2013年04月05日 来源:China
Daily
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China
needs to be careful in apportioning responsibility for emissions
In the recent session of the National People’s Congress,
the head of a provincial environmental bureau told reporters that foreigners
buy and use clean goods made in China but it is China that will have to put up
with the pollution that comes with making those goods. Indeed, various studies
show that goods that China exports contain huge quantities of carbon dioxide.
They all come from the emissions that have helped make China the world’s
largest carbon emitter after the United States, and China is pulling further
ahead in this race that no one wants to win.
This raises the question of who should be responsible for
this pollution and who should bear the costs. It is a very sensitive and
complex issue, but several years ago, at a news conference organized by the
Information Office of the State Council, Ma Kai, the then chairman of the
National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning
agency overseeing national economic planning and climate response issues, said
China wanted importers to cover some, if not all, of the costs.
Under the accounting rules of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, all greenhouse gas emissions and their elimination are based
on in-country production measurements. Commitments under the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and its follow-up
regimes are set and evaluated based on this territorial-based emissions
accounting system.
China reckons that when a country’s carbon dioxide
emissions for production are higher than those for consumption, the country is
in effect emitting carbon to meet the needs of other countries.
That is a perfectly reasonable argument, and putting it
goes some way in providing a better understanding of China’s emissions and
their contributions, finding solutions to deal with the problem and allaying
the concerns of developed countries.
However, if the argument is pushed to the limit, it will
not lead to solutions but may in fact be detrimental to China’s interests.
China’s status as the workshop of the world came about
largely because of a comparative advantage in the division of trade. Using fewer
energy-efficient technologies to produce goods for domestic use and exports is
also largely dictated by its current state of development.
It would be fair to say that rapidly rising carbon
emissions and emissions embedded in exports are also the results of China’s
pro-trade policies. China has not only adopted common pro-trade policies, but
has long used access to its unique giant customer base and its access to
certain raw materials as a way of enticing foreign companies to open factories
in China or relocate their production to the country.
If you concede China’s argument that its emissions are in
fact European and American ones generated by China’s deliberate pro-trade
policies, it can equally be argued that the jobs that generate those emissions
must also be European and American. Given that job outsourcing in the current
economic crisis is extremely sensitive in the US and the EU, such an argument
does China few favors.
Combined with US concerns about the huge trade deficit and
further deterioration of its trade balance with China, pushing the
responsibility of the consumers in importing countries is definitely a tough
sell to the US. Moreover, this is not just about China versus industrialized
countries, but has a bearing on developing countries as well.
It could be argued that China ought to shoulder at least
some of the blame. For example, it has been criticized for having a role in
deforestation in Southeast Asia.
Existing studies on carbon emissions embodied in trade
consider energy-related carbon emissions only, failing to take account of the
role that land use changes and forests play in the emissions. If those factors
are taken into account, what China is doing arguably reduces these countries'
capacity to use forests as a sink to absorb global carbon and increases the
carbon dioxide emissions contained in its imports.
Consumption-based accounting of carbon dioxide emissions
further complicates the current debate on the legitimacy of carbon tariffs. The
carbon tariffs that the US has proposed have drawn fierce criticism from China
and India. However, if the consumption-based accounting of carbon emissions,
either implicitly or explicitly, is to indicate that the responsibility for
such emissions from the production of traded goods and services lies with the
consumers in importing countries, it can then be argued that the final
responsibility for regulating those emissions lies with the governments of
importing countries.
This line of thinking ignores the dynamics of China’s
future development. Savvy Chinese leaders have recognized that China’s
capital-intensive, export-oriented growth over the past few decades is no
longer sustainable. Accordingly, the current 12th five-year economic plan
(2011-15) focuses on rebalancing an export-driven economy and on inclusive
growth, aiming for less reliance on trade and for more on domestic consumption
to drive growth. As would be expected, the share of China’s carbon emissions
embedded in exports is expected to fall over time.
Attributing emissions to consumers suggests that whoever
consumes is responsible for pollution from consumed goods. If you put that
user-pays principle in a broad context, it could be argued that it is rich
people who are the highest emitters, so they are responsible for emissions in
their countries.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that if
permitted national emission levels are based on the number of high emitters,
the increasing number of high-living, carbon-guzzling rich Chinese would be
unable to hide behind their poor and carbon-thrifty compatriots anymore and
China would accordingly be asked to take on emissions caps even earlier, which
would be more stringent, than it would wish.
However, assigning responsibility to China for the carbon
emissions in its exports does not necessarily mean the issue can be dealt with
at a domestic level alone. In fact, effectively controlling those emissions
requires action internationally, too.
At the national level, China needs to focus on rebalancing
its investment-driven, export-oriented economy, boosting the service sector and
domestic consumption. It also needs to adjust its trade structure. The
processing trade has played a significant role in promoting development and job
creation, but that trade needs to be upgraded. This is essential not only if
China is to press ahead with opening-up and maintaining its competitive edge,
but also in improving the environment and reducing carbon dioxide emissions in
the production of goods, whether they be for export or for domestic
consumption.
Cutting carbon emissions in exports creates the impetus
for upgrading the energy mix and improving energy efficiency. China has made
great strides in this area and has committed itself to setting
energy-conservation targets, the use of clean energy and carbon intensity. But
it needs to be more ambitious, aiming to reduce emissions by 46-50 percent by
2020 and adopting absolute emissions caps around 2030 that will lead to the
global convergence of per capita carbon emissions by 2050.
With rising domestic energy demand and increasing
difficulty in further cutting energy and carbon use, putting a price on carbon
is a crucial step if China is to successfully harness market forces to achieve
that aim, and genuinely become a low-carbon economy.
At the moment, five provinces and eight cities in China
are experimenting with low-carbon measures. In addition to that experiment, a
carbon tax or a domestic carbon trading scheme would serve as a cost-effective
measure to supplement costly administrative measures that the country relied on
to meet its energy-saving goal in 2010.
Internationally, cutting China’s carbon emissions in
exports creates an impetus for strengthening coordination on climate change and
establishing a global carbon price framework. It is the absence of a global
carbon price that has failed to internalize carbon costs. China and the rest of
the world need to work more closely together to internalize those costs,
ensuring that the cost of emissions embodied in traded goods is reflected in
the price to the consuming countries as well as those goods for domestic use.
This is a feasible way of passing on carbon costs to consumers without
consumption-based accounting of carbon emissions, which is more data-intensive
and complex than production-based accounting of them.
To that end, China needs to increase its domestic carbon
prices and support more stringent global greenhouse gas emissions reductions to
bring about higher, more consistent carbon prices internationally.
ZhongXiang Zhang is chairman and a professor of School of Economics, Fudan University,
Shanghai. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
(China Daily
04/05/2013 page 8)