Friday 23 November 2007

China's great leap backwards

Australian Financial Review
Friday 23/11/2007 Page: 9

China is facing a rapidly worsening environmental situation that threatens its economy, public health and international image. A senior Chinese government figure said in 2005 that the country's economic miracle 'will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace.' Attempting to spruce up China's deteriorating environmental reputation in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, its leaders have been getting increasingly vocal about environmental targets and investments, and overseas investors are already evincing interest.

Part of China's problem is that it has a huge - and increasing - consumption of resources, mainly because of inefficiencies. According to a report in Der Spiegel last year, a Chinese official admitted: 'To produce goods worth $US10,000 we need seven times the resources used by Japan, almost six times the resources used by the US and - a particular source of embarrassment - almost three times the resources used by India.' Besides a rising demand for resources such as coal, the World Wildlife Fund estimates that China's demand for timber, pulp and paper will grow by 33 percent between 2005 and 2010.

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