CHINA - Economic Growth vs Environment

"China Weighs Environmental Concerns Against Economic Growth"
PBS Newshour 4/12/2011

Esquel Textiles, one factory with 54000 employees! WOW


Notable excerpts from transcript

WEN JIABAO, Chinese premier (through translator): We need to unceasingly increase the size of our economy, but not at the cost of excessive consumption of resources and energy and environmental pollution. That would not only be unsustainable. It would also affect future generations.

JEFFREY KAYE (Newshour): Guangdong Province speaks to both pollution and promise. Sometimes referred to as the world's factory floor, the area's colossal growth has come at an enormous cost. Its waterways have been ravaged by industrial contamination. Its consistently smoggy skies are evidence of chronic air pollution.

China is investing increasing amounts in cleanup efforts. Its recycling industry of metals and of paper is also growing. One effort to promote environmental stewardship is the Environment Health and Safety Academy at Sun Yat-sen University in the provincial capital of Guangzhou.

The two-and-a-half-year-old academy trains managers in manufacturing companies. It provides courses on environmental regulations, health hazards and risk assessment. It has support from the U.S. government, major transnational corporations, and a Vermont-based foundation, the Institute for Sustainable Communities (opens in new page), represented in Guangdong Province by Wan Yang.
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WAN YANG, Institute for Sustainable Communities: We are delivering some courses, some training to, you know, change the behavior of the workers, change the awareness and mind-set of their managers, their CEOs, and finally, help to, you know, to protect the environment, help to address the global climate-change issues.

JEFFREY KAYE: One company Wan has worked with is Kaibang Motors. Its products, exported around the world, power electric devices, such as elevator doors, washing machines and air conditioners. It employs 5,000 workers at its plant in the Zhuhai on the southern coast.

General manager Huang Shijie says his company's output grows by about 40 percent each year. Energy consumption is also rising but at a lower rate than production.

HUANG SHIJIE, Kaibang Motors (through translator): We're trying to reduce the amount of electricity that we're using. We're trying to adjust our equipment to make it more efficient. And, third, we're trying to switch all of our light bulbs to the more efficient kind.

JEFFREY KAYE: Huang says the factory has also started to recycle water used for cooling, instead of discarding it.

Does the following sound familiar?

YUGAO ZHANG, Esquel Textiles: China is changing. More and more people and more and more companies are paying much more attention to the environmental protection. The environmental protection is getting better and better.

JEFFREY KAYE: But not at the pace some would like to see.

Ma Jun, a former journalist, directs the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. The nongovernmental organization maps water pollution to try to expose the most polluting businesses.

MA JUN, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs: To change current status quo is not easy, because some of the stakeholders benefited through these, you know, lower standards on the environment and labor.

JEFFREY KAYE: By shining a spotlight on polluters, Ma tries to pressure large companies to clean up their supply chains. Ma says corporate polluters have taken advantage of lax governmental regulators in China.

MA JUN: The enforcement of all these environmental standards and the standards on occupational health and safety remains to be weak in this country. And the cost of violations are still lower than the cost of compliance.

JEFFREY KAYE: We have been told the calculation of the companies is, it's easier, it's cheaper for us just to pollute, pay the fines and get on with our business than it is to clean it up.