A Beijing scientist is being criticised for supposedly suggesting a levy on exhaling carbon dioxide. Li Taige explores whether the Chinese public is huffing and puffing over nothing.

Source: ChinaDialogue

Public faith in scientists seems to be in decline in China, as evidenced by the huge controversy arising from a recent speech by a Beijing ecologist.

Jiang Youxu is a scientist with the Research Institute of Forest Ecology, Environment and Protection at the Chinese Academy of Forestry, as well as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Speaking at the China Forest and City Forum in Guangzhou on November 18, he described the significance of forests for the urban ecosystem.

After the forum, the Chinese public was presented with a new concept: a “breathing tax”. Jiang – branded a villain for wanting to inflict such a tax on average city-dwellers – immediately became the target of criticism and abuse on the Internet.

One online songwriter even came up with the “The Breathing Tax Song”, to the tune of a classic hit by the late pop star Teresa Tang (Deng Lijun):

Academician Jiang, named Youxu,
proposes a carbon tax on you,
for we are all a pollution source
and living makes you a criminal force.

Guangzhou’s New Bulletin was one of the first media outlets to report on Jiang’s speech. In an article that was soon to be widely republished, it said: “Yesterday, at the China Forest and City Forum held in Guangzhou, member of the Chinese Academy of Science Jiang Youxu called for the government to consider imposing an environmental tax on businesses or even CO2-emitting citizens … Jiang believes that since all citizens are emitters of CO2 [carbon dioxide], they should pay the costs of reducing energy use and cutting emissions”. Jiang was then quoted as saying: “Making citizens contribute 20 yuan [US$3] to an environmental fund every month could be considered.”

The Guangzhou reporter seems to have confused environmental taxes and environmental funds. In my experience as a science reporter, Chinese media reports sometimes misinterpret what scientists say.

According to the original audio transcription of Jiang’s speech, his actual words were: “As urban forests have so many obvious beneficial functions, shouldn’t we further consider the idea of an environmental tax? … [Since] every city-dweller is putting out carbon, we could give 10 or 20 yuan to a fund [and] this money could be used for reforestation, or businesses could use the money from the taxes to plant urban forests.”

Contrary to assertions, then, it seems that Jiang did not mention a “breathing tax”. Unfortunately for him, however, online media outlets republished the report with an embellished headline designed to attract readership and attention: “Academic calls for ‘breathing tax’, 20 yuan per person per month to protect the environment”.

I have to admire the editor who came up with this idea of a “breathing tax”. As clever as it may be, however, the contribution of our respiration to total CO2 emissions is minute compared to other sources of greenhouse-gas emissions, such as cars, industry and power generation. The phrase “breathing tax” has only misled and angered the public, as there would be no way to escape such a tax. Clearly, this is not what Jiang intended.

What he actually proposed was a fund to which citizens could contribute voluntarily, with the proceeds used to plant forests and offset carbon emissions. In fact, China already has something similar – the China Green Carbon Fund, launched by the State Forestry Administration and the China Green Foundation.

Founded in July 2007, the China Green Carbon Fund is a national public investment scheme which does not, and cannot, force the public to donate on a monthly basis. It aims to provide a platform for businesses, groups and individuals to participate in climate-change mitigation measures such as tree-planting, forest creation and forest management. The China National Petroleum Corporation made the first donation of 300 million yuan (US$44 million).

Of course, some say that Jiang’s “20 yuan per person per month” is no different from an environmental tax and argue that he has not considered the varying responsibilities for emissions between China’s rich and poor. However, Jiang is one of the 12 members of the National Climate Change Expert Committee -- a climate change think tank – and undoubtedly is aware of the divide between rich and poor in China. How could he suggest collecting the same level of emissions tax from all?

If he had suggested such a thing, then perhaps the abuse he has received was not undeserved. However, the question remains: did the media accurately and objectively report his actual speech?

To an extent, the fuss over the “breathing tax” reflects both sloppy reporting and a lack of in-depth knowledge regarding climate change among Chinese media workers.

But more importantly, the whole story demonstrates the chasm that separates scientists, the news media and the public. China’s press has a lot of work to do on reporting accurately about climate change.

@SciPark.CN

@SciPark.CN

An official on the roof of the world

Global warming worsens the environmental changes that threaten the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau.  A local government official tells how he plans to cope with unprecedented challenges.

ChinaDialogue 中外对话

How does a Tibetan government official view the challenges of climate change? Last September I found out when I toured Tibet with several colleagues.

Three hundred kilometres from Lhasa, on the northern Tibetan plateau, lies the prefecture of Nagqu. It was our first port of call, since the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture runs a climate research project here.

Lin Erda, the project head and a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Population, Resources and Environment Committee, put us in touch with Gyaltsen Wangdrak, deputy chief of Nagqu prefecture. Lin had met Wangdrak at a grasslands protection conference in 2003, and had been impressed by his report on environmental issues facing the northern Tibetan plateau.

The northern Tibetan plateau is 4,500 metres above sea level on average. The Yangtze River, the Nu River and the Lancang River all rise here, and the area accounts for almost one-tenth of China’s grasslands. However, the grasslands have suffered major degradation in recent years.

Lin decided to work with Wangdrak and use satellite data to monitor the extent of the damage to the Nagqu grasslands. This data allowed them to draw up ecological functional zones for the area. They divided it into protection zones, areas in need of improvement, zones needing control and development zones. It was the first such proposal in Tibet, but could it actually be implemented? According to Wangdrak, the proposal was distributed to every local government official in his prefecture and it has become the “theoretical basis of planning for land use, environmental protection and construction.”

But the cooperation between Nagqu and CAAS did not always run smoothly: the researchers initially ran tests of the grassland’s livestock carrying capacity under different climate and ecological conditions. Wangdrak explained that this would allow predictions of carrying capacity to be provided to herders “just like weather forecasts”. But after the completion of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, the prefecture decided to use that land to build a large distribution center. “For me it was like a television reporter losing his camera,” he says.

The tests were relocated to Amdo county, which is 5,000 metres above sea level and not far from the Tanggula Pass. Here they became part of a national science and technology project on adaptation to climate change in the northern Tibetan “ecological buffer zone.”

As we headed north along the Qinghai-Tibet highway to Anduo, we saw bare patches of soil on both sides of the road. Wangdrak explained these were evidence of the grasslands’ deterioration. Herding is an important part of Nagqu’s economy, but climate change, over-grazing and pests have caused severe damage. The satellite data showed that half of the grasslands were degraded in 2004, totalling 320 million mu (213,300 square kilometres). Over 60 million mu (40,000 square kilometres) were classed as severely degraded or very severely degraded.

Wangdrak and his colleagues want to make sure things do not get worse. As we drove through the patchy grasslands, he told us about an experiment to take water from the head of the Nu River to use in sprinklers. These and other demonstration measures, principally planting, fertilisation and pest extermination, are designed to gradually restore grassland fertility. He hopes these demonstrations will form part of a proposal for dealing with climate change that can be implemented by herders on the plateau.

“Global warming is a major influence on environmental change in the grasslands,” Wangdrak says. All we can do is figure out how to adapt. As far as knowledge about the grasslands and the herding industry goes, I can only do what I can and start from basic research.”

Flooding around lakes had become a problem in recent years, said Wangdrak. The village of Mechu had been repeatedly flooded since 2004, with 200 households forced to leave homes that their families had occupied for generations. He clearly remembers the scene, waters rushing over low-lying grasslands and rising around their feet. Homes and livestock pens were almost completely inundated. “Nothing like that had been seen before. Not in historical records dating back to the Ming Dynasty, nor in local histories.

Many scientists blame the rising waters on melting glaciers, a thaw that has been accelerated by global warming. The increasing level of the lakes means that 10,000 people in Nagqu, a prefecture that is home to less than 420,000 people, have already been displaced or are waiting to be relocated.

Wangdrak leaves us with a question. Western scientists can detect pollutants that originate in Asia, he says. Does this mean that Chinese scientists will ever be able to pinpoint the greenhouse gases that western countries have emitted – and demonstrate their influence on his local ecology?

For this local Tibetan official, climate change is a major part of his day-to-day work.

@SciPark.CN

Seismic Jolt

The deadly Wenchuan earthquake taught China hard lessons about the importance of early warnings and disaster mitigation

Caijing Magazine, Annual Edition 2009

By staff reporter Li Hujun

   Shortly after China’s worst earthquake in decades hit Sichuan Province’s county of Wenchuan, seismologist Li Zhiqiang of the China Earthquake Administration (CEA) predicted the death toll would “quite likely be close to that of the Tangshan earthquake.”

   The Tangshan quake in 1976 killed about 240,000 people and seriously injured another 160,000. But the Wenchuan tremblor was more intense, according to Chinese authorities, measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale and at least 11.0 in intensity at its epicenter.

    The May 12, 2008 Wenchuan disaster claimed about 87,000 lives, ranking it the second deadliest, after the Tangshan tragedy, in the history of modern China.

    Many experts were puzzled and saddened by the failure to predict the 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan, which was followed by a 6.1 magnitude quake August 30 that rocked the city of Panzhihua as well as Huili County in Sichuan Province, and a 6.6 magnitude temblor October 6 in Tibet’s Dangxiong County.

In addition, although Chinese Seismological Networks Center data indicates that the country is experiencing a high period for seismic activity, experts cannot determine how long this period will last, nor predict what 2009 will hold. That means it’s possible that 2009 will be another tense year for professional earthquake watchers and forecasters in China.

In an interview with the official newspaper People’s Daily commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Tangshan earthquake in 2006, CEA Director Chen Jianmin indicated the nation’s seismologists could, to a certain extent, predict earthquakes of certain types in specific regions. He said more than 20 incidents had been successfully predicted in the years after Tangshan, helping avert disasters in 10 percent of all predicted cases.

In the wake of the Wenchuan disaster, Chen acknowledged the fact that China’s failures in earthquake prediction had far outweighed the successes. “We are still in the trial and error stage,” Chen said at the 14th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (WCEE) on October 13, 2008 in Beijing. The common opinion among scientists currently holds that even a rudimentary ability to accurately predict earthquakes is at least several decades away.

Because China is still undergoing economic transformation, differences in regional economies and a motley mix of old and new buildings highlight the lack of quake-proofing in many areas  a situation that will be difficult to improve in the short term. Therefore China’s future ability to prevent earthquakes and mitigate disasters would partly hinge on its earthquake forecasting abilities.

Research and Models

    Understanding the causes of earthquakes is the first step in accurately predicting temblors. So after the Wenchuan tragedy, the Chinese government increased investment in this area of research.

   An example of the new commitment is the Wenchuan Earthquake Fault Line Scientific Exploratory Drilling Project, which began in November 2008. The project involves a long-term, deep seismic observation system created by drilling two guide holes 1,200 meters into the ground, and two scientific boreholes reaching depths of 3,000 meters.

   Scientists hope the four-year project, a joint effort of the Ministry of Science and Technology along with the Ministry of Land and Resources and CEA, will increase understanding of an earthquake fault line under Wenchuan and provide basic data to aid future predictions, early warnings and monitoring.

   In addition to earthquake predictions, timely reports of quake intensity as well as early warning system are useful tools to mitigate disaster. Certainly, China’s system for rapid monitoring could be improved. Imitating a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) system, for example, could be a worthy goal.

    “China’s failures in earthquake prediction had far outweighed the successes.”

On the day of the Wenchuan disaster, a USGS mapping report, called ShakeMap, showed the intensity of tremors in quake zone areas just two hours after the temblor hit. These “intensity distribution maps” showed that Wenchuan county was not the only area hit badly and a primary disaster zone with an intensity of 10 stretched from the town of Yingxiu in Wenchuan to Beichuan county.

   However, China’s CEA wasn’t able to release the similar report during the day nor did it disseminate the USGS report. While the ShakeMap is based on preliminary data   and is by no means completely accurate,  the information is invaluable for emergency rescue teams.

    Another trend-setter is Japan’s earthquake early warning system — the world’s first when it was launched in October 2007. The system can raise a red flag before disaster strikes by observing the unique properties of earthquake waves. Longitudinal waves move quickly but have little destructive force, while transverse waves that move slowly are highly destructive. Japanese experts claim many deaths associated with the Wenchuan earthquake could have been prevented if such an early warning system were in place.

    Shortcomings in China’s rapid reporting and early warning systems are well known. CEA’s Chen said at a November 2008 meeting of the China Seismological Networks Center that near-event reports about intensities and disaster conditions should be broadened to provide scientific support to earthquake and disaster relief command centers more quickly and effectively.

   The Chinese government has approved plans to set up a demonstration early warning system in the Beijing and Lanzhou areas. Some provinces and cities are working with CEA as well, underscoring the widespread interest in this potentially lifesaving effort.

Wenchuan Lessons

   To a large extent, these decisions were born from the Wenchuan earthquake. But more is expected. For example, the public still hopes the government will release an objective report about the many schools that collapsed in the Wenchuan disaster. For those that toppled due to poor quality construction, it’s hoped the courts will get involved in a timely manner.

   “After the Wenchuan earthquake, there was an intense debate on the Internet among earthquake engineering experts as to what we had gotten wrong,” said Tsuneo Katayama, president of International Association for Earthquake Engineering, at the opening ceremony of the 14th WCEE.

   “Many agreed that the huge losses of life and property were the result of a number of factors, including insufficient government oversight, construction quality, societal and economic limitations, a lack of awareness, corruption and cultural traditions. Of course, this is an extremely complicated problem, and finding real solutions in any given area is not easy,” he said.

   A proposed amendment to China’s Earthquake Prevention and Disaster Mitigation Law offer a promising answer to the weak links in a system laid bare by the 2008 disasters. In October 2008, during the fifth session of the 11th National People’s Congress Standing Committee, a draft amendment was submitted. A month of public input followed.

   The draft called for improving rules for quake-proof construction and said “schools, hospitals, shopping centers, transport hubs, public cultural facilities and other construction projects involving high concentrations of people should be designed to exceed local quake-proofing requirements for housing construction.” Moreover, for the first time, the proposed amendment calls for bringing quake proofing to rural areas by requiring “research, development and promotion of seismic safety technologies in the countryside.”

Implementing these new rules could pose a challenge, but retooling China’s disaster prevention and mitigation system could be even more difficult.

@SciPark.CN

By staff reporters Li Hujun and Cheng Han
From Caijing Magazine

http://english.caijing.com.cn/2008-12-26/110042630.html

China’s environmental scientists and climate researchers are closely watching the sky.

And what some of them see, according to a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report on global pollution and climate change, are brownish cloud layers hovering over Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, blotting out the sun, reducing visibility and damaging human health.

A number of Chinese scientists contributed to international research that led to the November 13 release of the report entitled Atmospheric Brown Clouds.

“The scientific circle is getting to know the ABC phenomenon, but this is just a start,” said Shao Min, an environment professor at Peking University who participated in the project.

According to some scientists, brown clouds, in addition to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, already pose a major threat to weather systems and humans.

Asian Clouds?

The pollution layer was first observed during a field study called the Indian Ocean Experiment in 1999. A belt of brownish haze three kilometers thick was discovered over parts of the Indian Ocean and South Asia, including southern China, blanketing an area as big as the United States.

The cloud consisted of minute particles and gases. Mixed in the pollution layer were sulphates, nitrates, ammonium salt, black carbon and sand dust.

India and China protested against the original name for the phenomenon -- “Asian brown clouds” -- coined in a 2002 UNEP report. Scientists heeded the protest and renamed the layers “atmospheric brown clouds.” They’ve since acknowledged that the clouds can occur in North America, Europe, southern Africa and the Amazon River Basin.

“Brown clouds do not appear in Asia alone,” said Shi Guangyu of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, who led the push for a name change. “If they are called Asian brown clouds, China and India would come under great international pressure.”

Still, the clouds have been a focus of intense study across Asia. Scientists are interested in the high-flying haze due to the region’s variable climate, but especially because Asia is home to around half the world’s population and is undergoing massive growth.

Dimmer Cities

The skies in many big Chinese cities, particularly in the heavily industrialized Pearl River Delta, seem to have darkened in recent years. Days of low visibility have been on the rise. Now, scientists say brown clouds are mainly to blame.

The UN report said minute particles in brown clouds can absorb or reflect 10 to 25 percent of the sunlight that should reach a city’s streets. The report singled out as an example the Pearl Delta city of Guangzhou, where soot and dust have reduced natural light 20 percent since the 1970s.

Toxic aerosols and carcinogens float over the delta, including particulates less than 2.5 microns in width that are top contributors to low visibility, according to studies of regional atmospheric conditions conducted by Zhang Yuanhang and his team at the Environment Department of Peking University.

But standards for these tiny particles do not appear in China’s national air quality regulations. And the so-called “inhalable particles” mentioned in the Chinese media’s daily air quality reports only refer to particles smaller than 10 microns. 

What’s happening in the Pearl River Delta reflects the overall deterioration of the nation’s air. The UN report said the sun’s warmth on the ground in China has decreased 3 to 4 percent every decade for the past 50 years. The situation has particularly worsened since 1970s.

Another region with poor air quality is the Yangtze River Delta, which reported a daily aerosol pollution record on January 19, 2007. Visibility fell below 600 meters as haze covered nearly the entire delta, including Shanghai. It was hard to breathe.

Shanghai’s air pollution index that day soared to 413 – nearly nine times the level recommended by the World Health Organization. It hit 500 on April 2.

But haze also envelops Beijing, Tianjin and other cities. Zhuang Guoshun, director of the Atmospheric Chemistry Research Center at Fudan University, said some cities are wrapped in haze more than one-third of the year. Weather forecasters now describe conditions as clear, cloudy, overcast or hazy.

The latest UNEP report identified 13 cities worldwide as brown-cloud hot spots. Three are in China: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. But Zhuang said clouds over China stretch far beyond to cover a region from Beijing south to Zhengzhou and Xi’an, as well as the coastal cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou. In addition, the western cities of Urumqi and Lanzhou are seriously affected. 

Indeed, scientists say brown clouds can stretch over areas even larger than eastern China.

Deadly Risk

Breathing such toxic mixes of pollutants can be deadly. The UN report said about 340,000 people in China and India die each year from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases linked to concentrations of 2.5 micron particles that can be traced coal-fueled factories, diesel trucks and wood burning.

Pollution also hurts the economy. Economic losses tied to outdoor exposure to ABC-related particulates has been roughly estimated at 3.6 percent of GDP in China and 2.2 percent in India.

Apart from impacts on air quality and human health, the report said, brown clouds are in some regions aggravating the impact of greenhouse gas-induced climate change. Globally, however, brown clouds are blunting global warming by reflecting sunlight and absorbing heat. This is because ABCs contain particles such as black carbon and soot that absorb sunlight.

Eliminating brown clouds overnight could trigger a global temperature rise of as much as 2 degrees Celsius, which is considered by many scientists a dangerous threshold.

The scientific study of ABCs, which is interwoven with investigations of greenhouse gases, is not simple. These cloud conditions may contribute to highly complex warming and cooling patterns witnessed in different regions of China. For example, some fear they’ve changed the country’s East Asian monsoon climate system, while worsening droughts in the north and floods in the south.

Scientists suggest ABC-related heating of the atmosphere may be as important as greenhouse gas warming in accounting for retreating glaciers in China. The Academy of Sciences estimates these glaciers have shrunk 5 percent since the 1950s, while the combined size of China’s nearly 47,000 glaciers has fallen by 3,000 square kilometers over the past quarter century.

Other ABC-related phenomena may be waiting to be discovered. That’s one reason why Chinese scientists are calling for the nation’s leaders to give increased attention to brown clouds. Another reason is that millions of lives are at risk.

@SciPark.CN

Environmental challenges make supplying the ever-growing population of Tibet with sufficient and sustainable electricity a logistical conundrum.

October 28, 2008

http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/2515-Water-sun-and-dung-

By staff reporter Li Hujun and intern reporter Sun Haomu

http://english.caijing.com.cn/2008-09-03/110010124.html

Beijing enjoyed the clearest skies in a decade thanks to long-term and temporary restrictions made for the Olympics. Expectations remain, however, even after the Games have ended. Observers are paying close attention to the Beijing Olympics’ role in averting global warming.

Caijing has learned that the Chinese government and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) will conduct a final assessment of the Beijing Olympics, in terms of both greenhouse gas emissions and carbon offsets. The question still hanging in the air is whether or not the Games achieved a “carbon balance”.

Sports Affect Climate

“Carbon balance” is a new term, referring to total carbon release. If the amount of carbon released balances the amount of carbon sequestered or offset, there is “carbon neutrality”.

Why assess “carbon balance” of the Beijing Olympics? Beyond the sports events, the Games generate greenhouse gases, mainly in the long-distance travel of delegates and spectators, the construction and operation of the Olympic venues such as the “Bird’s Nest” and “Water Cube”, and even in the torch relay.

Achim Steiner, UN Undersecretary General and Executive Director of the UNEP, told Caijing that greenhouse gas emissions are inevitable when the Olympic Games bring people together. But he also pointed out that the Games’ carbon footprint and carbon emissions could be reduced and offset.

The Torino 2006 and Germany World Cup set an example in climate protection. What is different between those two events and the Beijing Olympics is that the “Kyoto Protocol” obligated developed countries such as Italy and Germany to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while a developing country such as China has had no such obligations up to now. What’s more, when Beijing won the bid for Olympics seven years ago, the issue of climate change was not as prominent as today. So Beijing did not mention climate change in its Green Olympic pledge.

It was not until last October that the United Nations explicitly recommended that the Beijing Olympic Committee publicly commit to offsetting greenhouse gases.

Fulfill “Carbon Balance”

Caijing has learned that the Beijing Olympic Committee did not directly respond to the UNEP’s proposal, though the Chinese government immediately began to estimate the carbon footprint of the Olympics.

On April 25, at the International Forum on Climate Change and Science & Technology Innovation hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology and other ministries, a special venue with the theme “carbon balance and the Green Olympics” displayed China’s initiative.

Xu Huaqing, a researcher at the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at the forum that the Beijing Olympics would release an estimated 1.18 megatons of carbon dioxide or equivalent gases, all of which would be offset by “Green Olympics” measures. That estimate was presented by a team of researchers from the Administrative Center for China’s Agenda 21, the Energy Research Institute of the National Development Reform Commission, Geography Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University.

Out of the 1.18 megatons, the majority come from activities by the audience. About 0.1 megaton come from construction and operation of the venues, 20,000 tons come from the activities of the athletes and officials, and 80,000 tons come from activities of the Olympic Committee, such as the torch relay.

With the Beijing Olympics designated as “Green Olympics”, the organizers established as a zero-emission zone the 3.8 sq km area surrounding key sports venues, using eco-friendly cars such as electric, hybrid and fuel cell cars. Many venues including the “Bird’s Nest” are powered by solar energy. In addition, other policies have been implemented, such as the building of the Olympic Forest Park, the shutdown of some polluting factories as well as the even-odd license plate system.

Based on the team’s conservative estimate, the use of clean energy vehicles during the Olympics was expected to offset 20,000 tons of emissions, and renewable energy products in the venues such as solar energy was to reduce about 1000 tons of emissions. After the Olympics, the facilities will contribute more offsets in the long run.

Thanks to the energy saving measures like tree-planting, factory shutdowns, and control of the use of vehicles, the total offsets are close to or have even surpassed the greenhouse gases released by the Beijing Olympics.

Technology Minister said in a press conference held by the State Council on May 8 that the Beijing Olympics would be “basically” carbon neutral.

Hazy Result

Whether the “carbon balance” can be ensured or not, however, is still unknown.

Theodore Oben, UNEP Chief of Sports & the Environment, told Caijing that the energy-saving measures and tree-planting would make a difference, but in order to evaluate the “carbon balance”, the total emissions of the Olympics should be calculated, including international flights and domestic flights by the athletes and guests.

However, there is strong controversy as to how to calculate the greenhouse emissions generated by their flights.

For example, according to the “carbon emissions calculator” on the website of the non-governmental organization “climate-friendly”, a roundtrip economy-class flight from London to Beijing generates emissions of 4.8 tons, and one from Washington to Beijing generates 6.6 tons, which exceeds the emissions of the average Chinese person over a whole year.

If the emissions are calculated this way, as recommended by non-governmental organizations such as the WWF, flight emissions generated by the Beijing Olympics alone far exceed the previously estimated 1.18 megatons.

In comparison, the ICAO “carbon emissions calculator” presents different results. Economy-class flights from London to Beijing and from Washington to Beijing release 1.15 tons and 1.6 tons of emissions respectively, less than a quarter of the climate-friendly calculation.

It is still unknown which count will be adopted by the research team of the Chinese government.

In addition, some basic data such as the exact number of spectators and resources consumed in the torch relay have not been announced. By the end of the year, the UNEP is expected to report its environmental assessment of the Beijing Olympics, with these final details on the “carbon neutrality” of the Olympics.

In fact, as to the definition of “carbon balance” or “carbon neutrality”, there is strong debate around the world.

Yang Ailun, Climate & Energy Manager of Greenpeace China, told Caijing that although it’s a hot topic and will come up in the 2012 London Olympics, “carbon neutrality” still lacks clear definition such as the calculation of emissions and the offsets.

In her view, the International Olympic Committee should first and foremost set up clear standards for the “carbon neutrality”.

However, there is no doubt that Beijing Olympics will leave a valuable legacy no matter whether “carbon balance” or “carbon neutrality” is achieved, and a legacy with benefits beyond Beijing.

After all, Greenpeace acknowledged this legacy in its environmental report, “China after the Olympics: Lessons from Beijing.” “These reductions reflect real measures taken to ensure that energy consumption is minimized through these Olympic initiatives”, Greenpeace wrote.

Steiner of the UNEP told Caijing, “From what I can see, people here regard the Olympics not only as a 17-day event, but an opportunity for China to adopt clean development mechanisms. This is the best return a country can get from the Olympics”.■

August 12, 2008

New climate-controlled edifices in China are promoted as eco-friendly and desirable. But, writes Li Taige, researchers in Beijing have found that high-tech can mean high energy use – and no fresh air.

http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/2299--Energy-efficient-buildings-Not-always

A friend of mine lives in Beijing Tiptop International Apartments, one of the city’s high-end residential complexes. One of the building’s features is a climate-control system that maintains a constant temperature and humidity.

But such comfort does not come cheap. He pays 8,000 yuan (about US$1,170) a month for his two-bedroom apartment -- no small price.

The apartments are five years old and known for their use of energy-saving technology. According to the property developers, the building was China’s first “high-comfort, low-energy” project. Temperatures are kept at between 20° and 26° Celsius (68° and 78.8° Fahrenheit) without the need for individual air-conditioning units or radiators, and the ventilation system is said to provide health benefits. The project also claims to be “the first building in China to reach European energy-saving standards” -- and to have “caused a sensation, with 1,300 media reports”.

The Tiptop is not the only Beijing building to use climate control as a selling point. Other examples include the Modern Group’s Moma buildings. The Grand Moma (Linked Hybrid) residences, Shangdi Moma and even the villa community of Forest Forever Moma all boast constantly controlled temperature and humidity.

For a long time I’d been a supporter of these buildings. After all, they save energy and still ensure a pleasant environment. However, after reading the 2008 Annual Report on Chinese Energy Efficiency, my opinion started to change.

Produced by Tsinghua University’s Building Energy Research Centre in Beijing, this report points out that if “energy-saving technology” is simply put in place without careful selection and management, energy use may not fall. In fact, it may increase substantially.

A residential building in Beijing is given as an example. A high-efficiency central air-conditioning system was installed to provide 24-hour climate control throughout the building. This was hailed as a fine example of energy saving. But in summer it uses eight times as much energy as traditional air-conditioning methods.

The report goes on to say that not only do these controlled environments fail to save energy, they also fail to be healthier, more comfortable or more convenient. A temperature of 26° is not the upper limit of comfort in the summer; it is the lower limit. A temperature of over 26° benefits health and reduces the illnesses that air-conditioning can cause. With natural ventilation, a temperature of 29° (84.2°) is most comfortable.

It seems there may be no benefit to the pursuit of constantly controlled environments.

Because the phenomenon of “energy-saving” buildings is not restricted to the residential sector, office complexes suffer the same problem. One office development in Beijing installed a number of solar water heaters. This is all very well, but the system used requires the water to circulate constantly. And the cost of running those pumps was almost as much as the cost of heating the water in the first place. This is hardly power saving.

A central government organisation refurbished its offices in 2003, replacing single-glazed windows with double-glazing for better insulation -- but the majority of the new windows could not be opened. The individual air-conditioning units in each room also were replaced with multi-room units, or “quasi-central air-conditioning”. The result was that the building’s energy consumption rose by 50%, with energy used for air-conditioning increasing fourfold. Even so, this is less consumption than that of many high-end government offices. Imagine how much energy is being wasted in all of Beijing’s other government offices.

The report also points out that the numerous large-scale and energy-hungry public buildings – government offices, concert halls, museums, transportation hubs and so on – have become a way of demonstrating economic prowess. The refitting of existing public buildings, too, is causing large increases in energy use.

The new China Central Television (CCTV) headquarters in Beijing in Beijing could be called bizarre in design, and their appearance has earned them the nickname of “the giant pants”, but every time I walk past them I find myself wondering how much energy the building will use when it is fully operational.

Simply installing energy-saving technology without thinking about how it will actually be used is not a practice unique to Beijing. At a discussion with the news media organised by the Climate Change Journalists Club, Jiang Yi – a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and professor at the Building Energy Research Centre – provided a number of examples from around China.

A solar energy firm in Wuxi in Jiangsu province employed a Dutch architect to design a 20,000-square-metre office building, using energy-efficient glass. However, the windows could not be opened, turning the building into a glass box that relies on a mechanised ventilation system. The building is equipped with solar panels, but the energy they supply is inadequate to power the ventilation system – hence a perfectly sound energy-saving mechanism has been wasted. The building is due to be completed this year, and may yet appear in the news media as another energy-efficient success.

At the end of last year, Yalong Bay in Hainan province started work on a huge central-cooling system. A modern refrigeration plant will deliver cold air to hotels in the area via a network of pipes – much as heating is delivered in the north of China. The project will cost 100 million yuan (US$14.5 million) and is Hainan’s first national-level energy-saving project. It is also said to be China’s largest central-cooling system. But Jiang has his doubts, suspecting that the project actually will increase energy consumption.

As the report makes clear, we can now create and maintain any environment we choose; we can do so in one of two ways: relying primarily on machinery or primarily on nature.

The “machinery-first” model uses artificial ventilation, air-conditioning and lighting to create the desired indoor environment. To do so on a global scale would require 30% more energy than is available – and it is not necessarily good for our health. For example, many “modern” buildings have few, if any, windows that can be opened, resulting in poor air quality and other problems.

A “nature-first” approach allows for ventilation via open windows and the use of natural light and shade, and when this is not adequate, supplementation with artificial means, such as heating. Climate control is adjusted in tandem with the environment.

So the researchers at Tsinghua hold that we should use that natural approach, improving living conditions without increasing power use. And this is the only option for real energy-saving buildings when we are faced with both scarce resources and huge environmental pressures.

I hope that my friend, and the rest of China, can realise the truth about China’s “energy-efficient” buildings.

2008-04-30 17:09 Caijing Magazine

http://english.caijing.com.cn/20080430/59003.shtml

Health officials are debating whether person-to-person transmission of the deadly bird flu virus has occurred in China. But even if it hasn't yet, it may someday.

By staff reporter Li Hujun

The case of a father and son infected with H5N1 bird flu in Nanjing remains controversial, more than four months after the report triggered close scrutiny from medical specialists worldwide.

Intensifying the debate was Wang Yu, director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who along with colleagues wrote an article published April 8 in the British medical journal The Lancet citing the case as a “probable, limited person-to-person transmission” of highly pathogenic avian influenza A, that is, H5N1.

Yu’s article marked the first official report from Chinese scholars about a possible case of person-to-person bird flu transmission in the country. It said experts think the virus was transmitted to Lu Wei from his son, Lu Kan. At the time, the son was in a hospital and being cared for by the father.

But later Mao Qun An, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health --  the overseer of the CDC -- insisted at a press conference that the virus had jumped to each patient from a bird. “There is still no conclusive, epidemiological or biological, evidence to prove a person-to-person transmission,” Mao said.

A representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in China, Hans Troedsson, backed the ministry’s opinion. He told Caijing that Yu’s article only showed that “limited and non-continuous person-to-person transmission” may have occurred in China.

According to WHO statistics, 381 human cases of H5N1 in 14 countries had been confirmed between November 2003 and mid-April 2008, killing 240 people.

Most cases affected only a single individual. But one-fourth affected two or more people with close contact who displayed symptoms simultaneously. Limited person-to-person cases probably happened in Vietnam, Thailand and Pakistan.

But only one direct case of person-to-person transmission has been confirmed by scholars. It happened in Indonesia when eight members of a rural family were infected. The female patient who first showed symptoms was found to have transmitted the virus to her niece, and from that point the virus continued spreading to others.

In China, more than one case of person-to-person transmission has been suspected. Guan Yi, a microbiology professor at Hong Kong University, raised the possibility in connection with a 1997 bird flu outbreak in Hong Kong. In a 2003 case, three members of a Hong Kong family were infected with the virus in the mainland’s Fujian province.

A suspicious case drawing the most attention on the mainland involved the death of He Yin, a 12-year-old girl who died in October 2005 after being diagnosed with an unknown strain of pneumonia. Around the same time, her 9-year-old brother was hospitalized. But because the girl’s corpse was cremated, it was impossible to determine whether the boy contracted the bird flu from his sister.

A team led by Chinese researcher Gu Jiang discovered that the bird flu virus could be transmitted from mother to fetus. The study, published in September’s The Lancet, was based on the autopsy of 24-year-old Zhou Maoya, who died of bird flu in 2005 four months into pregnancy.

The case of Lu Kan has so far been harder to crack. He had contact with his father as well as about 90 other people, an overwhelming number of people. Yet only the father was infected, leading some scientists to guess that genetics have an influence in transmission.

Officially, Chinese health authorities warned that “people have been infected with a new kind of flu virus, but person-to-person transmission has not occurred.” Yet they still remain cautious. Most poultry in China has already been immunized, but bird-to-bird transmission has not entirely stopped yet, raising concerns about future human infections.

Certainly, no one is suggesting the possibility of widespread person-to-person transmission of the virus. Jeremy Farrar, a leading bird flu researcher in Oxford University, said there are no signs that such events have occurred anywhere in the world.

But Farrar warned that, as long as bird flu continues breaking out among poultry, it is “just a matter of time” before it begins jumping between people.

Some experts have criticized a lack of coordination between the animal immunization program managed by the Ministry of Agriculture and disease control organizations under the Health Ministry, which they say makes it difficult for officials to identify any original virus carrier. Troedsson told Caijing that the bird flu issue is deeply linked to both animal hygiene and public health. For that reason, he said, more cooperation among government agencies is needed.

As the price of food soars, countries are looking to the biotechnology industry to help increase harvests. But can genetic modification really increase yields? Taige Li investigates and finds further research is needed.

As global food prices continue to soar, biotechnology firms and advocates are lining up to argue that gene technology can solve the world’s food shortages. 

China, too, has ambitions in the research and application of genetically modified (GM) crops. Government plans for the industry include the development of pest- and disease-resistant GM rice, rapeseed, maize and soy. Development of new GM crops is one of the 16 major projects listed in the country’s plan for mid- to long-term scientific and technological development (from 2006 to 2020). It will be China’s most expensive agricultural science undertaking of all time, with research focussing on yields, quality, nutritional value and drought-resistance.

GM technology transplants novel genes into an organism in order to improve it in some way. In GM crops that are already being tested or commercially farmed, genes have been added to increase resistance to pests, disease and herbicides – but never to directly increase harvests.

However, these changes can – at least in theory – increase yields. This is the viewpoint taken by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications’ (ISAAA) 2007 report, Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops, which says GM technology can increase production.

In India and China, fields of pest-resistant GM cotton need 50% less pesticide than non-GM strains. The technology has been responsible for harvest increases of 50% in India and 10% in China. The GM strain has an additional gene – known as Bt, for the Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria from which it originates – which produces a poison that kills off certain pests that attack cotton plants.

Cotton is not a food crop, but some argue that the same technology could also be used to increase maize production. In South Africa, Richard Sithole, chair of the Hlabisa District Farmers’ Union, reported that 250 poor, small-scale farmers planted GM maize with the Bt gene on their plots, which averaged at 2.5 hectares per household. His own harvests rose by 25%, worth an extra US$300, and some farmers reportedly saw increases of 40%.

Among all modified food crops, it is GM rice that is drawing the most attention. In China alone there are 110 million rice farmers, with an average 0.27 hectares of land per capita. The impact of increased harvests would be massive. 

Iran is the only country to have approved the commercial growing of GM rice. But China has spent significant amounts on researching this area. Four pest-resistant strains have passed intermediary testing and environmental release trials, and are now undergoing large-scale planting trials – the forerunner of commercial use.

A research team led by Huang Jikun, head of the Centre for Agricultural Policy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, carried out a survey of pre-production trials on two strains of pest-resistant rice. The ISAAA quoted this study as saying the strains could increase yields by between 2% and 6%, and reduce the use of pesticides by almost 80%.

However, a paper by Huang’s research group, published earlier this year in the journal Economic Development and Cultural Change, revised this claim. The villages where GM rice was planted did see an increase in harvests, they said, but households where both GM and non-GM rice were planted did not see any improvement. They say there is no evidence from randomised and controlled trials that GM rice does increase harvests.

One reason may be that the trials were not actually randomised; village officials may have chosen better farmers to participate in the tests. Whatever the reason, more research is needed before to ascertain whether pest-resistant rice increases yields or not. Even if it does not increase yields, but does reduce pesticide use and labour input – while presenting no health or environmental risks – then it will help to slow the rising cost of food.

There also may be a new hope for the use of GM rice to raise yields, as reported in a paper by Zhang Qifa and his research group at Huazhong Agricultural University, published in May 2008 issue of Nature Genetics. The research group discovered for the first time a single gene that controls stalk height, flowering time and the number and size of grains. Theoretically, this gene can be used to increase productivity. For now, however, this possibility only exists on paper.

Debate rages over the use of GM technology in other food crops besides rice. Some research has found that GM technology actually can result in smaller harvests. A recent study by Barney Gordon of Kansas University, published in Better Crops, found that yields from a Monsanto-produced strain of herbicide-resistant soy were 10% lower than from conventional varieties.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which was produced by 400 experts from around the world over a period of three years, reflects this controversy. Limited research data on some GM crops in certain years show increased yields of 10% to 33%, while others see lower harvests. The report, therefore, makes a cautious assessment on whether GM crops can meet the increased demand for food. With GM technology developing rapidly, it says, long-term evaluations of the risks and benefits for health, the environment and the economy are lagging behind.

The IAASTD report has been accepted by 57 nations, including China. The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, interpreted the report as saying that GM technology did not offer a solution to food shortages. However, the IAASTD did not entirely reject the idea that GM has a role to play, but warned against over-simplifying the problem or relying too heavily on GM crops. A multi-pronged approach is needed, the report said, including further agricultural research and the continuation of local agricultural practices. It also warned that patents on GM technology can have negative effects, such as obstructing independent scientific research and the freedom of small farmers to make their own choices.

In truth, it is wise neither to simply advocate GM technology nor to oppose it entirely.

The technology is already becoming one of the major characteristics of modern agriculture. As it develops, we need independent and objective research, the prompt and full release of information and the participation of all stakeholders.  

To discover whether GM crops really can increase yields, we may need to copy the randomised controlled trials that are used in medical research and carry out analysis of actual case studies. Only then will we have a convincing answer.

http://www.chinadialogue.cn

July 03, 2008

Landslides and mudslides in the Beichuan region added to the high death toll in May’s earthquake. Now, writes Taige Li, familiar warnings are being heard. Will historic errors be repeated?

The most shocking of the many tragedies of the Sichuan earthquake on May 12, 2008, was that of the town of Qushan, the county seat of Beichuan.

The quake left the town virtually flattened. Official statistics put the dead and missing at 13,000 – out of a population of only 40,000. The town is no longer habitable, and a memorial is to be built on its ruins.

Beichuan, the only Qiang-nationality autonomous county in China -- and under the jurisdiction of Mianyang municipality -- suffered not just from the tremors themselves but also from the landslides and mudslides triggered by the quake. If these geological-disaster risks had been considered when the county seat was located here or as it expanded, the destruction may not have been so total. 

Beichuan lies in the north-west of the Sichuan basin, and has a history stretching back 14 centuries. However, the county’s administrative centre was moved to Qushan just over 50 years ago, in 1952. Why this was done is unclear, but one theory is that Qushan’s better outside links meant quicker reinforcements could arrive when bandits were at large.

The move, as the future would prove, was a mistake. Qushan lies in a narrow valley between steep mountains, and landslides are common in the area. Even without earthquakes, it is a dangerous place to live.

In an article published in 1992, Zhang Defan of Mianyang’s water management authorities pointed out that Qushan’s steep mountainsides, location on a fault line and complex geological conditions caused repeated landslides and mudslides. When the county seat was relocated, Qushan was home to only 500 people. Of course, the problems continued after the relocation.

In the 1980s, experts pointed out the risks of the location -- on the Longmenshan fault and between mountains. The locals started to worry that one day those mountains would bury them.

According to Caijing magazine, in the late 1980s the county authorities once suggested moving the administrative centre again – to the town of Leigu, which lies on flatter ground and indeed saw fewer deaths and less damage in the May earthquake. But funding for the relocation was not forthcoming and the experts could not decide if the move was necessary or not. The plans did not go ahead.

In his report, based on results of a survey of the area, Zhang Defan said that “the surrounding mountains are stable, and there is no chance of a collapse destroying the town.”

So the idea of moving the county seat was gradually forgotten, and the town continued to grow. But land was scarce. Qushan is surrounded by mountains and water, and there was only about a square kilometre of land available for building. A new part of the town was founded across the Jian River at Maoba. But Maoba itself lies at the bottom of a mountainside and is, again, a dangerous location. Despite this, plans for rapid expansion of the town were approved. By the end of 2005, it covered 1.6 square kilometres and had provincial approval for plans to expand to 4.1 square kilometres by 2020.

But the risks were not entirely forgotten. Materials from Beichuan’s Land Bureau show concerns about potential landslides and a number of reports were made to the provincial government. In 2004, work was carried out on the mountainside at Wangjiayan in the old town. In 2005, Wangjiayan was listed as a provincial-level project, winning funding of 1.52 million yuan (more than US$220,000). And in July 2006, work on columns to stabilise the slope, retaining walls and drainage was completed.   

But when hit by such a huge earthquake, the value of these works was limited. Beichuan was buried. 

As one survivor, who lost more than ten relatives in the quake, said: “If the mountainside hadn’t collapsed, not so many would have died.” Wang Zifa, head of the China Earthquake Administration’s Institute of Engineering Mechanics (IEM), said in an interview with Science and Technology Daily that half of the losses in Beichuan were due to the landslides.

Two thirds of China’s land is mountains and hills. Add in rain that tends to fall heavily over a small area, and landslides become a more frequent problem than earthquakes.

The mistakes made in Beichuan should not be repeated – but the existing situation is worrying. The locations of many towns and villages have not been well chosen.

In recent years the Chinese government has spent several billions of yuan on preventing landslides in and around the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest. But in many areas, funding is inadequate, if not severely lacking.

And to add to these existing dangers, new risks still are being taken. In some mountain areas, the geological conditions are ignored and towns are built on already unstable hillsides – raising the risk of disaster.

The tragedies that occurred in Wulong and Tengchong in recent years are cases in point.

On May 1, 2001, a landslide destroyed a residential building in Wulong county in Chongqing municipality, killing 79 people. Part of the hillside had been removed to build a road, and private developers had excavated further in order to make room for the building.

On July 19, 2007, a mudslide near a hydroelectric plant in Tengchong county in Yunnan province buried barracks housing construction workers, killing 29 people. The China Institute of Geo-Environment Monitoring (CIGEM) blamed “engineering work”.

The destruction of Beichuan has sounded another warning. As Xu Qiang, deputy head of Chengdu University of Technology’s geohazard prevention laboratory, said in an interview with Caijing, landslide risk management and control must be made an integral part of urban planning and construction in mountainous areas.

05-19 12:18 Caijing Magazine 

All odds stacked against, the Chengdu dam has been relieved of rising pressure.

By staff reporter Li Hujun
 
Experts announced May 18 that the Zipingpu dam upstream of Chengdu is functionally intact, removing concerns that a breach could deluge nearby cities and endanger more than ten million urban and rural residents.
 
The magnitude 8 earthquake on May 12 caused a death toll of at least 33,000 in China. Damage was also severe on innumerable structures and created cracks on the Zipingpu dam, critically standing merely 10 kilometers upstream from the capital city of Sichuan province.

The damaged dam posed two main challenges – inoperable gates blocking the supply of drinking water for the nearby Chengdu and Dujiangyan cities; and the grave concern that a collapse or breach would flood Chengdu.

The intensity of the May 12th earthquake was greater than the designed safety parameters of the Zipingpu dam. An expert from the Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute told Caijing that Zipingpu was designed to withstand earthquakes below level 8 on the Mercalli intensity scale, however the recent quake reached level 11, on a scale ranging between 0 and 12.

“Had we known earthquakes like this could happen in this area, we wouldn't have built a dam of this height (156 meters),” said the expert. “It's really a wonder that the dam survived the jolt.”

“If no special conditions occur, water should pass the dam smoothly, and the safety of people downstream is ensured,” said Li Hong, manager of Zipingpu Development Ltd.

A deputy minister and an expert team from the Water Resources Ministry was dispatched to Zipingpu on the night of May 12, to live and work there for the next six days.

The looming risk was ominous. Zipingpu had been undergoing a routine safety check when the earthquake stuck and damaged part of the dam's power generation facilities. As an added effect, it also ended up blocking water from the Min River.

The immediate risk was a shortage in the water supply. Zipingpu's reservoir provides drinking water for the cities Dujiangyan and Chengdu. Engineers decided to bypass power generation and send water through the spillways at 90 cubic meters per second to reduce pressure on the dam.

A new problem quickly arose. Rain had fallen in the region for several days and water was adding into the reservoir at 600 cubic meters per second, much more than the designed outflow capacity of 370 cubic meters per second. The 90 cubic meters per second of extra efflux would not be sufficient to balance the equation.

If the water continued to accumulate in the reservoir, rising pressure would break the weakened dam and swamp Chengdu.

After an initial check, experts decided as early as May 12 that, despite some cracks and distortion at the bottom, the dam was basically safe.

Engineers and dam workers then manually opened the flood gates, increasing the outflow to 800 cubic meters per second. After several days of work, engineers completed repairs on damaged facilities May 17 and left the site May 18.

Restoring the Zipingpu Dam back to normal operation was critical. The Zipingpu reservoir is fed by the Min river and numerous tributaries in the mountainous watershed. The earthquake, its aftershocks and resultant mud and rock slides created natural dams in the mountains - perhaps hundreds of them. When these dams fill and eventually burst, Zipingpu must be able to withstand the cascading floodwaters.

Now, Zipingpu is only 30 percent full and has the capacity to absorb flooding, should there be any.

http://www.caijing.com.cn/20080519/63348.shtml

Spotlight on the Profit Model

Another source of confusion for Lu and the other mothers in Shanghai was the identity of the blood bank’s financial backer. A 1999 law forbids any institution or individual from providing cord blood collection services for profit. And a government blood bank management circular said in 2006: “The state does not permit the establishment of for-profit special blood banks such as umbilical cord blood stem cell banks.”

Documentation from the Bureau of Industry and Commerce showed that the bank’s controlling shareholder was a private enterprise, Shanghai Jukang Biotechnology Development Co. Ltd., which held a 70 percent stake. Two, smaller shareholders are the Shanghai Red Cross, which held 20 percent, and the Shanghai Blood Center, a 10 percent stakeholder.

Si Weijiang, a lawyer who has been advising the group of mothers for their lawsuit, told Caijing that the blood bank’s charter contains clear provision for the division of profits and, in itself, sufficiently shows that the company is a typical, for-profit legal entity.

But the Shanghai company is not the only blood bank in trouble. Caijing has learned that the Shanghai bank was modeled after two other institutions -- cord blood banks in Beijing and Tianjin, which are also controlled by private businesses. An examination of the company charters of these private businesses reveals no hint whatsoever of any charitable purpose.

The Beijing Municipal Cord Blood Bank was the first to receive an operating license from the Ministry of Health. After a dizzying series of stock transfers, the blood bank’s ownership wound up with Beijing Jiachenhong Biotechnology Ltd. -- a wholly owned subsidiary of a foreign-invested enterprise called China Stem Cell Holding Ltd., a company registered in the Cayman Islands.

The story behind the Tianjin Cord Blood Bank is perhaps more representative. It is currently owned by Tianjin Union Stem Cell Genetic Engineering Ltd., which has registered capital of 100 million yuan and is controlled through a 57 percent stake by Shanghai Met (Group) PLC (SSE:600645). The China Academy of Medical Science, China Union Medical University Hematology Research Center’s Institute of Blood Diseases holds a 33 percent stake. And the remaining 10 percent is held by Huayin Investment Holdings Co. Ltd.

Tianjin Union was launched in 2001. Its first CEO was Han Zhongchao, who also directed both the Hematology Research Center and the Institute of Blood Diseases. Well-known domestically as an expert on blood disease, Han was widely regarded as an enthusiastic promoter of autologous cord blood storage in China.

Meanwhile, Shanghai Met PLC, which controls the Tianjin Blood Bank through Tianjin Union Stem Cell, stated that the blood bank is its core business. A company report in August 2001 said it would “strive to realize strong economic returns within the same year our investment in this venture was made.”

Since national law quite clearly states that for-profit cord blood hematopoietic stem cell banks are not allowed, how did these profitable investments prosper in a non-profit sector? The answer can be found by turning back to the earliest investment model in which “banks were used to pay for banks.”

A Frankenstein Process

Private capital holders were able to obtain the right to operate commercial cord blood banks like those in Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin because they had dual identities -- acting simultaneously as operators of public blood banks that accepted donated blood.

As the sector’s supervisory agency, the health ministry had conceived a system whereby commercial profit from businesses such as cord blood autologous storage services could be used to support the development of public blood banks. This process could resolve the problem of public funding shortfalls.

Real-world evidence shows the concept took a radical turn when put into practice. If a balance were possible that allowed private banks to pay for public banks, the most important factor was guaranteeing a proper ratio of the two. Otherwise, an enterprise could expand a private blood bank and contract public ones, turning what should have been a charitable enterprise into a instrument for profit.

The Shanghai blood bank’s charter says the company has the right to set this ratio itself. Currently, holdings of cord blood in public banks in Shanghai are only 60 percent of those in private banks.

The situation in Tianjin is even more astounding. The official Web site of Tianjin Union says its cord blood bank holds some 300,000 samples. Yet Ministry of Health data puts the total amount of cord blood in public banks nationwide at just 250,000 samples. Based on these figures, the amount held in banks is at least 10 times the storage in public institutions.

Behind this loss of balance between public and private entities, and as supervisory agencies remain silent, this charitable enterprise inevitably developed into an unregulated battleground for private capital. By 2003, the struggle to capture the private autologous cord blood storage market was growing ever more intense. The health ministry was forced to try regulating the sector, stipulating that only one cord blood bank could be set up in a given region. During this effort, a branch of Tianjin Union that had been operating in Shanghai was forced to close, and the Shanghai blood bank appeared on the scene.

.

Yet the ministry had merely regulated competition between geographical regions for private blood storage and had done nothing about the “using banks to pay for banks” model. Critics said this model was not only fundamentally unsuitable for expanding the scale of public blood banks in China, but it also made it easy for commercial enterprises to trump supervisory agencies, preventing government supervisors from acting impartially.

During the Shanghai scandal, most users of the private storage services had strong suspicions about the impartiality of the investigation into the blood bank’s practices, since the Shanghai Red Cross and Shanghai Blood Center had official ties and an intimate network of connections within health sector regulatory agencies. They also wondered about the objectivity of the health agencies, which apparently expected to receive funds from the private blood bank.

Regulate or Relegate?

Despite heavy criticism, health authorities have yet to give any indication that they intend to abandon the “using banks to pay for banks” model. In their response to public doubts, both the Ministry of Health and the Shanghai Bureau of Health failed to address this issue.

Light on the matter was shed during a February 1 interview with Medical Business News by Dr. Lu Daopei, an expert on hematology who is known as the father of hematopoietic stem cell transplants in China, and who also chairs the health ministry’s committee of experts on cord blood banks. Lu said, “We need to regulate the ‘using banks to pay for banks’ model rather than ban it altogether.”

But if the current model is to be maintained, a key question must still be addressed: How can supervisory authorities be extricated from the bind they currently find themselves in?

How, for example, should standards applied to blood samples accepted for storage at public and autologous cord blood banks be determined? At organizations such as the Shanghai blood bank, the standard for autologous samples has been lower than that for donated cord blood.

Internationally, since 2005, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has been pushing for a common standard for all stored cord blood. Han, the science academy expert, told Caijing that, from a medical perspective, the standard should be the same for both public and private cord blood banks. The logic behind this is quite simple. Should a patient’s stored autologous blood be insufficient to meet their needs, they would be obliged to turn to a public service. And if the public and private banks are operating at different standards, patient risks and procedural difficulties would increase.

Yet it would not be an exaggeration to call the “using banks to pay for banks” model a uniquely Chinese arrangement. In Britain, the United States and Japan, public blood banks are entirely funded from the public purse, and private investments are not allowed. These operate independently of commercial autologous services.

In one example from Britain, billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson of the Virgin Group once tried to donate 3 million pounds to a cord blood bank under the national blood transfusion agency. But the public body turned the private donation. Eventually, Branson set up a private blood bank.

At the cord blood bank created by Branson, the charge for storing a single sample is around 1,500 pounds. One-fifth of the donated cord blood is kept in private storage for the donor, while the remaining four-fifths goes into a general access public bank. Of course, if there are no breakthroughs in technology to replicate cord blood stem cells on a large scale, and should the donating child need a transplant in the future, a mere 20 percent of their original donation of cord blood would not be sufficient. But it’s likely that the 80 percent given to the public bank will not have been used for anyone else. And the larger the scale of public blood storage, the greater the chance that the public bank will contain a suitable blood match for the sick child.

Branson says all profits that he and Virgin Group receive from the blood bank will be donated to charitable stem cell initiatives. Nor is Branson’s private facility making exaggerated claims in its advertising, unlike so many other private banks. Its Web site says frankly that the chances of a child benefiting from the use of a private cord blood bank are very small.

Industry insiders say the time is now ripe in China for a fresh look at the cord blood bank system. Even if the current model did, to some extent, make up for shortfalls in state funding in the early days, more drawbacks of the model have been exposed. The downsides are now obvious, adding clout to critics who say it’s time for public and private storage to go their separate ways. This is perhaps the only way that the dubious links between the two kinds of blood banks can be broken, allowing for fair and independent oversight of the sector.

This is a step that has already been taken by the Guangzhou Cord Blood Bank. From its very inception, aside from accepting donations, the blood bank never offered commercial autologous services and has entirely operated under the government as a public cord blood bank. It requires just a few million yuan -- a cost that metropolises such as Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin could surely sustain.

Of course, once public and private are separated, more questions will arise. Should China allow private cord blood banks and, if so, should they follow the Branson charitable model or operate purely as commercial, for-profit services? And how can China guarantee that private cord blood banks operate to acceptable standards?

Before answering these questions, though, one key problem will be whether China can truly relegate the “using banks to pay for banks” model to the pages of history.

1 yuan = 14 U.S. cents

http://www.caijing.com.cn/English/society&culture/2008-03-07/51309

International experts and China's policymakers say public facilities can best handle demand for umbilical cord blood. So why have private blood banks profited?

By staff writers Zhao Hejuan and Li Hujun

It probably never crossed the mind of Shanghai mother Lu Yi that the "life insurance" -- an umbilical cord blood autologous bank service -- she elected to invest in for her daughter two years ago would result in such lengthy and ongoing tribulation -- and a dispute that has rocked China’s medical community.

What are known as autologous cord blood banks provide a private service for mothers-to-be who choose to pay for having blood taken from umbilical cords at birth and stored for possible future needs of the child. In addition to autologous blood banks (in which an individual can have his or her blood stored for personal use), there are also public banks where a mother may choose to donate cord blood for the benefit of any who need it, whether a member of the general public, or her own child.

“Cord blood bank” is the popular name for an umbilical cord hematopoietic stem cell bank -- a unique type of blood bank that collects, processes and stores hematopoietic stem cells from the umbilical cord blood that’s extracted when a mother gives birth. The cells can be used later in transplant operations.

On December 14, 2005, at Shanghai’s International Peace Maternity and Child Health Hospital, Lu signed an agreement for autologous cord blood storage with a staff member from the Shanghai Cord Blood Bank. Eleven days later and moments after her newborn daughter’s first cry, Lu’s umbilical cord blood began a special journey.

Under the agreement, the Shanghai Cord Blood Bank would store the blood for 20 years, a service for which Lu paid a one-time fee of 16,060 yuan. The blood bank sent her a report about tests performed on the cord blood one month after the girl was born, saying the blood had met all standards during a variety of tests.

Then in early September, an anonymous text message shattered Lu’s peaceful life as a new mother. She received the message which read: “Your baby’s blood tested positive for anaerobic bacteria. Storing it is completely pointless. You have been defrauded.”

More than 200 other new mothers who had also signed up for the cord blood bank service received the same message at the same time. Soon, these women joined together to try to find out whether the text message was true. They contacted the blood bank in hopes of obtaining the original test reports. But their repeated requests were denied.

Later, the women tried working with Shanghai No. 6 People’s Hospital, which was in charge of the actual testing. These requests for documentation were similarly refused.

A Nationwide Scandal

Having failed to resolve the issue with the blood bank, Lu and a dozen other mothers filed a class-action lawsuit in November 2006 with the People’s Court in Shanghai’s Changning District.

The following April, in hopes of avoiding judicial proceedings that might increase the negative impact of the incident, the Shanghai municipal Bureau of Health sent an internal memo to the blood bank requiring it rectify the situation. The bureau also exacted administrative penalties on the blood bank based on irregularities in operating practices revealed by the dispute.

However, most users of the blood bank’s services were not satisfied. So last November, a year after launching the legal proceedings, Lu and her co-plaintiffs again approached the Changning court to ask that their suit proceed as soon as possible. The court refused to set a timetable, though, instead asking the parties to engage in further arbitration.

In January, following additional reports by major media including China National Radio and the newspaper Southern Weekend, the controversy that had dragged on for more than a year once came to the fore of public attention.

A Shanghai health bureau spokesperson responded January 15, stating that in November 2006 the bureau had arranged for a special investigation to be conducted by its own Center for Health Supervision and other agencies. This investigation had found that the blood at the center of the scandal had initially tested positive (for bacteria) before being accepted by the blood bank for storage. The blood bank, following its own standards for storage, had re-tested the blood, found it to be negative, and accepted it for storage.

Both the initial and repeat tests were double-blind, and both had produced objective results, the spokesperson said. Nor was there any evidence of tampering.

The spokesperson did, however, say that the health bureau had clearly told the blood bank that it was obliged to fully inform all mothers using its services that if their blood initially tested positive, but showed negative on re-testing, and the women were unwilling to use the service, then the agreement to store the blood would be void and the fees refunded. In the future, results of blood tests should be made known to the women the blood had been taken from, the bureau said, and the blood would be stored only after permission had been received from the women.

Finally, 16 months after the media exposed suspicions that the Shanghai blood bank was storing “tainted” blood, China’s highest health sector authority gave a public response to the affair. The National Ministry of Health’s response came during a routine news conference February 18.

Mao Qun An, speaking on behalf of the ministry, said senior officials had set up a team of experts to investigate cord blood banks and also had issued a call for all local authorities to improve oversight and monitoring of the quality of umbilical cord blood stem cell storage services. The duty of such service providers to provide full disclosure of test results was also made clear, so as to uphold the public’s right to know and right of free choice. These measures were aimed at ensuring the healthy development of cord blood bank stem cell services.

However, it is not known whether the results of the expert team’s investigation into the sector will be made available for public scrutiny, nor precisely what measures supervisory agencies are expected to adopt to improve oversight. Caijing wrote to the ministry seeking further clarification of these matters, but as this article went to press February 29, no response of any kind had been received.

Value of Blood Storage

Lu and her co-plaintiffs, having been caught in this marathon dispute, were perhaps left unsure about the value of autologous cord blood storage they paid for, since the blood in question had supposedly satisfied the medical requirements.

By the health bureau’s account, the blood bank by the end of 2007 had accepted more than 3,000 donations and collected more than 5,000 autologous cord blood samples. Yet to date, all the cord blood stem cells provided that Shanghai Cord Blood Bank -- for 10 patients suffering from diseases such as acute myeloid leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia and aplastic anemia -- came from its stock of publicly donated blood.

This explains why the blood bank has yet to prove the value of its autologous blood storage service through clinical practice. Interviews by Caijing reporters with all of China’s specialists in umbilical cord stem cell transplants found none able to offer a conclusive, domestic example of a successful transplant operation.

In 1988, umbilical cord blood was for the first time anywhere in the world used to successfully treat a child suffering from Fanconi’s anemia, marking the beginning of a new era where cord blood came to be used in clinical medicine. Research had led many to believe that transplanting the somatic stem cells contained in cord blood cord work in the same way as bone marrow transplants, with enormous potential in the treatment of diseases such as blood system cancers and those affecting the immune system.

Even internationally, privately stored cord blood at present accounts for just a tiny portion of the actual application of this therapy. The world’s largest private cord blood bank, the Cord Blood Registry in the United States, has existed for 15 years and now holds more than 200,000 blood samples. Yet, as of January, it had supplied a mere 60 samples for actual use in treatment. Nineteen of these were transplants back to the original child whose cord the blood had come from, one was a transplant given to a mother, and the other 40 were transplants to siblings of children whose cord blood had been stored.

Over the past few years in China, private cord blood banks have grown to surpass public cord blood banks in terms of their scales of operation, although the international controversy over the necessity and appropriateness of autologous cord blood storage has continued.

In March 2004, the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) formally reported its opinion on the issue for the European Commission. It said commercial, autologous cord blood banks “could be entirely disregarded” for lacking any real value as a clinical choice, thus bringing the appropriateness of such services into question. EGE is an independent advisory committee of experts whose 15 members are appointed by the president of the European Commission.

Although EGE did not recommend closing cord blood banks, it did emphasize the need for stringent government controls on advertising for such services to prevent exaggerated claims and one-sided information.

A June 2006 report by Britain’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists also cast doubt on the value of autologous cord blood banks. The report said the probability of a person needing autologous cord blood before age 20 was extremely low, estimated in the range of between 1 to 2,700 and 1 to 20,000. Should a cord blood transplant be necessary, and the patient suffered from a hereditary condition as in the case of some leukemias, it would not be suitable for use in a transplant operation since autologous cord blood would carry the same genetic flaws.

Current mainstream, international medical opinion thus remains cautious about private cord blood banks. In many European countries, the government does not encourage the commercial provision of such services. In Italy, their provision is illegal. In Japan, the only cord blood banks are public bodies.

Speaking to Caijing, Dr. Nathan Cox of the obstetrics department at Cornell University Medical College said the use of private cord blood banks is of "effectively zero" added value because public blood banks are continuing to expand and can well satisfy the demand created during the rare instances when children require such services.

For example, the National Cord Blood Program set up by the New York Blood Center in 1992 currently holds more than 30,000 cord blood samples and is the world’s largest public cord blood bank. Of patients requiring cord blood, 99 percent are able to find blood in which only two of six antigens do not match, 65 percent can get blood with just one unmatching antigen, and in 11 percent of the cases the cord blood perfectly matches their own. Even when one or two antigens do not match, a transplant is possible, although a complete match may have a better outcome.

China’s first cord blood bank was established in Beijing in 1996. There are now six in the country, with others in the cities of Tianjin and Shanghai, as well as the provinces of Guangdong, Sichuan and Shandong. The Ministry of Health is planning for up to 10 such banks by 2010.

Health ministry spokesperson Mao said specialists calculate that all the clinical requirements for treating sick children in China could be met if citizens nationwide donate 70,000 to 100,000 samples to cord blood banks. To date, the country’s six public blood banks already hold 25,000 samples and have contributed stored blood for more than 400 successful, clinical transplants.

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Dam projects, pollution and climate change threaten the future of China’s largest freshwater lake.

China’s last remaining expanse of clean water, Poyang Lake, faces a crisis. Not only is the lake drying up, but the little water left behind is polluted.

Once known as Pengli, Poyang Lake is in the northern part of east China’s Jiangxi province. During the wet season, the lake covers over 4,000 square kilometres.Water feeds in to the lake from the Gan, Fu, Xin, Rao and Xiushui rivers and flows out again into the Yangtze River. The river basins of these waterways cover 97% of the province’s land area.

Jiangxi is one of the poorer provinces in eastern China, and this may explain why the lake has escaped major industrial pollution so far. Of China’s four major freshwater lakes – the others are Dongting Lake, Taihu Lake and Hongze Lake – it is the only one not to suffer eutrophication.

Every year Poyang Lake sees extreme variation – of 10 metres or more – in its water levels. It is known for its wide expanse of clear water in times of flood, but it shrinks dramatically in the dry season, becoming little more than a river.

Varying water levels are nothing new, but recent years have seen a succession of new lows. The dry season is also getting longer. The water level used to reach its lowest point in January or February; now this happens in December or even earlier.

Jiangxi is a water-rich province. However, the areas around Poyang Lake are starting to suffer from water shortages. In October 2006, the drinking water inlet for Duchang county was left dry by the retreating lake.

The province’s drying rivers and lakes are like an illness, said Tan Huiru, a researcher at the Mountain-River-Lake Development Office for Jiangxi province. “Floods are rapid and violent like an acute sickness,” he said, “but the shortage of water in an ecosystem is more like a chronic disease. The damage it causes to wetlands will take a long time to repair.”

Experts point to a number of factors that are driving the increased water shortages, including climate change and decreased flows from upstream rivers.

The Three Gorges Dam (see “The Three Gorges: a wiser approach”) is also a major factor affecting Poyang Lake and the ecology of its water basin. Speaking at the Second Yangtze Forum in April 2007, deputy governor of Jiangxi, Xiong Shengwen, said that the dam had caused a “historical change in the relationship between the Yangtze and Poyang Lake.”

Some experts also say that as the Three Gorges Dam reduces water levels along the Yangtze River, the volume of water flowing out of Poyang Lake and into the river will increase. In September last year, the Three Gorges Dam started storing water at the end of the flood season. Several days later the Jiangxi Water Bureau found that 6,000 cubic metres of water per second were flowing out of the lake and into the Yangtze. At the same time, only 1,000 cubic meters per second were feeding into the lake from its tributaries.

Caijing magazine reported a retired senior water engineer from Jiangxi, Xiong Dakan, saying the erosion of upstream riverbeds and siltation at the lake’s mouth due to the Three Gorges Dam could have disastrous consequences for flood prevention efforts in the next 30 years.

The impact of the Three Gorges Dam on water shortages and flood prevention needs further research. The Jiangxi Water Sciences Institute took the lead in December last year by launching an assessment of the impact of the Three Gorges Dam on Poyang Lake and its tributaries. The conclusions of that report are eagerly awaited.

But it is not just the quantity of water that is a problem; quality is also an issue.

Seven years ago Poyang Lake had clear waters. In 2001, the water was classed as Category I or II on 80% of tests; it was Category III in the remaining 20%. These are the top three classes in China’s scale of water quality. This meant the water in Poyang Lake was suitable to drink all year round.

By September 2007, however, a provincial monitoring centre found no Category I or II water in 10 locations in the lake. (The water was at its normal level for the time of year and covered 3,000 square kilometres). The water was Category III in 60% of tests. The remaining 40% was Category IV: lightly polluted water. In December 2007 and January 2008 – when the water level was at a record low and the lake covered only 40 square kilometres – monitors found the water flowing from the lake in to the Yangtze was Category V: heavily polluted water.

In the last few years county towns in Jiangxi have stepped up efforts to attract investment. Many new industrial zones have been established and heavy polluters from richer provinces, such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang, have also started to relocate to Jiangxi. Rules on pollution are often breached. In many locations, the construction of water treatment plants is only just beginning. Poyang Lake has become the cesspit of the entire province.

Additionally, sand-dredging and the over-planting of trees are damaging the ecology of the region. Since 2003, many towns in the area have started large-scale planting of poplar trees. This fast-growing wood creates an income for both planters and the local government.

However, the poplars suck water out of the soil and leave other plants thirsty, threatening the survival of the lake’s wetlands. Large single-species forests are more susceptible to pests and disease. Experts are worried about the rash of poplar planting on the shores of the lake.

For years people have exploited the lake; it has been left wounded and exhausted. Tang dynasty poet Wang Bo reflected on the songs of returning fisherman, which drifted along the banks of the lake in the evening. But you won’t hear them today: there are few fish and the fishing industry has suffered.

Thankfully, awareness of the situation is improving. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao ordered improvements in the water quality of the lake in April last year. The provincial government held a telephone conference later that month to launch the cleanup operation and help end destructive practices such as over-planting trees. Poplars planted in the Poyang Nature Reserve have been removed.

But uprooting trees isn’t enough. Now is the time to save the country’s last remaining expanse of clean water. Jiangxi’s problem is the same the whole of China faces: how to encourage economic growth, without damaging the environment.

March 28, 2008

http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/1846-Crisis-at-Poyang-Lake

Climate change will have a disastrous impact on the world's poor, says a UN report. As key climate talks in Bali draw near, how should India and China approach an increasingly divided world?

“The World Toilet Summit was held in New Delhi on October 31,” read a text message sent to me by a colleague in Beijing. “According to the World Health Organisation, 2.6 billion people do not have access to ‘improved sanitation’ – more than half of them in China and India.” My friend thought it was a joke, but in fact three years ago Beijing played host to the World Toilet Summit.

The World Toilet Organization (known as the WTO, but not to be confused with the World Trade Organization) chose the right location when it opted to hold its summit in India. India is the world’s most toilet-poor nation, even more so than China. It is hard to find a public toilet on the streets of New Delhi, but you see plenty of men standing against walls relieving themselves. In a sense, the state of a nation’s toilets reflects the state of its economy and society.

Hundreds of millions of Indians continue to live in poverty, with no access to adequate sanitation or domestic conveniences. An Indian government report, India: Addressing Energy Security and Climate Change, says 600 million Indians have no electricity – a figure equal to the combined populations of the EU and the US.

And China finds itself in similar circumstances. Speaking at an NGO workshop on climate change negotiations held in Beijing on November 18, Lu Xuedu, deputy director general at the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Office of Global Environmental Affairs, said that according to the UN standard of US$1 a day, China still has at least 200 million people living in poverty. “There’s a village by the Miyun Reservoir which I have visited three times,” said Lu. “The poverty there is appaling. Wangfujing [a major shopping street] in Beijing and the Bund in Shanghai do not give you the whole picture.” The Miyun Reservoir is less than 100 kilometres from central Beijing.

It is facts like these that have led India and China’s governments to refuse to commit to reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. Professor Zou Ji, deputy dean at Remin University’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, is a member of China’s delegation to UN climate change talks. At one heated point at the COP11 climate-change negotiations in Montreal in 2005, he told delegates: “It cost tens of thousands of yuan for me to get here – enough to support a rural Chinese family for years. Why am I here? To represent the Chinese people. Come and see how many Chinese people do not have air-conditioning in summer or heating in winter . . . We need to improve the conditions they live in, and of course that will mean more emissions. These are essentials, not luxuries!”

But international calls for China and India to undertake emissions reductions are becoming stronger. On December 3, UN climate change talks will open in Bali. It is expected that the US and other developed countries will continue to put pressure on the world’s most populous developing nations. Even the ever-cautious UN has called for more action from China and India. On November 27, the UN Development Programme published its 2007/2008 Human Development Report, Fighting climate change: human solidarity in a divided world. The report recommends that developed countries reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by between 20% and 30% by 2020, and 80% by 2050. Major emitters among developing countries should aim for their emissions to peak by 2020, and to fall 20% by 2050.

This report was edited by Kevin Watkins, director of the UN's Human Development Report Office, who reportedly said at a reporters’ workshop held a month prior to publication: “We suggest rich countries take deep cuts of 80% from their present level of emissions and other countries (including India and China) take on targets as well. Rich countries should provide the finances for these countries to achieve their targets”

Sunita Narain, from India’s Centre for Science and Environment expressed surprise: “If the UN is saying this, it is a regressive stand.” Narain believes that developing countries should not be required to reduce emissions, but that developed countries should provide the funding framework for them to leapfrog to clean technologies.

As a Chinese journalist, I do not believe China and India should undertake to cut emissions at this stage. But the two nations should do their best to play a more constructive role.

In fact, the Chinese government has already taken a number of measures to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions. As Lu Xuedu pointed out, the Chinese government has set a target of a 20% reduction in energy consumption per unit of GDP between 2006 and 2010 – equivalent to saving of 600 million tonnes of coal. “That would be unthinkable in some western countries, and it is not easy to achieve,” said Lu.

China was also the first developing country to publish a national plan of action on climate change – in June this year. For this reason, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary general, singled out China for praise at a press conference in November to mark the release of the fourth report from the International Panel on Climate Change.

The Chinese government in September launched a nationwide campaign to persuade citizens to reduce their emissions and energy usage. This is no doubt praiseworthy, but could China also ask some of its citizens – the rich, for instance – to make a greater contribution than just voluntary behavioural changes?

Both China and India have massive gaps between rich and poor, though the situation in India is even worse than in China. In New Delhi and Mumbai, skyscrapers contrast with slums, many cannot afford even to take a bus. Yet as a friend from Mumbai told me, the tycoon Mukesh Ambani is in the process of building a 27-storey mansion – with its first six storeys alone allocated for parking.

China has 345,000 residents with assets over US$1 million, according to October's Merrill Lynch and Capgemini "Asia-Pacific Wealth Report", second only to Japan -- and up 7.8% on last year. India has 100,000 millionaires, up 20.5% on last year.

As the Human Development Report says, we live in a divided world. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, rich and poor nations have common but differentiated responsibilities. Is the same also true for the rich and poor citizens of developing nations?

November 28, 2007

http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/1524-China-India-hard-choices-in-a-divided-world

Enthusiasm for electric cars is revving up in China, where Dongfeng Electric Car Co. produced its first batch of 30 hybrid buses in September and BYD Auto Co. Ltd. launched the country’s first gas-electric hybrid, the F6DM, just a month later. 

More models are expected to roll out of Chinese auto factories in coming years, and the upcoming 2008 Olympics in Beijing is being touted as a showcase for green technology, including hybrid cars and other forms of low-emissions transportation. 

This flurry of activity did not appear overnight. Rather, the hybrid-car industry has taken years to develop in China and more than 28 billion yuan in government investments. Research continues for what’s been called the largest, publicly funded research effort in the history of the nation’s auto industry. 

How far will the industry go? Answers vary. Lagging research and the overwhelming strength of multinational competitors in the auto industry are nagging forecasters. 

But China has a growing team of cheerleaders, including Wang Chuanfu, chairman of Shenzhen-based BYD, whose gas-electric car features gas engine for long distances and a battery-powered motor for short hauls. After five years of development, production is expected to begin in the second half 2008. In addition, the company’s all-electric models are scheduled to go on the market in 2009. 

'As a transition from hybrid cars to purely electric automobiles, this (BYD model) is a car that has the power to change the world,' Wang told Caijing. 'And three to five years down the road, the age of electric cars will have arrived.' 

High stakes for research and development 

Toyota Motor Corp.'s hybrid hit, the Prius, was launched on the Japanese market a decade ago. It was the world’s first, mass-produced hybrid passenger car. At the time, even some Chinese auto industry research and development experts were not exactly sure what 'hybrid power' meant.   

'Some people thought it meant using a combination of gasoline  and natural gas,' recalls Dongfeng research and development director Xu Pingxing. But actually, this type of car is only one in a whole class of gas-electric hybrid cars that generate power using an internal combustion engine in conjunction with an electric motor with battery power. 

China was still in the slow lane in 1999 when, after three years of research on electric car technology at a Toyota research center in Japan, Chinese researcher Dr. Yang Yifu returned to his hometown in Hunan. He discovered a stagnant electric car industry in his homeland. Prospective companies had yet to enter the market for a simple reason: The hybrid car concept was neither generally accepted nor clearly understood in the industry. 

Yang went on to run his own hybrid car manufacturing company. But his initial observation about the state of the industry was also on the mind of China’s Vice Minister of Technology Xu Guanhua, who turned his attention to developing electric cars and energy-saving technology. Xu’s report to the National Party Congress in early 1999 recommended launching a 'blue skies plan' that would organize technological advances and popularize the use of natural gas, liquefied natural gas and other alternative fuels for automobiles. He also suggested a plan for introducing electric cars in several cities.   

Xu's report got a boost from Vice Premier Li Lanqing. In a memo on the recommendations, Li wrote, 'I support programs similar to the Tai Hu Cleanup (a lake improvement project) that would establish other clean air projects.” A cooperative effort involving more than 10 government departments led to a program called Clean-Air Project -- Clean Car Action, led by the Ministry of Science and Technology and State Environmental Protection Agency. 

Also in 1999, Wan Gang, who currently serves as head of the technology ministry, was working as technology manager for Audi and chairman of the German Alumni Association of Tongji University. He organized a trip to China by high-level, German auto engineers. Afterward, Wan wrote proposals to the National Party Congress in which he suggested that developing electric cars could help the Chinese auto industry leap forward.   

Wan met Xu and other senior officials two years later, after he returned to teach at Tongji University. He relentlessly promoted the electric car concept. And the officials listened. Later that year, the technology ministry decided to include electric car technology development in its 863 Hi-tech Program, which was part of the Tenth Five-Year Plan for 2001 to ’05. Wan was appointed chief of the experts group. 

Wan oversaw a huge expansion in government support for the new technology. During the five-year period, the central government injected 8.8 billion yuan into the electric car program. Local governments and individual enterprises invested more than 20 billion yuan. And more than 2,000 high-tech experts from more than 200 companies participated. 

'This is the biggest automobile research and development program in China's history,' said Ouyang Minggao, auto department dean at Tsinghua.  

From the start, the project was not without controversy. But Ouyang played down the debates, praising the national plan that closely linked hybrid autos to energy savings and environmental protection. “Moreover, this program is working on shared technology,” he said. “How auto manufacturers utilize this technology is their own business.'   

Thanks to the government’s strong support, some domestic automakers that originally shied away from electric cars jumped on the bandwagon. 

The pace of industrialization 

Wan Gang’s electric car program passed a review in February 2006. Three sample cars were introduced, testifying to the domestic technology’s achievements in areas of functionality, capacity and appearance.   

Yet the researchers and industry officials had to face an embarrassing fact: Chinese-made electric cars could be found on car exhibition floors, but not the nation’s roads. The four-year effort was incomplete without industrial applications for the technology. Yang, now general manager of Hunan Shenzhou Co., said few companies considered mass producing electric cars because of a national lack of research and development during the early 2000s. 

The tide turned when Dongfeng delivered its first batch of hybrid buses to the Wuhan public transit system September 8. At a city ceremony marking the occasion, Wan said the delivery had started China on the road to electric vehicle industrialization. Meanwhile, anticipation was building for a Chinese electric car. 

BYD’s response to the buildup was the F6DM, which Wang said is currently undergoing road tests. The groundwork has been laid for technological development, and Wang said as long as government officials give the nod, the car’s production schedule won’t change. 

In addition to BYD, leading Chinese automaker Chery Automobile Co. Ltd. is also on track to launched hybrid cars this year or in 2008. Other domestic automakers including Dongfeng and Shanghai Auto Industrial Corp.(SAIC) have made hybrid power a priority and plan to start hybrid production around 2008. 

'Hybrid power is the focal point for our research and development,' a Chery research engineer, who declined to be named, told Caijing. Chery plans to run tests by equipping taxis with its hybrid power system starting in October. 

However, Chery’s hybrid cars would differ from the Toyota Prius, which offers a “high” hybrid technology that combines top gas-saving performance with high production costs. Chery plans to produce “mid-range” and “low” hybrids, applying the latter technology in urban taxis for an added cost of 2,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan, and cutting gas consumption by up to 7 percent. 

Chery also plans to build a mid-range hybrid that reduces fuel consumption 25 percent for an added cost of up to 30,000 yuan. The automaker is in the preliminary stage of research and development for a high-level hybrid.  

Yet the Chery-Toyota technology gap does not rule out competition between the companies. Although Chery’s hybrid cars will not match the Prius in fuel efficiency, according to one engineer, the Chinese car’s production costs will be much lower. And 'as long as we are in the market, Prius will be affected,' the engineer said. 

Chery and other domestic carmakers originally planned to sell hybrids by the end of 2006. Their ambitions were cooled for different reasons, but they generally blamed the delay at least partly on the time-consuming, tedious process of research and development.  

Dongfeng fell victim to research pitfalls. The company had introduced hybrid public buses in Wuhan as early as November 2003, delivering another 20 units two years later. But the company’s Xu said that, due to a lack of experience early on, the actual fuel efficiency for the buses tested close to zero. Researchers struggled to improve the technology, finally developing an optimal control strategy designed specifically for buses in actual traffic situations. Fuel efficiency rose up to 30 percent. And the same technology was used for the fleet of buses delivered in September. 

These technological improvements have been awarded with a higher commitment from the government. The technology ministry has apparently approved an even greater investment for the next version of the electric car program, under the Eleventh Five-Year plan for energy saving and resource development. 

Ouyang, who has now taken over Wan's position as program chief, hopes that, by the end of plan period, China will have developed a hybrid car industry, and that industrial production of hybrid cars will peak during the Twelve Five-Year period, 2011-’15. 

Going green at the games 

From the perspective of industry insiders, the upcoming Beijing Olympics may prove to be a turning point for the Chinese electric car. 'Green Olympics' decrees say all vehicles shuttling athletes to and from competitions must be electric, and electric buses will be used for public transportation around the Olympic stadiums area. 

Shanghai Volkswagen, the event’s official auto sponsor and a leader in fuel cell car manufacturing, will likely provide 500 Touran hybrid cars for use during the games. Research and development for this group of cars reportedly will be conducted simultaneously in Germany and Shanghai. 

Other domestic carmakers also may jump on the bandwagon for a high-tech Olympics. At the Chinese auto brand development and strategy initiative in August, Wan said China's fuel cell research and development initiative for hybrid and electric public transportation and passenger cars 'will appear at the Olympic venues.' Yang told Caijing said Hunan Shenzhou will test hybrid car production capability, technology and market response at the Olympics. 

The next platform for China’s hybrid car industry will be the 2010 World's Fair in Shanghai, where only zero-emissions vehicles will be allowed within a 3.2-square-kilometer area. In addition, Shanghai plans to launch 10 hydrogen fuel stations, 100 fuel cell buses, and 1,000 fuel cell cars before 2010 with a 1.3 billion yuan investment for hydrogen fuel cells.    

'This is an important task in our research and development for the upcoming World's Fair,” said Xiong Weiming, general manager of Fule Cell Unit, SAIC. “We have already selected a team who will work on this until the end of the event.' 

The Ministry of Technology plans to spend half its budget on developing emission-free fuel cells by 2010. But Hu Liqing, general manager of Shanghai Shen-li High Tech Co., a private company that develops and manufactures fuel cells, said hybrid cars offer more practical potential than fuel cell vehicles. The reason is cost; the price of a fuel cell power system is 10 times that of traditional power system.   

Despite the huge potential for the industry tied to the Olympics and World’s Fair, and the ongoing research and development efforts, a new fuel tax has been cited as an additional incentive. The long-anticipated tax, along with rising oil prices, would encourage consumers to switch to fuel-stingy cars. 

Yet hybrid vehicles cost more. BYD's upcoming model will include a power system that costs 50,000 yuan more than a traditional engine. Even with large-scale production, the car’s final price will likely be about 30,000 yuan above similar gas models. 

In the United States and Japan, hybrid buyers only need to foot half the extra cost due to favorable policies, such as financial subsidies from the governments. Similar policies are not in place in China. Chery executives expressed hope that the Beijing government will eventually bear some of the cost.   

Naturally, government policies only play a small part in the industry’s future. Another key factor for the Chinese market is the attitude toward hybrid shown by companies that build traditional, gas-powered autos. 

Tongji University’s Yu said electric cars present a double-edged sword for traditional manufacturers. Their production is already up and running on a broad scale, but the electric car industry is advancing slowly. “If big changes happen too quickly, then many efforts will be wasted,” he said. “You can only go one step at a time.' The industry’s progress may be good for newcomers such as Chery and BYD, however, perhaps because they are more ambitious and have more incentives to enter the new market. 

Yet lagging technology and research and development will continue to pose a disadvantage for the long-term development of China's electric car industry. BYD’s Wang said that although their ferrous cell batteries are a relatively mature technology, and are close to entering the mainstream market, China's auto industry overall is clearly behind the rest of the pack. 

Yang agrees. 'Compared with foreign companies, we still lag behind more than 10 years,” he said. “We are advancing, but so are they.' 

For big automakers like Toyota, research and development is part of the company structure, making it easy to organize cooperation between manufacturing divisions. But in China, companies often lack proper in-house research and development. Staffing and funds for many Chinese automakers are below those in just a single department at Toyota.  

One researcher told Caijing that problems stemming from cooperation among Chinese auto companies are almost unavoidable. These troubles may be tied to secrecy, an unwillingness to share technology, or disorganized research. 'All these things will act to slow down the research and development process,' the researcher said. 

1 yuan = 13 U.S. cents 

http://www.caijing.com.cn/newcn/English/IndexList/2007-10-26/35369.shtml