Three visions of China's road ahead ( 2003-09-03 10:40) (China Daily HK Edition)
Six Nobel Prize winners, including Lawrence Klein and James Heckman, and six
Chinese economists, Li Yining and Dong Furen among them, have worked out a draft
version of a world economic development declaration.
Workers sift
through rubble of a demolished site in Shanghai. A China Urban Development
Report released in December 2002 said the percentage of Chinese living in
urban centres will rise from the current 37 per cent to 75 per cent within
the next 50 years. [Reuters]
Key points of the declaration will be made public at a series of high-ranking
economic meetings scheduled to take place in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province from
November 6-7.
At the beginning of August, a group of famous Chinese economists expressed
their views on the declaration, urging that alleviation of poverty top the
agendas of all developing countries in the coming years.
A smoother transfer of technology from and closer co-operation with developed
economies is seen as essential in achieving this goal.
Meanwhile, the drafting committee is also considering the views of 25,000
business people from 74 economies around the world.
The draft declaration stresses the importance of equality, mutual benefit and
interdependence in world economic activities.
The guideline principles to boost world economic growth will also emphasize
the rational use of natural resources to achieve sustainable development, in
addition to the fair and equal distribution of wealth among various nations.
China Daily invited three experts to voice their views on sustained
development, urbanization and education issues.
R. C.
Lao
R.C. Lao, a Canadian Chinese, is an
environmental expert with the State Council, and also the resident project
manager of the Canada-China Project on Cleaner Production (CP) under the
Canadian International Development Agency:
China is currently going through a phase of rapid economic growth under a
reform process that is having a significant impact on people's lives.
China's GDP is expected to triple by 2020, ushering in "xiaokang", or the
promised "well-to-do society". To sustain such "economic miracles", an average
annual growth rate of 8 per cent is critical, along with the necessary resources
to support such growth. Aside from other problems along the bumpy road to
prosperity, insufficient resources can be the single most dangerous threat to
the otherwise rosy scenario.
China must implement a strategy of sustainable development to keep from not
only exhausting its own resources but also having a serious impact on those of
the rest of the world.
As Dr Klaus Tupfin, Deputy Secretary General of the UN and Director General
of its Environmental Programme (UNEP), recently warned, if one car was owned by
every two Chinese, the same ratio of people to cars in America, steel and
petroleum production across the globe would soon be exhausted.
The huge increase in consumption of fossil fuels would have an adverse effect
on climate changes, causing drought, flooding and heatwaves. The most serious
consequence of all would be the impact on China's food supply.
This is perhaps the first time that agricultural production is being
appreciated as a sensitive measure of the dangers that climatic change can
bring.
A circular economy is the only path by which China can realistically reach
sustainable development.
The transformation of the traditional pattern of dependence on resources
consumption must be replaced by more ecological solutions and the recycling of
resources for utilization in economic development. In industrial sectors,
cleaner production is the fundamental prerequisite for establishing a circular
economy.
By so doing, China can realize the rewards of its buoyant economic
performance.
James
Jao
James Jao, an American-Chinese, is the
State Council's certified foreign expert and the first New York City Planning
Commissioner of Asian Descent:
As the largest developing nation in the world, China faces various growing
pains, one of which is unplanned urbanization.
According to the China Urban Development Report released in December 2002,
the percentage of Chinese living in urban centres will rise from the current 37
per cent to 75 per cent within the next 50 years.
This means that 320 million square metres of housing will be added to urban
areas each year for the next 30 years. Presently, there are 663 cities in China
with more than 400 million people. By 2010, China will have approximately 1,200
cities with populations of 600 million or greater.
No matter how you look at these figures, the growth rate is mind-boggling.
The challenges that lie ahead for city officials and planners are immense,
such as how to cope with dramatic population growth, while avoiding the mistakes
made by many industrialized cities in the West as well as the East.
Municipal officials, therefore, will need to balance the conflicting
political, social and economic needs of growing cities with the ecological needs
of their surrounding environments. They must be sophisticated in the promotion
and implementation of land-use and transportation policies, and knowledgeable
about the utilization of environmental assessment studies to identify potential
problems and design strategies for mitigation.
To equip officials and planners with these skills, the country must send more
of its senior staff and planners to study overseas and obtain advanced planning
degrees.
The Chinese Ministry of Construction should also hire more foreign planning
experts to work in China so they can share experiences and expertise from their
native countries. After all, one of the biggest wastes of resources in modern
China today is the demolition of poorly planned developments.
Tearing down a recently constructed building or having to re-plan a site
because of a flawed planning process is a terrible waste of tax dollars, but it
is avoidable if planning is done correctly in the first place.
Lin
Yueqin
Lin Yueqin, a researcher with the
Economic Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences:
Environmental challenges, poverty and education will all be top priorities
for China during the coming years.
But education is of utmost importance as solutions to all manner of problems
can be cultivated by developing the country's greatest resource - people.
China suffers an imbalance of educational levels across the country,
especially between the relatively developed eastern areas and the underdeveloped
western regions.
Schooling for people aged 15 and older in rural China averages 6.85 years,
despite a noticeable leap in the country's efforts to reduce rural illiteracy.
By the end of 2001, more than 91 per cent of Chinese had benefited from the
"Nine-year Compulsory Education" system, which includes six years of primary
education and three years of junior high school, according to statistics
released by the Ministry of Education.
But of every 100 Chinese, only two go on to receive higher education. In the
United States, the figure is 44 in 100.
To ensure that China sustains its development both economically and socially,
the country must spare no pains in the sphere of education.
A change is needed in the current investment policy, which emphasizes
infrastructure construction but fails to attach enough importance to education,
especially compulsory education.
The central government should substantially increase financial input into the
education cause and expand mandatory education to include senior high school.
Foreign investors, together with Chinese partners, can also become involved
in most education services in China through joint-venture schools and
co-operative programmes, such as distance learning and training.
China should open primary, secondary, higher and adult education to foreign
educational organizations through co-operation, and even allow foreign investors
to hold controlling shares in these services.
China does not set any obstacles on Chinese students' studying abroad or
receiving training outside China, and schools and educational institutions can
also invite or hire foreign teachers, provided they have bachelor degrees or
higher qualifications and at least two years of teaching experience.
In addition, China must foster a large number of economic and scientific
professionals who can adapt to international competition.
China's education sector should be strengthened as soon as possible to
compete with foreign counterparts as the government can no longer erect any
barriers to block out such competition.
