John Byrne, Young-Doe Wang, Bo Shen, Chongfang Wang, Craig R. Kuennen and Xiuguo Li. Introduction. Since the 1970s, Asian developing countries have.
Bull. Sci. Tech. Soc., Vol. 13, pp. 324-331, 1993. Printed in the USA. 0270-4676/93. Copyright 1993 © STS Press.
URBAN SUSTAINABILITY DURING INDUSTRIALIZATION: THE CASE OF CHINA John Byrne, Young-Doe Wang, Bo Shen, Chongfang Wang, Craig R. Kuennen and Xiuguo Li.
Introduction Since the 1970s, Asian developing countries have experienced rapid economic growth. While the world economy grew at an inflation-adjusted rate of 2.1 percent annually during 1977-1987, 37 Asian developing countries registered an average annual growth rate of 4.8 percent. (1) China's performance was even more impressive, with the country growing at an average annual rate of 9.6 percent during the last decade.(2) Compared with the world economy, China's economy grew nearly five times faster. Historically, rapid economic growth in developing countries has often been accompanied by even more rapid growth in commercial energy use. This trend is evident in the recent economic growth of Asian developing countries. While the rate of energy consumption in the rest of the world increased an average of 3.1 percent annually during 1977-1987, Asian developing countries expanded their energy use by more than 7 percent.(3) China's energy consumption grew at an annual rate of 5.2 percent during that same period.(4)
in or near a few large cities. As a result, China's large urban populations are exposed to a multitude of air pollutants, including sulphur dioxide (S02), nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, fly ash and other suspended particulate matter (SPM). A study of global air quality, for example, reported that the ten cities with the highest levels of suspended particulate matter were all in Asia, and five of these cities - Shenyang, Xian, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou - were in China.(5) Further, emissions of a second pollutant - sulphur dioxide - were likewise concentrated in Asia with five Asian cities among the highest. Three of the five Asian cities - Shenyang, Xian, and Beijing - were Chinese. The measured levels of SPM and S02 in China's five cities exceed World Health Organization health guidelines, indicating that continued emissions at those levels threaten the health of China's urban populations. Suspended particulate and sulphur dioxide are both by-products of coal combustion and coal has been the major energy source for fueling development in Asian countries. This is especially true for China which depends on coal for more than three-fourths of its commercial energy use.(6) When this fact is coupled with China's requirement for further economic expansion to meet the growing needs and desires of its population, it is clear that China faces difficult, even self-contradictory, choices of economic growth versus social health and sustainable relations between society and the natural environment. The self-contradictory character of these choices can be traced directly to the growth-oriented development path that the country currently adheres to. It is our argument that a national
Successful GNP growth among Asian developing countries has been accompanied by a second, related tendency. As these countries enjoyed economic growth, they found themselves experiencing high levels of energy-induced environmental degradation. The negative environmental effects of Asian economic growth are dramatically visible in large cities where industry and populations are heavily concetrated and where large amounts of fossil fuels are consumed. This is particularly true in China where industrial activity and commercial energy use facilities are located 324
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The Challenge of Urban Sustainability During Industrialization: The Case of China
transition to a sustainable mode of development is needed. This will benefit cities because they are the nexus where the nation's development, energy, and environmental choices are realized. Through a national transition to sustainability, China's cities can improve human health and environmental quality while maintaining their role as the key contributors to the national economy. Industrial-Based Urban Development Development of China's cities as industrial centers can be historically traced. Chronic civil wars and the incompetence of the Nationalist Government had essentailly brought China's economy to collapse. When the Chinese Communist Party took over the leadership of China in 1949, China's existing industrial infrastructure and skilled industrial workers were located almost entirely in its cities. Consequently, China's cities bore the responsibility of national economic reconstruction. In the decades following the establishment of the People's Republic of China, continued industrial development in urban areas insured that China's cities would play an important role in the country's economic renewal. By 1985, 67 percent of China's industrial enterprises were located in cities, and the gross industrial output produced by these urban
enterprises accounted for nearly 70 percent of the total output produced by the nation as a whole.(7) The expanding metropolises of Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenyang, and Xian came to dominate China's economy. As China's people and industries settled in these five cities, their influence on China's economy grew. By 1990, these five urban centers housed 6 percent of China's urban population. Yet, these same five cities accounted for 9 percent of all Chinese urban industrial enterprises and produced 15 percent of China's 1990 gross industrial output. During that year, Shanghai and Beijing ranked first and second in terms of gross industrial output, while Guangzhou, Shenyang and Xian ranked 4th, 6th, and 18th, respectively. (8) The industrial enterprises located in these Chinese cities are drawn mainly from heavy industries such as iron and steel, metallurgy, machinery, petroleum, and petrochemicals. By 1990, over half of the industrial output from three of the five cities- Beijing, Shenyang and Xian - derived from heavy industry. In fact, several of the ten largest Chinese enterprises - among them the Capital Iron and Steel Company, Yanshan Petrochemical Company, and Baoshan Iron and Steel Complex - are located in these cities. Selected indicators for the five cities are given in Table 1.
Table 1 Selected Indicators of Five Cities (1990)
Total 467 Cities
Beijing
Guangzhou
Population (millions)
717.2
10.4
5.9
Number of Industrial enterprises
389,122
6,383
Gross Industrial Output (GIO) (billions RMB)
2,160.4
Indicator
Percent of 52.6 GIOby heavy industry (%)
Shanghai
Shenyang
Xian
12.8
5.7
6.0
4,684
13,525
5,570
3,476
73.4
44.2
163.2
35.5
17.6
57.9
36.5
48.5
66.7
57.0
Source: CSSB (China State Statistical Bureau), Chinese Urban Statistics. 1991, Hong Kong: Longman Group (Far East Ltd., 1991.
J. Byrne et al.
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The significant economic contributions of heavy industries in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenyang, and Xian have been fueled by a coal-based energy sytem. As noted below, this system is highly inefficient and heavily polluting.
The Problem-Ridden Energy System Caught in the conventional growth-oriented development paradigm, the five Chinese cities in our study have consumed large amounts of energy during rapid economic growth and urban expansion. According to China's State Statistical Bureau (CSSB), in 1985 these five cities alone accounted for over 14 percent of the total electricity consumed by China's 324 cilies.(9) Electricity consumption per capita in four of these five cities far exceeded the national urban average of 113 kWh. Beijing was highest with 383 kWh per capita, followed by Guangzhou (284 kWh), Shanghai (232 kWh) and Xian (228 kWh). Only Shenyang, at 144 kWh per capita, was near the national average.(lO) Coal is the primary fuel for electrical generation in most Chinese cities, including the five case study cities. For instance, in 1988, 98.3 percent of Beijing's and 99.8 percent of Shanghai's electriciy was generated by coal-burning power plants.c ll ) Additionally, due to shortages in electriciy supply, many Chinese cities power their factories and households by directly burning coal. In Shanghai, for example. there were more than 10.500 industrial boilers and 0.8 million household stoves powered by coal in 1985.(12) Because of its relatively cheap price and the conisderable size of national depostis, coal dominates the Chinese commercial energy sector. (Table 2). Coal is not only intensively consumed, but it continues to be inefficiently used. International comparisons of energy consumption per million US dollars of Gross Domestic Product (GOP) among selected countries give strong evidence of the low level
of energy efficiency in China. While industrialized countries consumed 212 to 679 tons of coal equivalent (tee) to produce $1.0 million in national output, China used nearly 3,200 tee to produce the same value of goods (see Table 3). According to Vaclav Smil, China's average fuel conversion efficiency is as low as 30 percent, compared with Japan's standard of 60 percent.(13) And compared with other Asian developing countries who use an average of 724 tee per $1.0 million of output (based on conversion of figures in Byrne, et al.), it is clear that China's industrial sector is highly inefficient.(14) The use of coal as a fuel source is inherently problematic from an environmental point of view. In the best of circumstances. this fuel's use can lead to major air pollution and solid waste disposal problems. Inefficient use of coal only exacerbates an already significant tendencey toward environmental degradation. In China, the problem is becoming acute because more than 83 percent of the coal burned in China is not sorted or washed.
