China and Environmental Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities Ahead

Abstract

Since the introduction of the market-oriented reform in 1978, China has achieved such miraculous economic growth to become the world’s second largest single-country economy. However, growing gross domestic product (GDP) as a top priority together with a rapidly growing population has resulted in a severe environmental degradation. China is today the world’s largest source of carbon emissions, world’s top consumer of primary energy and minerals, and leads the world in resource consumption and waste emissions. Domestically, energy and water shortages, water and air pollution, cropland losses, desertification, and biodiversity losses, have become really severe obstacles to a future sustainable development of the country, threatening both China’s natural ecosystems and public health. In such a context, the environmentally sustainable development challenge is arguably China’s most complex and difficult challenge that any country has ever tried to confront. The Chinese government has acknowledged the time has come to implement an alternative growth model. However, what is more striking is the coexistence of often contradictory initiatives. On the one hand, the government continues investing in renewable energy so massively that it has become the world’s largest investor in such sector. On the other, it has repeatedly declared it will not be able to reduce its dependence on coal in the short-term, it will make domestic consumption of the rising middle-class the new growth model, especially promoting car ownership, while imposing at the same time strict measures to tackle pollution. The massive urbanization process, the growing unbridled demand of natural resources and consumption, the increasing production of polluting waste will negatively impact more and more Chinese people in the near future if the country’s leadership will not be able to reconcile its socioeconomic model with environmental protection, namely to achieve environmental sustainability in the long-term. Based on an extensive relevant literature review as well as an accurate analysis of statistical data related to the topic at issue, the present research seeks therefore to broadly examine the key intertwined challenges and opportunities for China to achieve an environmentally sustainable development. By adopting a holistic approach and presenting data, the study was explorative and interpretative in nature. Given the cross-cutting nature of the topic, which requires to be analyzed from many perspectives in order to be fully understood, conducting such kind of research was not easy task. Despite this, it has attempted to give the most accurate picture and analysis to contribute to the discussion about environmental sustainability in present-day China. China’s huge environmental challenges are significant for us all. The choices the Chinese government and Chinese people are making influence not only the health and wellbeing of China but, given the global nature of environmental problems, the very future of the planet.