Momentum is building to put pressure on China over its ‘involvement’ in Sudan. Stephen Spielberg has resigned as artistic director for the Beijing Olympic Games in protest at China’s support for the Sudan government. Now, an open letter, signed by Nobel Peace Prize winners, politicians, Olympic medalists and entertainers, criticises China’s President Hu Jintao for not taking action to prevent atrocities in Darfur.

“As the primary economic, military and political partner of the government of Sudan…China has both the opportunity and the responsibility to contribute to a just peace in Darfur.

“Ongoing failure to rise to this responsibility amounts, in our view, to support for a government that continues to carry out atrocities against its own people.”

Words are flying back and forth, but so far nobody has talked about a boycott of the Beijing Games. Just to get the ball rolling, I am declaring myself unavailable for selection for the Great Britain team for any of the sports which I play to an international standard. If that doesn’t get their attention, nothing will.

Meanwhile, the leader of the free world refuses to consider the idea of a boycott. George Bush has confirmed he will be accepting the Chinese invitation to attend the ‘Genocide Games’, saying that as far as he’s confirmed it’s “just a sporting event”. No, Mr President, international sport is all about politics, and this is the most politically-charged Games since Moscow 1980. To quote George Orwell:

“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play, it is bound up with hatred and jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all the rules and sadistic pleasure in unnecessary violence. In other words it is war minus the shooting.”

Mr Bush should feel right at home. Apart from that bit about the shooting.

The Australian reports that China is running out of fuel.
(‘Chinese tiger has nothing in tank‘).

• Police are guarding petrol stations in several inland provinces to prevent fights, as shortages of petrol and diesel are causing huge queues of trucks, buses and cars.
• In Kunming, capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, 1000 trucks are stranded.
• A truck driver named Li told the Chuncheng Evening News he had been stranded at the Stone Tiger Gate petrol station for three days after searching for fuel in other places, but failing. He said his delivery date was way overdue.
• Another driver, at Geiju city, said a job that would have taken one day in the past, now took three: one on the road, two queuing for fuel.
• Nine days ago, a truck driver was reported to have been stabbed to death in central Anhui province after a row about queuing.
• A few days earlier, at Ezhou in Hubei province, 100,000 people were stranded, unable to get to work, because city buses had run out of fuel.

With economic growth running at 11.5%, China is the second-biggest consumer of oil after the US. Diesel imports in the first nine months of the year were up 46.5%, compared with the same period last year. Inflation is at a 10-year high of 6.5% and the Government is reluctant to let the price of oil ‘float’ in line with international markets. As inflation took off this year, the Government announced it was capping the prices of key commodities it still controlled, including oil, until the end of the year. However, under strong pressure from refiners and distributors, it conceded a 10% rise from this month. This still leaves the price well beyond international levels, and China has to import about half its oil, for which it must pay world prices.

Could good old-fashioned supply and demand act as a brake on China’s runaway growth? Now where did I put that old economics textbook?

Photo: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The New York Times has been running a series of in-depth articles ‘Choking For Growth’, exploring the extent of the pollution crisis in China. In the latest instalment, ‘Far From Beijing’s Reach, Officials Bend Energy Rules’, Howard W. French shows how China’s campaign to cut energy use is having little effect outside the capital.

When the Beijing government announced a nationwide energy reduction campaign two years ago, officials in the western Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region started work on creative schemes to evade the requirements.

Local officials were required to raise electricity prices to discourage the growth of large energy-consuming industries and to force the least efficient to close down Instead, fearing local economic impacts, the regional government brokered a special deal for the Qingtongxia Aluminum Group, which accounts roughly 10% of the region’s GDP. The company was removed from the national grid and supplied directly by the local company, exempting it from expensive fees and allowing it to continue to get its power at the lowest price.

Before the national energy consumption campaign began, Ningxia officials worked to get around environmental regulations that could hinder growth. In 2002 Beijing issued rules limiting the number of new coal-burning power plants, but Ningxia has built at least three that either did not have the required permission, or failed to meet new environmental standards.

Even after Beijing cancelled company exemptions to special consumption fees in 2004, the local government extended them for another year, obtaining huge savings for its metal industries. As recently as 2005, regional officials continued to argue that the exemptions should remain. Many of the region’s strategic metal working industries had been spared Beijing’s mandated price rises until as recently as this May, nearly two years after they were announced. “That favourable price wasn’t approved by the state. It was a regional policy”, said a company official. As French says in his article:

“The tug of war between localities and the central government also shows the limits of China’s ability to impose change on a vast, unruly country by edict, while exposing the weaknesses of a one-size-fits-all approach to reform in a country where regional economic disparities are rapidly growing.”

One could say much the same about the United States, where individual states are increasingly ploughing their own furrow at a local or regional level. The big difference is that US states are acting on their own initiative to exceed inadequate Washington environmental directives. In China, they’re busting a gut to avoid compliance with regulations that stand in the way of the drive for growth.

Twelve Chinese companies reported for environmental violations have had crucial bank loans recalled, suspended or rejected. The first list of thirty offending companies was submitted to the People’s Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) in July this year. China’s new ‘Green Credit’ policy is intended to starve notorious polluters of operating capital. Under Chinese law, polluters are subject to a maximum fine of 100,000 yuan (about 13,500 U.S. dollars).

“The deterioration of China’s environment tells that it is not effective to rely on just one department to monitor pollution emissions,” said Pan Yue, deputy minister of SEPA. “The environmental watchdog needs to work hand in hand with financial policymakers to find ways to punish polluting factories.”

Wang Jinnan, a senior expert at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, said: “The listed plants are small and medium-sized plants, which face more challenges than large companies when applying for loans from financial institutions. The green credit system is a reasonable way to control pollution from the small and medium-sized plants. But if large companies were on the list this time, the policy would be more influential and effective.”

None of the names on the list have been made public. However, most of the factories were in the paper-making, coking, pharmaceuticals, iron and steel, and brewery industries. This week’s report outlined several cases, including:

• a brewery in East China’s Anhui Province whose 10 million yuan ($1.35 million) loan application was rejected owing to continued violations in waste-water discharge.
• a power company in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, whose bank loans were recalled after it failed to pass an environmental assessment.

Wang Jinnan, a senior expert at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, said: “The listed plants are small and medium-sized plants, which face more challenges than large companies when applying for loans from financial institutions. The green credit system is a reasonable way to control pollution from the small and medium-sized plants. But if large companies were on the list this time, the policy would be more influential and effective.”

We shall have to wait and see whether the green credit system will have a real impact on pollution in China. If SEPA continues to ignore the large companies, this policy may prove to be just window dressing.

Chinaview

Chinadaily

Presenters Billy Bragg and Mark Viduka show their emotional involvement in the issues

Well I’ve ploughed through the first part of CNN’s much-vaunted eco-documentary ‘Planet In Peril’, and I wasn’t that impressed. A series of episodes filmed around the world, loosely linked by a cobbled-together ‘theme’ of interlinked ecosystems under threat from human exploitation, it kicked off with a slot about illegal wildlife trading in Thailand. After 15 minutes of shaky footage of sad caged creatures and police raids, we were off to Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot with only 10% of its natural environment remaining. We followed a Conservation International RAP (Rapid Assessment Program) team as they surveyed the forest for rare species. Inevitably, a tiny lizard was found which might or might not be a completely new species. After a brief aside on the economic pressures driving the locals to over-exploit their environment, we were off again, this time to the US.

Yellowstone Park is a “pristine ecosystem”, and we reviewed the progress of the re-introduction of the grey wolf in 1995. A natural predator for elk and bison, the wolf has brought about a ‘trophic cascade’ benefiting all levels of the ecosystem. After establishing the vital role of the high-level carnivore in maintaining ecosystems, we went to Cambodia where a small team of park rangers funded by the Wildlife Alliance are struggling to keep tiger poachers at bay. Collateral damage from indiscriminate laying of snares has reduced the population of wild elephants in Cambodia to 2-3000. The Asian elephant is a “keystone species”.

Tigers are hunted for their supposedly therapeutic body parts, so our next visit was to China, the world’s number one destination for illegal wildlife. Apparently, “the Chinese will eat anything”. Despite swift punishment and hefty fines for selling endangered species, the trade continues to grow. Traditional Chinese medicine is driving species to extinction, leading on to a discussion of general resource exploitation, shortages, pollution and health problems. Cancer is the leading cause of death in China. Finally, back to the USA for a slot on “body burden” testing, highlighting the accumulation of pollutants and toxins in the human body and their effects on health.

All a bit of a muddle really, but how refreshing to see a 90 minute (excluding adverts) documentary about the environment that didn’t mention global warming once. That is still to come in Part 2. Sadly, I can’t find any trace of that having been uploaded to P2P. Perhaps the guy who uploaded Part 1 lost the will to live after watching it.

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/planet.in.peril/

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and the Bank of China (BOC) have opened their joint venture to provide private banking services to wealthy individuals in China. This is the first such service to be offered by a major Chinese bank, and is aimed at customers with at least $1m (£515k) of investible assets.

The two banks announced a strategic partnership in 2005, with RBS taking a 5% stake in BOC. The new venture reflects RBS’s view of the long-term growth potential in China. Whatever you think about RBS as a company, the Scots don’t make any financial moves without thinking long and hard, and usually get their sums right.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/business.cfm?id=435242007

RBS and its high street subsidiary Natwest may do good business, with 2006 end-of-year profits of £9bn, but it is coming in for a growing amount of criticism over its approach to environmental and ethical issues. A student boycott is threatened over its huge investments in global oil and gas projects. A new report accuses the bank of going on a “destructive binge with potentially devastating consequences for the planet”. The response from RBS, which markets itself as the “Oil and Gas Bank”, is to attempt to discredit the report and deny involvement in many of the projects it mentions.

RBS still maintains there is no scientific consensus over the causes of climate change, but there’s no doubt they’re doing their bit. Since 2001, RBS has provided over £5bn in oil and gas loans and participated in over £15bn worth of related projects. Carbon pollution from the projects amounted to almost 37 million tonnes in 2005, the report claims, more than total expected emissions from Scotland. This is more than a hundred times higher than the pollution for which RBS accepts responsibility.

http://www.carbonweb.org/documents/Oil_&_Gas_Bank.pdf

http://www.carbonweb.org/

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