About the Author:
Liu Jianqiang is the Beijing-based deputy editor of ChinaDialogue – an independent, non-profit organization based in London, Beijing and San Francisco, which publishes on global environmental issues in English and Chinese. He is an experienced journalist, having reported extensively about China’s environmental movement and Tibet. He is author of ‘Heavenly Beads: A Tibetan Journey’.
In China, climate change comes not simply as climate change, but as a general word to describe a series of problems, such as water pollution, air pollution, food contamination, traffic congestion. Chinese people learned the term “climate change” much later than others in the world. When I first reported about climate change in 2005, there were not many journalists paying attention to this issue.
When climate change was first reported, Chinese people quickly linked it to the pollution problems they were facing everyday. At the Lunar New Year two years ago, the southern part of China was hit by the worst snowstorm in five decades, hundreds of thousands people were stuck at airports and railway stations, spending their new year’s day without their loved ones. My then 72-old mother said, “Isn’t it what people called ‘climate change’? Climate change doesn’t mean only getting warmer, it might mean strange weather.”
Her words then reminded me of a BBC survey released in September 2007. It interviewed 1,000 people as a standard sample size for most of the countries, but 1,800 for China. The results showed that Chinese have a good understanding of climate change. 87 per cent of the Chinese interviewees believe that human activities (such as industrialization and transportation) are the main cause of climate change, while only 71 per cent Americans, 78 per cent British and 47 per cent Indians share the same view. 70 per cent of the Chinese interviewees said measures must be taken to reduce the human activities which are causing climate change; only 59 per cent Americans, 70 per cent British and 37 per cent Indians agreed on this.
“I could feel climate change.”
In other words, the Chinese are the pioneers in understanding climate change, globally.
I asked my mother, “Have you heard of climate change?” as her comment interested me. “I don’t need to hear it. I could feel it. It used to be very cold in the winter; we needed padded jackets, trousers, shoes and hats. Now nobody wears padded shoes, some don’t even wear the hats.” “When did you feel the change?” “Thirty years ago. When you were small, the lowest temperature was minus 18 degree Celsius and now it is minus 10, a big difference,” she said.
My mother only heard of the terms “global warming” and “climate change” from the television in the past four, five years. She has her own observations and conclusions about the cause, “I think there are more people, more cars and factories, fewer trees and less water than the past.”
She believes that the growing number of factories is the main cause of global warming. “As soon as we step out of a car in summer, it feels as if we are going into an oven, why is that? The heat came from the car, like factories – many of them are using coal – they release heat and carbon dioxide.”
In our neighborhood, there are buildings of the biggest paper producer of the country, one large-scale chemical factory, two breweries and countless number of small and medium-size factories. Our county’s annual income is rated 30th, among some 2,000 counties of China.
“Are climate change and pollution the same issue?” I asked.
“It is the same. Factories rely on coal for energy, and they release waste. When I was small, the sky was so blue, the sunshine came through the clouds and we could feel the heat on our skin. Now, where is the blue sky? Where is the sun? Whenever we go out, it is grey everywhere. Even the sun is dimmer, if you still call it Sun,” my mum said.
The disappearance of rivers and forests, the growing number of factories and their chimneys, releasing dark smoke and discharging waste water, to secure China’s ever-growing Gross Domestic Product (GDP). My mother witnesses this massive change. For many ordinary Chinese, such as my mother, climate change is closely linked with environmental pollution and they know this from their observations of the past decades, instead of reading it from scientific reports.
Therefore, my mother – an old lady from the rural area – also acknowledges the harm of climate change and supports mitigation efforts, as much as the scientists and environmentalists do, “We can’t shut down the factories, otherwise, how can the workers survive? But we should manage the factories better: they should release white smoke, not dark smoke,” she said.
Has the Chinese Government taken climate change seriously?
What is the position of the Chinese Government regarding climate change then? In an interview, some academics recommended that the Chinese Government – indeed echoing the official position, i.e., to negotiate for the state’s interest – insist on no concrete emission cut imposed on developing countries and bargain space for China’s economic growth. Their core argument is that in terms of CO2 emission per capita, China is not yet that high. According to the World Bank’s report, the current global average emission per capita is at 4.3 tons, while an average Chinese is at 4.1 tons and an American is at 19 tons. China, at the moment, should treat its own emission as for “survival and development”, which is fundamentally different from the “luxury and enjoyment” type of emission from the developed countries. In this sense, China has the right to ask developed countries to bear more responsibilities in terms of emission cuts.
