Name: Eastworld Spotlight: China’s climate challenge
Uploaded: 2020-10-22
Duration: 10 min 56 s
Description: Council on Foreign Relations’s Yanzhong Huang talks about China’s environmental dilemma.

[MUSIC PLAYING] GRADY MCGREGOR: Welcome to Eastworld Spotlight, Fortune's interview series where we interview experts about the most pressing issues facing Asia today. Today we have Yanzhong Huang. He is a professor for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a professor and director of Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University's School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Yanzhong has recently been an invaluable voice to explain China's response to the pandemic and what it means for the world. And he's also recently published a book called Toxic Politics-- China's Environmental Health Crisis and Its Challenge to the Chinese State. Thank you so much for joining us today. YANZHONG HUANG: Thanks for having me. GRADY MCGREGOR: So I guess to start, I was really interested in this section in your book. Because I remember when I lived in Beijing, checking the AQI readings from the US embassy, and then checking what the Chinese government was putting out, and just the visceral feeling of that on the ground every day. And I was curious why did you choose to focus on pollution for your book. And why is it such an important lens in understanding how China operates? YANZHONG HUANG: Basically, there are two reasons. One is that well, that-- we started that project in 2013, 2014, when China was facing a PM 2.5 crisis. The air pollution has become headlines-- all the media coverage. And secondly, I want to basically build on this case to bridge the gap between the studies on China's internal challenges and its international ascendance. Because we have a voluminous literature talking about China's-- the challenges China faces. And in the meantime, we have a lot of literature discussion talking about how China is becoming a threat because this military prowess, the capabilities, economic capabilities. And so I'm trying to use that case to focus on another dimension of the Chinese power that is the state capacity to provide better, high quality air, non-contaminated soil and food. And so that capacity to provide goods and services, I think it's a very important dimension of state power that is very often overlooked in China studies. GRADY MCGREGOR: Yeah, and I think you called it maybe the most formidable challenge-- and maybe one of the most formidable challenges that the Chinese government faces today. Why is that? And how would you assess its performance so far in addressing environmental health issues? YANZHONG HUANG: It is a nationwide and sustainable challenge. So if you look at the challenges to the economy, to the society, to the political legitimacy, that is also different. In fact, if you just look at the cost to the economy, according to a study-- well, actually, estimate I did-- is that it cost, in 2013, 18% of China's GDP. That is what shows how China is among those countries most adversely affected by pollution. But in the meantime, when you look at the government response, the-- it is mixed. On the one hand, you found the government has been very impressive in terms of bringing down the pollution level, both in terms of the PM 2.5 concentration level, and the number of polluted days between 2013 and 2018. But in the meantime, if you look at other indicators of measurement, such as the number of polluted days the winter time, and then you also look at the ozone level and the unintended undesirable consequences, this question, this cost-benefit analysis, you find that those achievements no longer become impressive. GRADY MCGREGOR: Under Xi Jinping, the response very much changed in terms of how it came down from the top level and then became implemented on more a local-- by local authorities. How did the change in Chinese leadership impact China's response to environmental issues? And where does that put us today? YANZHONG HUANG: The impact is, again, also mixed. Because certainly, well, if you look at President Xi, well, he has shown unprecedented levels commitment to tackling the environmental pollution problems. I think if there's any major shift in China's environmental policy, it's this growing state commitment to tackling air, water, and soil pollution through all these action plans and also through the increased implementation of these pollution control measures, like the heavily rely on mobilization approach by sending the so-called the Central Environmental Protection Inspection teams and mobilizing Thai bureaucracy in the society to achieve those objectives. And in this process, also, unlike his predecessors, he's been also trying to institutionalize those measures, instruments introduced in pollution control. And so we have indeed found those measurable decline in terms of pollution at the national level. But in the meantime, if you look at institutional aspects of this pollution control, right, the political aspects, we have exactly-- after 2012, we've seen this rise what we call the "bandwagon" politics-- when you have this political power so concentrated on one person, that is President Xi. Basically, everybody, local government officials try to jump onto these policy wagons in order to show their early and enthusiastic support with his favored policy agenda. So that is a good thing in terms of the speedy action on pollution. But in the meantime, it also change to be this bureaucratic incentive structure to give this strong incentives to f That is, to act more Catholic than Pope-- to sometimes carry those policy objectives too enthusiastically that sometimes causes unintended and undesirable consequences. GRADY MCGREGOR: And bringing us to today, President Xi also made a pledge recently to bring China carbon neutral by 2060. And do you think China's economy will have to sacrifice in order to meet that pledge? YANZHONG HUANG: Well, that is a good question. Because we have seen over-- despite those strong commitment to pollution control, and to-- also committed to tackling the climate change, this dilemma between economic growth and environmental protection continues, actually, even in the Xi year, right? We have-- but this is actually, this dilemma has, in a way, reinforced in the post-COVID era where the local governments actually trying to stimulate local economic growth to make up for the loss incurred during the COVID era. So you actually seen the permits being issued to those coal fired power plants increased in 2020 more than those were issued in 2018 and 2019. So that dilemma. And another example is the Premier Li Kequiang recently called for promoting the so-called "stall economy"-- those streetside vendors that many people believed was also a contributor to environmental pollution, right? So you have seen this dilemma continue to be there. And without changing of the-- fundamentally, the government legitimacy base, and fundamentally change those industrial and energy structural, you're going to see why this is going to continue to haunt China's efforts to tackle climate change. GRADY MCGREGOR: So it might be difficult, at this point, to say that they will meet that 2060 target. YANZHONG HUANG: Yeah. And also, you could point it out that now, with this deteriorating of US-China relations, China now is calling for that new strategy of dual circulation. It's focusing on domestic consumption, indigenous technology, right? So when China focus on economic self-sufficiency, right, the external forces that are impacting on China's green development will also be undermined. And so you mentioned in the beginning, right, that the US missions in China, right-- how the introduction of the PM 2.5 standards actually fundamentally change China's pollution control policy. But that was a good example of how the US could have leverage on China's environmental pollution control. But now with that leverage, it's becoming smaller and smaller, I think. GRADY MCGREGOR: Yeah. I think that's a good place to end. But I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today. YANZHONG HUANG: Thank you. My pleasure. 

Eastworld Spotlight: China’s climate challenge

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Council on Foreign Relations’s Yanzhong Huang talks about China’s environmental dilemma.