BEIJING - On a recent "Car Free Day" in
Beijing, the capital of China was clogged with
vehicles and the sky a drab shade of gray. The
sheer number of cars on the roads had made a
mockery of the city initiative to make residents
ride bicycles or use public transport.
"I
have been riding my bicycle since I was in primary
school," renowned Chinese environmentalist Liang
Congjie said. "But in recent years I don't feel
safe on Beijing roads and I have to take a
cab.
More and more cars are eating up the bicycle
lanes. The private cars have now become real
street despots."
While in Beijing there
are still 2.4 million people who ride their
bicycles to work every day, nearly 1,000 new cars
hit the streets daily. China's roads will be
clogged with 170 million vehicles by 2020,
according to the World Bank - by which time the
country would have surpassed the United States in
total car ownership.
"No one is doubting
that more and more Chinese people are going to
reach that threshold of affordability - to buy
their own car," said John Humphrey, manager of
China operation for the US-based car-industry
consultants J D Power Asia-Pacific. "The pace of
change we have seen in China's auto market is
astounding, but demand is still growing."
Seven million cars are sold in China each
year. That means China this year left Japan behind
to become the second-largest car market in the
world after the US, where more than 16 million
cars are sold annually.
Such phenomenal
growth has had analysts rushing to calculate the
environmental consequences if every Chinese family
realized its dream of owning a car.
Emissions from cars in the United States
alone now account for about 5% of worldwide
carbon-dioxide emissions, according to the US
Department of Energy. If China matched the US in
per capita ownership, its vehicles would make a
huge contribution to global carbon-dioxide output,
dwarfing any cuts in the emissions that the rest
of the world can make.
"China can no
longer afford to sacrifice environmental concerns
for the sake of prosperity," said Xue Ye,
executive director of Friends of Nature, China's
largest environmental civil group.
No one
is more worried about the consequences of such
prodigious growth than Beijing's leaders. They had
promised to hold "Green Olympics" in 2008 and have
less than two years to solve the escalating
problems of air pollution and traffic jams in the
capital.
They are now considering a
temporary ban on private cars during the Olympics,
but many say this could only be a stopgap measure
for the real problems plaguing Chinese cities.
"Instead of allocating resources towards
moving people and building a mass-transit network,
China has invested heavily in developing its auto
industry," said Rob Watson of the US-based Natural
Resource Defense Council.
As Chinese
citizens grow wealthier and demand the consumerist
trappings of their counterparts in the developed
world, Beijing is walking a tightrope in balancing
its promises to raise living standards while
keeping pollution and surging oil demand under
control.
The dilemma is not an easy one
for a leadership fixated on modernization and
aspiring to have the country join the ranks of
developed consumer societies as soon as possible.
While fretting about urban gridlock and
air pollution, the Beijing municipal government
controls and benefits from Beijing Automotive
Industry Corp, a car maker that has joint ventures
with DaimlerChrysler and Hyundai Motor Co. The
same is true for Shanghai, whose leaders receive
dividend payments from the state-owned Shanghai
Automotive Industry Corp, and for the southern
city of Guangzhou and almost every other
first-tier city in the country.
"There are
enormous profits to be made from the auto
industry," said Li Dun, a research fellow with the
Contemporary China Research Center at Tsinghua
University. "But these come with a price tag - the
stress caused to our environment and our energy
resources."
China's automobile industry,
which employs 1.7 million people, has become one
of the pillars of the country's economy, providing
jobs and bringing large tax revenues. China's auto
makers are now beginning to make inroads into
overseas markets, selling cars and trucks to Iran,
Syria, Egypt, Indonesia, Vietnam and other
countries.
Limiting the rapid growth of
China's auto market at this stage could be not
only difficult but also politically explosive. For
the country's expanding middle class, acquiring
one or two cars simply means aspiring to match the
living standards in the developed world.
Experts reckon shattering China's
middle-class dream would be close to impossible.
"The majority of individual consumers [who] buy
new cars in China - more than 80% - do so for the
first time," Humphrey told the Foreign
Correspondents Club in Beijing.
Beijing,
which has 2.5 million vehicles - more than any
other Chinese city - has almost no limitations on
car usage. Worried about public discontent,
Chinese leaders have also shied away from
fuel-consumption taxes that have encouraged people
to drive less in Europe.
Instead, the
central authorities have opted to institute tough
new fuel-economy standards for domestically
produced cars and trucks and equally strict
vehicle-emissions regulations. Once fully
implemented in 2008 and 2010 respectively, these
regulations will put Chinese cars at par with
automotive standards in the European Union.
The push to improve China's environment is
coupled with concerns over the impact of
car-ownership growth on national oil security.
Domestic cars are burning through a steadily
increasing proportion of the oil consumed in
China, rising from 10% in the mid-1990s to a
likely 40% by 2010, according to government
figures.
About one-third of the oil
currently consumed in China is imported, and
analysts project that the country will depend on
imports for 70% of its oil needs by 2010.
This year the government reversed a
decade-long ban on small vehicles in the capital
to encourage the purchase of more efficient
models. It has also imposed taxes on gas-guzzling
vehicles and begun experimenting with
environmentally friendly car technologies, such as
hydrogen-powered cars and biofuels.
But
whether China becomes an environmental pioneer
will depend on the government's commitment to
enforce the standards it sets and fulfill its
ambitious green pronouncements, experts contend.
"It is a public consensus that we don't
have to follow in the United States' path by
building so many roads, producing so many cars and
using so much oil," said Li Dun. "The problem is
how to implement the consensus. There are still
plenty of city leaders and even some central
government ministries that are steering us on to
this very same road."
