Greater China
Mar 25, 2005
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GC25Ad08.html
Too much for Mother Earth
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Even if per capita income in China grows at only 8% per year -
lower than the red-hot pace of 9.5% at which it has grown since 1978 - it
will still overtake the current per capita US income in just over 25 years,
according to the latest analysis by the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).
And if those increased incomes translate into the kind of lifestyle
currently enjoyed by most US citizens, Chinese demands will overwhelm what
the planet can provide, according to the analysis, "Learning from China: Why
the Western Economic Model Will Not Work for the World". While
geopoliticians worry whether China will integrate itself into the current
Western-dominated international system, Lester Brown, EPI's founder, is far
more worried about the impact of a wealthy China on the Earth's diminishing
resource base.
"If it does not work for China," he notes, "it will not work for India,
which has an economy growing at 7% per year and a population projected to
surpass China's by 2030." China's demands on basic raw materials to feed its
galloping economy have become increasingly clear in just the past few months
as successive trade delegations, including one headed by President Hu Jintao
himself, have made their way to Latin America to sign long-term supply
contracts for commodities from agriculture to mining. On a 12-day,
four-country trip in November, Hu announced more than US$30 billion in new
Chinese investments in Latin America in basic industries and infrastructure
designed to facilitate exports of raw materials from the region across the
Pacific over the next generation.
China's economic boom is the biggest single factor in the steady rise of
commodity prices worldwide over the past years, a factor that - coupled with
its investments and shrewd diplomacy - is buying it considerable goodwill in
much of the developing world, but especially in South and Southeast Asia, as
well as Latin America. A survey of 22 countries commissioned by the British
Broadcasting Corp (BBC) and released recently found that China is now viewed
as playing a significantly more positive role in the world than either the
US or Russia and that majorities in 17 of the countries surveyed are
particularly positive about China's growing economic clout. The poll, of
nearly 23,000 people, was conducted by GlobeScan and the University of
Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes in late 2004.
But Brown, a founder and former director of the Worldwatch Institute who has
long warned about limits to the Earth's ability to sustain wealthy
lifestyles - at least as they exist in the United States - now argues that,
to the extent China's growth is aimed at replicating such lifestyles, its
efforts will ultimately prove futile. Chinese consumption of each of the
"five basic commodities - grain, meat, coal, oil and steel - has already
overtaken that of the US in all but oil", he writes. "Now the question is,
what if consumption per person of these resources in China one day reaches
the current US level?"
China's current per capita income is estimated at about $5,300 a year, only
about 14% of US per capita annual income of about $38,000. If its economy's
annual growth rate slows to 8% per year, China would reach the current US
income by 2031; if it grows at a mere 6% a year, it would reach current US
levels by 2040. Assuming the 8% growth rate and that Chinese consumption
habits will be similar to those of the US today, per capita grain
consumption would climb from 291 kilograms today to 935kg for a US-style
diet, according to Brown. That would bring total Chinese grain consumption
in 2031 to 1.352 billion tonnes from only 382 million tonnes in 2004 - equal
to two-thirds of the entire 2004 world grain harvest.
"Given the limited potential for further raising the productivity of the
world's existing cropland, producing an additional 1 billion tonnes of grain
for consumption in China would require converting a large part of Brazil's
remaining rainforests to grain production," according to Brown, who notes
that if Chinese per capita meat consumption alone were to rise to today's US
levels, about 80% of the world's current meat production would be consumed
by Chinese.
Even more daunting are similar estimates for energy production. If by 2031
the Chinese use oil at the same rate as the US does today, it would need 99
million barrels of oil a day, or 20 million barrels per day more than the
entire world currently produces. Similarly, if China's coal burning were to
reach current US levels of two tonnes per person per year, the country would
use nearly 3 billion tonnes annually by 2031. Current annual global
production stands at 2.5 billion tonnes. As fossil fuels, more use of oil
and natural gas will also mean unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gases -
blamed by scientists on climate change and global warming - released into
the atmosphere.
If steel production per person in China were to climb to US levels, it would
mean that China's aggregate steel use would double by 2031 to a level equal
to the current consumption of the entire Western world. If China were to
reach current levels of automobile ownership in the US (three cars for every
four people), it alone would have a fleet of 1.1 billion cars by 2031,
compared with the current global fleet of nearly 800 million. "The paving of
land for roads, highways, and parking lots for such a fleet would approach
the area now planted for rice in China," according to Brown.
Similarly, if China were to ape current US consumption of paper products,
which are reliant on forests and recycled paper today, it would need nearly
twice the amount of paper produced worldwide last year to satisfy its needs
just for 2031. "The point of this exercise of projections," writes Brown,
"is not to blame China for consuming so much, but rather to learn what
happens when a large segment of humanity moves quickly up the global
economic ladder ... Plan A, business as usual, is no longer a viable option.
We need to turn quickly to Plan B before the geopolitics of oil, grain and
raw-material scarcity lead to economic instability, political conflict, and
disruption of the social order on which economic progress depends."
(Inter Press Service)
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