Eco-damage: China's Cement Shoes

8/22/2013

China's ongoing mass migration from country to city has been hailed as the "one of the largest peacetime population transfers in history". This movement of people has caught headlines because of its massive scale and vision as well as its often forced nature that has uprooted many rural Chinese. However, the ecological and economical repercussions may go far beyond what has been speculated at this point.


Putting Them On

Mysterious developments like this are popping up everywhere in China...
100 miles from the nearest city

Driven by the fervent planting of high-rise apartments throughout the countryside and expansion of urban mega-cities, one of the fastest growing industries in China is cement production. To give you an idea of the massive scale of this industry, it produces 2 billion tons of cement per year as of 2011, that's 59% of the world's total. That's nearly 10 times higher than the world's number two, India, which is one of the fastest growing economies along with China, not to mention the only other country in the elite "1 Billion Club" for population. What's worse, with 6% growth from 2010-2011 and 61% growth since 2006, it's not slowing down, it's accelerating.

China produces more than half the world's cement, further polluting their air

Why is this bad? Pollution!

Cement adds ~10% to China's CO2 production

Cement production is one of the dirtiest processes in use today and is one of the largest contributor to CO2 emissions in the world at ~5%. In China, however, cement production creates somewhere between 8%-12.5% of China's CO2 emissions, coming both from the actual process and the process' reliance on coal as an energy source. It also puts out a number of other particulates, including heavy metals such as thallium that can cause nervous system damage and birth defects from heavy exposure.

Cement production in China produces a wide range of pollutants in China-sized quantities

Cement production in China put 1.8 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2011, the equivalent of all of Russia's CO2 emissions combined.

The most amazing thing about all of this is that there is no REAL housing shortage in China. Those that need modernized housing are overlooked as the continued "strong housing demand" comes mostly from wealthy Chinese buying their second and third homes and external investment from abroad due to a relaxation of regulations. I'll get further into that in my next post.

New Chinese housing is vacant despite a booming market because
demand is from wealthy investors, not those in need of a home[1]

Bonus Happy Ending:

Cement that cleans the environment!

China KO's EU in Solar Trade War

When the EU threatened solar tariffs, China went after their most precious cultural and culinary export: wine!

The EU-China solar trade war is over on amiable terms; an agreement was reached. But the truth of the matter is that China has dominated the EU, and once again demonstrated its power on the world stage.

China's large subsidies gave domestic companies a huge
advantage on the world market, prompting investigations
into price dumping and tariffs from the US

The Chinese initiated a strong boost to their solar market in 2008 through subsidies. This prompted a huge domestic boom and the jump to world leader in solar panel production. It wasn't until late 2011 when US solar panel manufacturers began going bankrupt in large numbers. That prompted the US Department of Commerce to launch an investigation into Chinese price dumping. Despite a myriad of threats from the Chinese to impose their own reactionary protectionist policies and later follow through, the US tariffs were implemented in late 2012. These tariffs ended up being weaker than initially intended to the chagrin of many US solar panel makers.

De Gucht and China's commerce minister, Gao Hu Cheng, agree to end the
wine/solar trade dispute, clearly in conflict with De Gucht's 50% stake in a
Tuscan vineyard.[wine-searcher]

The EU followed suit around the time the US's tariffs were imposed and launched their own investigation, although with wildly different results. China quickly made things personal with a blunt instrument aimed squarely at the EU's trade commissioner Karel De Gucht's own fortune: a price-dumping investigation into European wine imports to China. Besides being a personal attack on De Gucht's 50% stake in a Tuscany vineyard, the European wine industry exports to China value nearly $1 billion each year. At a time when the debt crisis is still having a profound effect on economies, this, as well as the threat of further economic retaliation, was heavy pressure from the Chinese.

On Monday, July 29th, the EU showed its weakness on the world stage and cowed to China's demands by "agreeing to" a solar price nearly equal to the dumping price. This keeps one of China's two major solar markets buying solar panels at far below production costs. The inquiry into wine export price dumping was quickly halted.

China recently also flexed its muscles in Japan's direction over the disputed Senkaku Islands. They showed how ugly they could get, going as far as inciting their own people to riot in the streets in protest, conducting military training exercises clearly imitating taking the islands by military force, and just today releasing a video game simulating an all out conflict over the islands on China's Armed Forces Day. China's continued efforts to antagonize Japan have thus far thankfully not led to war, but this was one of the first times such a public dispute has happened between the two countries since China's military might has rivaled, or even surpassed, that of Japan.

China's recent wine-centered global demonstration of world power with its tariffs and economic bullying is even more potent, showing the East's rise and the West's current lethargic stasis. China would never have dared to challenge Europe in this way 20, or even 10, years ago; 2008 provided them not only the Olympics, but a chance to strike. Interestingly, and not coincidentally, China's price dumping is a direct result of the policies that allowed them to artfully ride out (for the time being) the economic catastrophe that dragged the EU and the rest of the Western world into turmoil and recession. China's stimulus gave solar producers a huge edge on the world stage, an edge that the US and EU governments chose not to hone.


Bonus Footage: China's Newest Videogame!