Wen Jiajun, "China’s Pending Climate Crisis" 

Wen Jiajun, “China’s Pending Climate Crisis and the Absence of Climate Justice”[1]
​
Introduction by Selena Orly and David Ownby
 
Introduction:  Where are the Women’s Voices?
 
Of the 642 intellectuals whose work is showcased on the Aisixiang website (in March 2021, when we checked), which presumably showcases “the best” of China’s thought world, only 24 are women, which comes to a pitiful 3.7% (we know because pictures are provided in the mini-bios that accompany every intellectual’s page).  Our site does slightly better—7 out of the 56 authors are women (12.5%) and 9 out of the 92 texts translated were written by women (9.8%)—but if gender equity is a goal then we are not achieving it. 
 
Of course, the achievement of gender equity is not a widely shared goal in China—which is not to say that calls to achieve such equity do not exist—and it is completely obvious that the world of Chinese establishment intellectuals is overwhelmingly masculine.  This does not mean that there are no women establishment intellectuals in China, but it does mean that they are harder to find. 
 
We have decided to look.  Our suspicion is that the numbers of women among the occupations that produce establishment intellectuals---university professors, journalists, artists—is probably trending slowly upward, but that it perhaps remains more difficult for women to break through whatever “glass ceiling” stands between them and the public status of a Wang Hui or a Qin Hui.  Qin Hui’s wife, Jin Yan 金雁, is one of the women with a page on Aisixiang, but the titles of her texts suggest that the questions she addresses are more technical or academic than the broader themes her husband regularly addresses. 
 
Of course, Aisixiang may well “screen out” women intellectuals, consciously or unconsciously, and its selection of intellectuals skews toward older Han men, which, again, accords with our experience of the composition of the world of establishment Chinese intellectuals.  There may be other forums where women’s voices are more accessible that we have yet to discover (to the best of our recollection, we found Wen Jiajun, the author translated here, by googling “women establishment intellectuals 妇女公知”).  An additional problem is that it is often impossible to tell solely from the name if an author is a man or a woman.
 
Tips from readers are more than welcome.  N.B.  We intend not to focus on Chinese feminist writings, not because they are not interesting, but because these texts and authors are already the focus of a considerable body of Western scholarship, which there is no need for us to duplicate.  We prefer women speaking about the world to women speaking about women, although we will not be doctrinaire about it.
 
 
Wen Jiajun (Dale Wen) earned her doctorate from the California Institute of Technology in 2000, and worked in high tech in the Silicon Valley for several years before devoting herself to policy research.  She has held several positions in China and abroad, and for a few years split her time between China and Germany, but at present appears to hold visiting scholar positions at the Environment and Development Research Center of the Academy of Social Sciences and at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. 

Wen self-identifies as a New Left, activist scholar, and works principally on climate change, environmental issues, and rural issues (for representative samples of her work in English, including articles and interviews, see here, here, and here; her latest publication on climate justice—in Chinese—appears to be this).  In China, she publishes on New Left sites like Utopia and Guancha, among others.

The text translated here was composed as a personal reflection prior to the December 2009 Copenhagen Conference, and originally published in the October 2009 issue of Beijing Cultural Review 文化纵横. The text examines China’s much-discussed dilemma as a still developing country and a major contributor to global warming.  Wen is appropriately alarmed at the state of the world and at the prospect for slowing or reversing climate change, and her scientific statements presumably reflect data available at the time (and surely remain fairly accurate now). 

From our point of view, more interesting than her science are her political stances, which call on the Chinese government and particularly the Chinese middle class to reexamine China’s goals and China’s development model in light of what reproducing the “American dream” in China will cost the planet.  She laments particularly China’s urban elites’ choice to abandon bicycles for private cars, a choice which has created traffic jams and whiny “citizen lobbies” demanding lower gas prices, “like the Americans.”

Wen’s text is a reminder of a time when, not too long ago, left-wing activists in China, the US, and elsewhere, could make common cause on a variety of global issues.  This is not impossible now, but is much more difficult, because rising populism, particularly in the US and China, has worsened bilateral relations, and made cross-national cooperation problematic (the same goes for the work of NGOs in China, whose influence Xi Jinping has sought to diminish).  In addition, the New Left in China has progressively allied itself with the state, meaning that statements like Wen’s if not impossible, are becoming more rare.
 
Translation by Selena Orly
 
In international climate change negotiations, China plays an important role as a member of the Group of 77 (G-77) and a representative of the interests of developing countries. As the largest emitter in the group of developing countries, international obligations require China to reduce its CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, which is the huge challenge it is currently facing. At the same time, China also has assume its domestic responsibility to meet the development needs of hundreds of millions of people.
 
As the "factory of the world," it is estimated that 7% to 14% of China's carbon emissions go to supply the U.S. consumer market. People all over the world buy cheap made-in-China goods, including clothes, shoes, everyday gadgets, computers, etc. Round after round of climate change negotiations and the recent economic crisis have propelled China to the center stage of world diplomacy.
 
The United Nations Conference on Climate Change, which will be held in Copenhagen in December 2009, will refocus people’s attention on issues of climate governance and climate justice. The problem itself is extremely complex, and practical and sustainable solutions require tremendous efforts from both the government and the private sector. The current economic crisis has created further difficulties in mobilizing sufficient political will to implement strategic climate and energy policies.
 
Many in China believe that the pressure brought about by climate change provides an opportunity for China to address its own environmental problems. Some, too, see the need to link the climate issue to the development path that China has taken over the past few decades.
 
Needless to say, climate change has become the greatest threat to human civilization. The accumulation of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere has increased to 383 ppm in 2007, an increase of 37% compared to 280 ppm at the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1750. The current accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at its highest level in 65,000 years of human history, and likely the highest in the past 2 million years.
 
China has surpassed the United States as the world's largest CO2 emitter. India is similarly set to overtake Russia as the world's third largest CO2 emitter in the near future. Considering that the two countries' huge population volumes cover almost two-fifths of the world's total population, the International Energy Agency not surprisingly estimates that China and India will account for 45% of the growth in world energy demand by 2030. The International Energy Agency also predicts that China and India will account for 80% of the growth in world coal demand, and that they will logically rely first on coal to meet their expanding energy needs, as it is the cheapest—if, sadly, also the dirtiest—fossil fuel. How should we reconcile the contradiction between the need and right to develop a sustainable climate future?
 
Energy and Emissions Trends in China: China as both Perpetrator and Victim
 
The economic growth that China has enjoyed over the past quarter century is spectacular. Its average annual growth rate of 9 percent is unprecedented in recent history. Despite improvements in the efficiency of energy use, the demand for energy continues to grow significantly. Especially since 2000, China's energy demand has grown faster than its GDP growth rate. The substantial increase in average annual energy consumption has frequently exceeded even the expectations of the Chinese government and its planning agencies. A shortage of energy resources has become the norm in certain regions of China.
 
One of the major reasons for the substantial increase in China's carbon emissions is that China has become the "factory of the world," or more precisely, "a factory owned by the world." Numerous companies, including some that seriously pollute, are subcontractors or direct subsidiaries of multinational companies from the United States, Europe and Japan. They are producing more and more cheap consumer goods for Western customers, while, at the same time, most of the profits are taken by these multinational companies because they control the brand and marketing channels. In essence, China has become the kitchen and the West has become the restaurant.
 
Wang Tao of the Tindale Center for Climate Change Research at the University of Sussex estimates that China's carbon emissions from exports reached 1.49 billion tons in 2004, while the carbon emissions mitigated as a result of imports were 381 million tons. This shows that 23% of China's carbon emissions come from net exports. Some government officials and researchers give even higher estimates, believing that one third of China's carbon emissions come from net exports. This not only raises the thorny question of "who really owns China's carbon emissions," but also shows the failure of the elite environmentalists' "NIMBY" approach. Indeed, developed countries have been very successful in exporting manufacturing industries to developing countries, and with that comes the externalization of carbon emissions and other pollution to developing countries. Since we still live on the same planet, and as long as greenhouse gases cannot be externalized to the moon, this problem must be faced head on.
 
At the same time, there is a huge geographic disparity between carbon emitters and countries affected by climate change. Carbon emissions vary greatly from place to place, due to differences in levels of development, technological capacity, and affluence. In 2000, 28% of global carbon emissions came from North America and only 0.09% from Central Africa. But climate change is causing the worst human catastrophe in Central Africa. According to World Health Organization estimates, this process actually started long ago. In 2000, climate change caused 40 to 120 additional deaths per million people.
 
Climate change has also caused harm in China. Taking the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau as an example, many locals have noticed that "glaciers are melting, the temperature is rising, and the rainy season has become unpredictable." For some local urban residents, a warmer and more comfortable climate may be welcome, but for the local ecology and economy, this is a bad omen. The origin of the Yellow River is found in Maduo County, Qinghai Province. It was once known as the county of a thousand lakes, but now this number is no more than 300. The culprit behind the disappearance of the lakes, according to a local environmentalist I recently interviewed, is climate change. According to him, "many of these small lakes are seasonal and unstable. They come and go depending on the amount of snow and rain in the area. With change of seasons and years, some lakes will disappear and others will appear in other places. This is very normal. So it also took us some time to realize that there are far fewer lakes today than there were 30 years ago. Now the weather is hotter and there is less snow.” The disappearance of plateau wetlands and the degradation of grasslands have caused some nomadic populations to lose their livelihoods. It is estimated that in Maduo County, about a quarter of herders have become ecological refugees. They have had to accept resettlement and rely entirely on government relief to survive.
 
Climate change models indicate that global warming will reduce precipitation in northern China, while increasing it in southern China. This prediction is supported by observational data from recent years. Data from the Yellow River Huayuankou Observatory show that the flow is decreasing at a rate of 5.7% per decade. Since the 1980s, the North China Plain has experienced persistent droughts, while floods have increased in frequency in South China. This trend has become more pronounced since the 1990s.
　
In addition to the water crisis, climate change is also threatening China's food security. If scientists’ predictions prove to be true, global warming will cause China’s output of rice, wheat and other crops to fall by 20 to 37 percent in the next 20 to 80 years, as pointed out in a report issued by the Chinese and British governments in 2004. In a recent report issued by Greenpeace, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences warned that rising temperatures, water shortages and declining arable land will reduce China's total food supply by 14 to 23 percent by 2050.
 
"Common but Differentiated Responsibilities" and Geopolitics
 
China's position in the international climate negotiations is the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" as described in the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.” But how is this principle to be interpreted at the practical level? At the climate talks in Potsdam in December 2008, the Chinese delegation put forward the concept of "convergence of cumulative emissions per capita" as a principle of fairness. The G-77 and China stressed that developed countries are not fulfilling their financial payments and technology transfers as promised in the Kyoto Protocol, and they put pressure on developed countries to fulfill those commitments.
 
According to the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries, including China, are not yet required to undertake any mandatory emission reduction tasks. However, considering China's status as the largest emitter, and especially considering its economic growth in the past 20 years, China is also facing increasing pressure from the Western camp, which believes that China should unconditionally commit to mandatory emissions reductions. How should the Chinese respond to this problem?
 
The Chinese economist Hu An’gang (b. 1953) believes that China should accept the binding nature of international targets and unconditionally make significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.  In China, Hu represents a minority opinion, which he himself admits. Among Chinese scholars working on the issue and climate NGO activists, I rarely meet people who share this view, although most of them agree that China should do everything it can to cut emissions and explore a low-carbon-consumption development path as soon as possible. The reason for this disagreement lies in different understandings of international politics.
 
Many scholars and activists believe that in international climate negotiations, China should avoid mistakes similar to those made during the World Trade Organization access negotiations. At that time, China made excessive concessions to join the WTO and those concessions were used by Europe and the United States as a tool to further suppress developing countries. In terms of domestic development, people agree with Hu An’gang that China will be the greatest victim if the climate crisis is not mitigated. In terms of international diplomacy, people believe that, as a leader of developing countries, China should take a strong stand in advocating the right to development and the principle of fairness in order to reserve policy space for developing countries.

Moreover, China should also use its power to force developed countries to meet their existing commitments and further increase emissions reductions efforts. In any case, developed countries account for only 20% of the global population, yet produce 75% of the global cumulative emissions. As the largest cumulative emitter and per capita emitter, the United States has withdrawn from all climate agreements to date. Even though Europe and Japan have signed the Kyoto Protocol, their emissions continue to increase. Should this trend not be reversed, even if developing countries completely disappear from the earth, that is, if their emissions are reduced to zero, climate warming will remain irreversible.
　　
Voices from Civil Society and Public Opinion
 
Since the mid-1990s, the Chinese government has encouraged the development of environmental NGOs, which the government hopes will fill gaps in public education and help the entire country face pressing environmental issues. Environmental NGOs are rapidly entering the newly opened space. Today, environmental NGOs are probably the fastest growing NGOs in China. Many international environmental organizations, such as the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, the International Fund for Nature, and Greenpeace, and others, have established branches in China.
 
The actions taken by environmental protection organizations and development organizations are certainly worthy of praise and encouragement, but people should also be aware of the ambiguous position these organizations occupy in the public sphere. On the one hand, environmental awareness is increasing, and green environmental organizations are developing rapidly; on the other hand, they are often accused of being foreign agents trying to hinder China’s development. Such allegations are often unsubstantiated, but the heavy reliance on international funding makes it difficult for many environmental activists to defend themselves in the face of such accusations.
 
Terms like “NGOs” and “civil society” are often used interchangeably in many contexts, and people tend to assume that non-profit organizations represent NGOs. Another recurring assumption is that a growing middle class fosters more responsibility and a more open civil society, and thus leads to liberal democracy. Unfortunately, these assumptions are not necessarily true.
 
Chinese citizens are increasingly organizing themselves.  However, there are also frustrating examples in middle-class efforts.  The most recent example is the controversy over the price of gasoline. Many believe that it is their natural right to imitate the American way of life. In November 2008, a Beijing law firm organized 1,773 private car owners to submit a letter of complaint to the government. The letter complained that current gasoline prices were not as cheap as in the United States, attempting to act as an outside lobbying group against a planned fuel tax. They demand that oil prices "should also conform to world standards."

This is a slogan often used in the reform era, meaning that China should copy Western rules. In most cases, elite bias equates the West with the world. And these car owners took it one step further:  America equals the world. They did not compare gasoline prices with Japan or Europe, although from the perspective of population density and other resource constraints, China is more comparable to Japan or Europe. In December 2008, for example, the price of gasoline in Beijing, which the car owners were complaining about, was only about half the price of gasoline in Germany.
 
These 1773 private car owners are just the tip of the iceberg. As far as I know, only 10 professors and individual energy experts have come forward to support the fuel tax. No environmental groups have taken a stand. This is probably because of fear of offending the middle class represented by private car owners, or more precisely the elite class, even though they only make up less than five percent of the country's total population.
 
It is precisely because of this elite status that private car owners have logically become the most organized and vocal part of the public sphere. With the rapid accession of many media professionals to the private car owner class, they became the loudest voice in the ongoing fuel tax debate. In Chinese news reports, these 1773 private car owners are often portrayed as heroes defending the public interest against the "evil" state-owned oil companies.
 
With all this in mind, it is easy to see why the book Unstoppable Global Warming:  Every 1,500 Years became a best seller on the subject in China in the second half of 2008. The book was written by two American authors, Dennis Avery and Fred Singer. Fred Singer is a meteorologist and Dennis Avery is a staff member of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. (The two coauthored the original English-language book, but in the Chinese version of the book, the authors magically shrunk to become just Fred Singer). They claim that the reason for the increase in global temperature is mainly or entirely due to natural cycles, that this is not that dangerous and that humans can do absolutely nothing to stop it. The middle class is happy to read what they like to hear, and conversely, they ignore the reality that they need to know. Like many urban elites elsewhere in the world, China's middle class has largely turned a deaf ear to the negative effects of climate change, which for them means at best a certain inconvenience, or even merely a conspiracy theory.
 
Once people realize how many Chinese people have already suffered from the negative effects of climate change, the neglectful attitude of this dominant elite group is very disheartening. As mentioned above, a large number of herders on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have lost their livelihoods and become ecological immigrants who are completely dependent on government relief. In Northwest China, thousands of people are being driven from one place to another by drought and invasive deserts. Farmers in many places are also experiencing more extreme weather conditions and more unstable rainfall conditions, all of which are seriously hurting agricultural production. Unfortunately, many farmers and herders do not know how to connect their local problems with global issues such as climate change, let alone express their views in the public media.

To a large extent, they have become the silent majority, and in most cases are not regarded as objects of the environmental movement. To date, most environmental NGOs, especially those based in Beijing, have focused much of their attention on the urban elite in an attempt to change their views and perceptions. If they could step out of their comfortable middle-class bubble and interact more with the real grassroots masses who are suffering the catastrophic consequences of environmental changes, they would undoubtedly deepen their understanding of environmental issues like global warming and get more support from the lower level of society.
 
Is the American Dream still Worth Dreaming? – Exploring the Real Possibilities of a Low-Carbon Economy
 
Global warming is only one aspect of the global environmental crisis. Therefore, this issue must be considered in the context of global governance and sustainable development. Many countries, including China, put great emphasis on technological improvement and energy efficiency. In the mainstream narrative, ecological modernization theory gives people confidence that with enough technological improvements, we can solve the environmental crisis. The ideology of ecological modernization theory, which comes from Scandinavia, is an optimistic, improvement-oriented theory of environmental protection. This theory places confidence in modernization and technological innovation. In other words, it is a win-win variation on solving the environmental crisis while driving economic growth through technology that improves energy and resource efficiency.
 
According to this theory, one can expect that developed countries represent a better model of sustainable development. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth, and it is clear that the United States is not following the Scandinavian model. In 2006, the World Wildlife Fund released a report called "The Planet We Live On," and based on the data in this report, one can project that if the Chinese people were to replicate the American way of life and current level of technology, we would need more than one planet. If everyone consumed as much as Americans do, I’m afraid, we'd need five of these planets. Since the late 1980s, the human "ecological footprint" (referring to the amount of productive land and water needed to maintain the current standard of living of the population in a given area) has exceeded the Earth's biological carrying capacity, and by 2003, had actually exceeded it by 25%. We are already overspending non-renewable resources. Technologically advanced countries like the United States are the very model of the overconsumption of resources.
 
Among the Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Finland and Norway do maintain a pattern of sustainable development on a national scale: their ecological footprint is smaller than their biological carrying capacity. However, a big reason for this is their low population density and very high biological carrying capacity per capita. The biological carrying capacity per capita in these countries is between 5.8 global hectares (referring to the global productive land area, equal to one hectare of land) and 7.6 global hectares, which is much higher than the global average of 1.8 global hectares as well as much higher than China’s 0.9 global hectares per capita. If we all reach the consumption level of Sweden, we will still need three planets. Therefore, the Scandinavian model is not something that developing countries can easily replicate. Developing countries tend to have high population densities. China, in particular, has a population density much higher than the global average, so the country is under extreme environmental pressure. On a global scale, some experts have proposed that the minimum standard for sustainable development is a human development index above 0.8 and a per capita ecological footprint below 1.8 global hectares. The only country that currently meets this standard is Cuba.
 
At the Potsdam negotiations in 2008, the Chinese delegation pointed out that development itself is a great contribution to solving the problem of climate change. Therefore, the space for development and the right to development should be guaranteed for developing countries. But this mainstream discussion on development issues leaves out one thing: what type of development do we need?
 
Still taking the automobile as an example, in its blind worship of the American lifestyle, China has abandoned its former focus on public transportation systems and bicycles in favor of encouraging a private car-oriented style of living. Cuba imported millions of bicycles and several bicycle production lines from China in the 1990s, in part as a response to the energy crisis caused by the collapse of the former Soviet Union. However, during this period, China imported millions of cars and multiple car production lines from the West. In 2004, China became the fourth largest producer and the third largest consumer of automobiles. The number of private car owners grew is growing at an average annual rate of 19%.
 
In addition to China's growing dependence on imported oil and increasing gas emissions, the massive explosion in private car consumption is damaging the quality of life of many Chinese, most of all the poor. Buses are getting slower and slower due to traffic jams. The average speed of Beijing buses in the 1980s was 16 kilometers per hour; in the 1990s, that number was reduced to 8 kilometers per hour. Today it is further reduced to 4 km, not much better than crawling. Even if magical technology appeared overnight to make all cars infinitely energy-efficient, meaning, zero fuel and zero emissions, there would still be other constraints: the urban transportation network infrastructure built around cars and the resulting spread of urban construction has eaten up so much arable land as to threaten China's food security. Meanwhile, the average one-way commute time in Beijing is already as high as 97 minutes - is this the modern life we want? Technological improvements, such as energy savings and reduction of private car emissions, are indeed important, but people need to be asking some more fundamental questions: how do we want to organize our lives? What kind of cities and villages do we want? What kind of transportation system and energy system do we want? After all, the most efficient car is still far less energy efficient than a bicycle.
 
The word for crisis in Chinese language means both danger and opportunity. The ongoing economic crisis, although terrible, can also provide China with an opportunity to re-examine its export-oriented and resource-intensive growth strategy. So far, signals from the Chinese government have been contradictory. For example, on the one hand, many people believe that the opportunity to reduce oil prices should be seized to implement fuel tax planning, which will help curb fuel consumption and encourage the shift to clean energy in the long run. On the other hand, some government officials are encouraging consumers to buy cars in order to stimulate the economy. Such confusion is to be expected. In any case, for the past quarter century, advocates and implementers of market-oriented reforms have held a certain unspoken belief that the ultimate goal is to replicate the American system. Now, faced with this storm originating from the center of capitalism, the United States, many people are beginning to struggle with the difficulty of trying to understand and respond.
 
For the past few decades, we have been deeply immersed in the cultural atmosphere of "immediate profit and short-term gain." But doesn't the current ongoing economic crisis provide us with adequate reasons to question this culture? We are in the midst of multiple crises because there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we organize our society. At a moment when the world is at the juncture of environmental, social and economic crises, we urgently need to ask: What kind of world do we want to live in? What type of development do we really need?
 
Note

[1] 文佳筠, “中国面临的气候危机与气候正义的缺席,” posted on Aisixiang on December 25, 2015, originally published in 2008.