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Along the Huang (Yellow) River in the city of Shizuishan, in the Ningxia region adjacent to Inner Mongolia, the extent of the pollution becomes obvious. Swaths of gray-black clouds blot out the sun to make the perfect setting for a Hollywood film about the end of the world. Two power plants belch ash into an artificial lake separated from the nearby river only by a thin dam. The wind blows the ash upward to start it on its journey around the globe. But it's not just sand, smog and ash that China is spewing into the atmosphere. The country's factories and power plants already emit more sulfur dioxide (SO2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) than Europe, even though the booming Chinese economy manages only a fraction of the per capita gross domestic product that the old industrialized nations do. Between 2000 and 2005, China's SO2 emissions grew to 26 million tons. In just a few years the country will surpass the United States to become the world's biggest carbon dioxide producer. China already accounts for more than 15 percent of total global CO2 emissions.
Independent U.S. energy expert James Brock can see the smog-filled sky from his office in Beijing. "Currently each Chinese person uses just one-fifth of the energy that an American does," he says. But when China reaches a Western standard of living, each person in the country will use three times what he or she does now. Even done efficiently, that will amount to five tons of coal each year. Presently, only very few Chinese can afford that standard of living. But what effect on the environment will there be if the Communist Party makes good on its promise to spread as much "modest prosperity" to as many citizens as possible by 2020? Can nature withstand the strain when the number of families with washing machines, driers, air conditioners and cars rises from 100 million to a half billion?
Chinese factories are already producing three times as many air conditioning units as they did five years ago. And although few people drive cars in China compared to industrialized countries, in Beijing alone the number of vehicles is growing by a thousand each day. In order to feed its appetite for energy, China is building coal-fired power plants as fast as it can. Every seven to 10 days a new plant begins spewing smoke into the sky. The amount by which China increased its power production last year alone is greater than Britain's entire capacity. Coal heavily pollutes the air, but China's leaders see little alternative to a dirty resource that is available in ample quantities around the country. Some 69 percent of all Chinese power plants are run on coal. China used 2.1 billion tons of it in 2004 -- more than the United States, the European Union and Japan combined. Even if the Chinese economy continues to grow only 7 percent annually, its coal usage would double to 4 million tons within 10 years.
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China's leaders are certainly pushing for tougher laws to allow for stricter punishments for criminal officials and unscrupulous factory managers. But the misery is partially caused by the country's authoritarian system, which allows for neither an independent judiciary nor democratic supervision. SEPA's 167,000 employees aren't empowered enough to clamp down on polluters in every single province, especially if there's an influential employer there. And often local officials simply consider impressive growth rates more important for their career than a clean environment.
Of 661 Chinese cities, 278 did not have a sewage treatment plant at the end of 2005. But wealthy polluters can often pay any fines with petty cash. Many recently built power plants shouldn't even exist. Roughly half of them are illegal -- many simply on technical grounds, but others because of corrupt or negligent officials who ignore environmental rules. Instead of falling as they should, emissions in 17 provinces have risen.
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