to make profit, yet they oppose the idea of planning on a national and international scale because they will not profit from it.

[supergirl]

And China is currently investing more in renewable energy than many Western countries. They are spending $12.6 million every hour to green their economy! China is actually investing twice as much as USA to green their economy. And this despite the fact that the US economy is so much bigger than China's.

That's an interesting fact, that I bet most people are not aware of!

I agree that due to state ownership it would be easier for China to make drastic changes to it's environmental and economical structure.. in my opinion. However I bet there are a lot of factors that we are not taking into account.