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Shanghai can learn from Nagoya
By John Gong |
March 23, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
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SHANGHAI was recently selected as one of the first pilot cities in China to take part in a new WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) initiative of low-carbon pathways to urban development.
Low-carbon has become such a buzz word these days that it's hard to run into a speech by government officials without their lips dripping with the word.
Put it in one sentence in the context of Shanghai's low-carbon initiative, I quote with a slight twist Winston Churchill who once said about the UK: I like to see industry less proud and finance more content.
Well, joking aside. I am all behind the Shanghai municipal government's growth strategy centered on turning Shanghai into a global financial center. Indeed, I even have better ideas to kick industry out of the city. Maybe the city should also invest in entertainment and movie making.
Yes, Shangllywood! That is a really low-carbon growth path. Avatar's 1.2 billion yuan box office sales in China is equivalent to China's exports of 120 million shoes. How much carbon emission can be reduced, if all those shoes are changed for a single blockbuster movie? Without those damn shoes, the Americans won't find a pretext to complain about our exchange rate. Right now the exports sector in China is dominated by manufacturing industries, accounting for one quarter of China's total carbon emission.
In Japan, they call it low-carbon society rather than low-carbon economy, which I think is a better term, as low-carbon is not just about the economy.
It is about people like you and me, individual citizens in their everyday life. No matter how you change or upgrade the economic growth pattern structurally, manufacturing has to go somewhere, if not in Shanghai, somewhere in China. That really doesn't solve the problem from the global perspective, if my low-carbon is at the cost of your high-carbon.
Japan is arguably a model of low-carbon economy for China. Nagoya for example, with such industry heavyweights as Toyota and Denso, is the hub of Japanese manufacturing industries, producing over 40 percent of Japan's major manufacturing categories such as automobiles, automobile parts, machine tools and aircraft parts. Yet on a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission per capita basis, it is only about half of the average number in Shanghai and Beijing, whose economies are already becoming more service-oriented.
What is even more remarkable than these cold hard statistics is the attitude and mindset of Japanese citizens with respect to environment issues.
In a 2007 study sponsored by Japan's National Institute of Environmental studies and several universities in China, it is found that an overwhelming majority of those citizens surveyed in Shanghai and Shenyang, Liaoning Province, think that their environment is improving and will get better, while those surveyed in Japan think the exact opposite.
Regrettably this public perception cannot be further from the truth. On purchasing actions, many more survey respondents in Japan than in the two Chinese cities buy organic, environmentally friendly and non-pesticide products, check eco-labels, and bring their own bags when shopping.
Ultimately the deciding factor of a low-carbon economy boils down to individual citizens in our daily lives.
Taking an extra effort in things like recycling and taking public transport may cause a little inconvenience, yet adding all those little behavioral changes across the entire globe can make a huge difference. It is about time residents in Shanghai to learn from Nagoya.
(The author is associate professor of economics at the University of International Business and Economics. His email: johngong@gmail.com)
Low-carbon has become such a buzz word these days that it's hard to run into a speech by government officials without their lips dripping with the word.
Put it in one sentence in the context of Shanghai's low-carbon initiative, I quote with a slight twist Winston Churchill who once said about the UK: I like to see industry less proud and finance more content.
Well, joking aside. I am all behind the Shanghai municipal government's growth strategy centered on turning Shanghai into a global financial center. Indeed, I even have better ideas to kick industry out of the city. Maybe the city should also invest in entertainment and movie making.
Yes, Shangllywood! That is a really low-carbon growth path. Avatar's 1.2 billion yuan box office sales in China is equivalent to China's exports of 120 million shoes. How much carbon emission can be reduced, if all those shoes are changed for a single blockbuster movie? Without those damn shoes, the Americans won't find a pretext to complain about our exchange rate. Right now the exports sector in China is dominated by manufacturing industries, accounting for one quarter of China's total carbon emission.
In Japan, they call it low-carbon society rather than low-carbon economy, which I think is a better term, as low-carbon is not just about the economy.
It is about people like you and me, individual citizens in their everyday life. No matter how you change or upgrade the economic growth pattern structurally, manufacturing has to go somewhere, if not in Shanghai, somewhere in China. That really doesn't solve the problem from the global perspective, if my low-carbon is at the cost of your high-carbon.
Japan is arguably a model of low-carbon economy for China. Nagoya for example, with such industry heavyweights as Toyota and Denso, is the hub of Japanese manufacturing industries, producing over 40 percent of Japan's major manufacturing categories such as automobiles, automobile parts, machine tools and aircraft parts. Yet on a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission per capita basis, it is only about half of the average number in Shanghai and Beijing, whose economies are already becoming more service-oriented.
What is even more remarkable than these cold hard statistics is the attitude and mindset of Japanese citizens with respect to environment issues.
In a 2007 study sponsored by Japan's National Institute of Environmental studies and several universities in China, it is found that an overwhelming majority of those citizens surveyed in Shanghai and Shenyang, Liaoning Province, think that their environment is improving and will get better, while those surveyed in Japan think the exact opposite.
Regrettably this public perception cannot be further from the truth. On purchasing actions, many more survey respondents in Japan than in the two Chinese cities buy organic, environmentally friendly and non-pesticide products, check eco-labels, and bring their own bags when shopping.
Ultimately the deciding factor of a low-carbon economy boils down to individual citizens in our daily lives.
Taking an extra effort in things like recycling and taking public transport may cause a little inconvenience, yet adding all those little behavioral changes across the entire globe can make a huge difference. It is about time residents in Shanghai to learn from Nagoya.
(The author is associate professor of economics at the University of International Business and Economics. His email: johngong@gmail.com)
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