Asia
Cutting energy intensity in China
The limits to power
Sep 10th 2010, 5:45 by Banyan
EVEN some Western liberals, including fierce critics of the lack of democracy in China, concede that dictatorial rule might have some beneficial side-effects. Take, for example, the challenge of tackling human-induced climate change. Whereas Western governments get bogged down in the morass where present-day voters are asked to make sacrifices now for the sake of voters to come, China, the argument goes, can just issue an edict. But even in China, it is not that easy.
There was some grudging admiration for the drastic measures in place in, for example, Anping county in the northern province of Hebei, around Beijing. As part of China’s national target of cutting energy intensity (the amount of energy used per unit of GDP) by 20% in the five-year period ending this year, Anping had wanted to cut its electricity consumption by 6.6% in 2010 from the 2009 level. The first half of this year, however, yielded a cut of less than 1%.
So the local government got tough. It divided the county’s 98 wiring systems into three groups and, from August 27th, turned them off in turn. People had to put up with not just a short black-out—but a 22-hour period, from 9pm to 7pm the next day, without electricity.
Not surprisingly, businesses, unable to complete orders they had taken, and residents, emptying their fridges of rotten food, were furious. And their cries of rage were heard. The central and provincial governments have told local authorities to restore power supplies.
Some restrictions remain in place: supplies to illegal energy-intensive and high-polluting factories are still to be cut. This is in keeping with the nationwide drive, which has seen many factories across the country closed for at least part of the time.
Steel production has been affected. Reuters quotes official estimates that output could fall by 7m tonnes in September. An analyst quoted by the Wall Street Journal, however, points out that this may have motives other than cutting carbon emissions and energy intensity. It might be intended to help the consolidation of China's fragmented steel industry, which would strengthen the country's bargaining position with the big iron-ore producers.
Even so, China does seem to be taking its energy-intensity target extremely seriously, which must be welcomed. Nor is it bad news that a local government cannot get away with high-handed collective punishment of its power-guzzling citizens. It too will have to enter the morass, and try to persuade people to change their behaviour.
In this blog, our Asia correspondents and our Banyan columnist provide comment and analysis on Asia's political and cultural landscape. The blog takes its name from the Banyan tree, under which Buddha attained enlightenment and Gujarati merchants used to conduct business
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@ Nivana-Bound:
Agree completely. It's not clear to me whether the rot first pervaded our citizens, or the political system. My guess is that a lot of compromises between government, personal freedom and corporate interests were necessary for the U.S. to prevail in WWII. Those compromises set a new baseline under which corruption could flourish on a grand scale. This is what Eisenhower warned about, although I'm certain even he never imagined how thoroughly the country would be sold out by its industrial power brokers.
So we have the autocratic oligarchy pretty much in the bag. Now we need a few bold and selfless leaders to introduce benevolence into the model. But I don't hold out much hope for that, nor for grassroots revolution. Collapse is more likely the intervening catalyst for a better way forward.
Nirvana, I thought capitalism ran on poor people and that the problems were caused by many of those poor people becoming less poor. I have no problem with rich people becoming less rich (and rich economies like Britain becoming less absurd) but I am also a liberal.
Furthermore, a "benevolent autocracy" is something of a phallacy: the very exercise of wielding absolute power causes harm simply by virtue that what is good for one portion of society will almost inevitably be bad for another. Anyway, China doesn't even have an autocracy, they have a party; a party which it is virtually illegal to criticise and steeped in obfuscation.
Ignoring for a minute the inherent dangers of corruption in such a system; it is also a prime breeding ground for the kind of greed, selfishness, narcissism, pride and hubris which have caused such suffering in human history. The pattern of democracy is moving away from such things by allowing minorities and the weak in society a voice. By not wielding power like a sledgehammer, but rather like a foam wiffle bat.
I dunno NB. Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick. Are you saying you want to live under an authoritarian government?
@ Pacer:
In times like these, a benevolent autocracy or a socialised statehood, is what America truly needs, to salvage itself from the imbecility of infantile hubris, greed & selfishness that capitalism & democracy have helped breed & foster here, over the years.
Democracy & capitalism, because of the very nature of the beast, eventually self-destruct, due to inherent & underlying human frailties, like greed, selfishness, narcissism, pride & hubris, the engines upon which these ideologies operate..
Nirvana-Bound:
It's not the lack of a totalitarian government that's hindering the West (we had representative democracy on the way up as well). It's corruption and the natural result of letting private enterprises become too large and too influential on our political process. Of course, it doesn't help that our citizens are too busy with their bread and circuses to properly operate their political system...
@TTG-India Sep 12th 2010 7:47 GMT
My earlier post was in response to your remark about China's "crummy" power infrastructure, which is the world's second largest in size after the US. Perhaps you could tell me how my figures show "India is much ahead of China in terms of cutting energy intensity".
Too much of a good thing ain't so good. In fact it can be down right bad. This is true about democracy, freedom, free enterprise, capitalism.. you name it. It is invariably self-destructive, because of mankind's primal & inherent propensity for greed & selfishness.
And that's precisely why the west is imploding on it' self. The stark paucity of regulatory controls & socio-political & finacial constraints is leading to societal & financial meltdowns, across western nations.
We need to adopt the Chinese way of state-run capitalism if we hope to ressurect ourselves from the morass we are floundering in presently.
Laissez faire is a fatal anachronism that begs to be discarded & buried for all time. Socialised capitalism is the way of the future..
Yes, this whole "strong government" thing seems rather jolly. Were it not for the possibility of being dragged away in the middle of the night with no explanation; locked up and crushed beneath a monolithic, powerful, authoratarian regime that has only token accountability to its citizens at best then I'd say it'd be nice to have it everywhere.
For the West, more undemocratic cuts on energy supply = Greater admiration to the regime
aniscal, I'm not sure if you thought you were quoting me. I cartainly hope not.
It is true that, in some places, democracy has not done well at all. It is also true that, in other places, dictatorship has not done well at all. Merely tossing out examples of each don't help decide which type of political system is "better." For openers, we would need to decide what the criteria are for "better" -- economic development, personal freedom, etc., etc.
Once we have that, we then need as large a number of each type of government as possible, followed by the kind of comparison which controls for the various variables which might be involved. You know, the sort of approach which actually results in valid answers as to what variables correlate with (even if they are not certain to cause) the criteria we have decided constitute "better."
If we can use that approach to tease out what kinds of medications work best for various diseases, we can use it for deciding what kinds of politics works best for populations. But just saying "India has democracy and problems X, Y and Z" does not prove anything about whether any or all of X, Y, and Z are a result of democracy (or, I suppose, lack of autocracy), and which are due to unrelated factors.
Dear Lecra, you have just proved my point. According to your figures, and the hilarious re-worded Chinese Propaganda masquerading as an Economist Article, India is much ahead of China in terms of "cutting energy intensity".
I shoud have had asleep，but when i is shutting off my pc，unluckily，i read the slkchina'comment,which astonished me，let us have a look following comment from he：
Electricty in university dorms is cut off at 10:30 and students must use battery powered lights if they want to study longer. Plus they aren't allowed hair dryers, mini-fridges, tvs, or microwaves in their rooms. Imagine how well that would go over in America.
Now，what i want to say to you is that you just making up something based your imagination.Our dorm never limited power,so i can write this in the deep of night.Also,i want tell you that we all have own pc,so we don't need tv,and in order to other'security,in case of fire，we don‘t use some unnecessary electrical appliance.China is not what you are thinking.If you don't belive,welcome to china and have a look!
To raise the tax rate will spoil the current industry structure ,and turn that into morass.
lecra: I doubt very much TTG-India is interested in any discussion based on objective facts. He's in here to make an unthinking, ideologically-based rant and he does have many supporters in India apparently which must explain the mess so-called democracy in India is, as expounded by a few other posters here.
Someone asked why India has to be injected into any China-based article. Unfortunately, TTG-India started it here!
China is only on the verge of knowing how much IT will make its Communist base tremble. Bubbles will start to burst because China is in no way prepared the challenges of a truly open democratic state and free trade. Watch after Expo Shanghai shuts its doors and crisis commences to tighten in on various regions.
Every time there is something said about China, there is no need to bring in India irrespective of whether India is mentioned in the original article or not. Seemingly the notion that India is competitor to China is universally popular because the notion is being made popular. Fact of the matter is politically and in terms of natural and human resource availability, China has it's strength and weaknesses like any other nation and it's pace of development would ultimately be determined by these factors predominantly. If China is taking measures to check energy consumption, it should be welcomed even if the measures are administered in undemocratic fashion by western liberal standards. Concern about Chinese growth from western quarter should be if or not that is sustainable for at least next decade or more because China growth also keeps USA and Europe afloat. As far as west is concerned, one is inclined to think that war economics is no more working because cold war is over and young western generation post second world war are not favourably disposed to fight wars for any holy reason. This clear from the fact that military industrial complexes of cold war ear are not even talked about and popular reactions to western military engagements from Korea to Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan and disastrous effects these wars had on US economy in particular. China may not be a democracy and it's solutions to it's problems may smack of authoritarianism, but China is a matured civilization, which is staggering a bit like one does in condition of intoxication because of it's success in last couple of decades after it's failures in great leap forward and cultural revolution. Deep down somewhere present Chinese leadership realizes that China draws much flakes because of it's political style, which does not quite synchronise with international fashion called democracy. Let the Chinese experiment go on just as other experiments elsewhere are on.
I believe China is planting more trees the last few years than all other countries in the world put togeather. That must amount to something, as trees (new forests) are a very important way to mitigate the green house effect. There is no single way to fix carbon dioxide for a prolonged period as effective as planting fresh forests on depleted lands, as China is doing on a grand scale.
Sorry, typo - China's should read 3.451 trillion kWh (2008 est).
@TTG-India Sep 10th, 2010 9:29 GMT
China's electricity production 3,451 trillion kWh (2008 est).
http://www.indexmundi.com/china/electricity_production.html
India's electricity production 723.8 billion kWh (2009 est).
http://www.indexmundi.com/india/electricity_production.html
The figures speak for themselves.
wolffa:
did you post by accident on this article? Three Cups of Tea is about Pakistan and Afghanistan, very different places to China in just about every way, including girls' education (which is not the topic of this article anyway)...
actually, i am shame of hearing this, chinese local government always do some "amazing things" through theirs unreasonable minds, but it is too complicated to talk about this, local government had be worries about their KPI in every year from central gov.,all of this are attribute the non-democracy policy. man! poor residents, better than north korean.