On Monday, the official newspaper of the Chinese military regurgitated leader Xi Jinping’s “two mountains” environmentalist economic theory. The Peoples Liberation Army Daily makes the theory sound good, but it’s just hot air.
China cares a lot about its economic strength and very little about the environment.
First articulated by Xi during his time as Zhejiang provincial Communist Party secretary in the mid-2000s, the “two mountains” theory seeks to balance environmental interests with economic interests. The idea is to ensure growing development and prosperity while protecting the natural environment. Xi’s work here, the PLA Daily says, also assists in “transmitting a clear signal to the outside world: the ecological environment is of great importance to the mission and purpose of the [Communist] party … No matter how difficult the situation is and how severe the challenges, China will always be firm on the road of green development.”
But the reality of China’s economic and ecological balancing is a little different. As measured against real-world action, the reality is that China cares only about summiting one metaphorical mountain: the global economic mountain.
Xi’s interest here is in ensuring that all global supply chains intersect with China and that Beijing has access to the intellectual property and resource networks that propel economic innovation. This is why Xi’s “Belt and Road” economic plan offers massive foreign investment in return for a feudal style economic and political deference from those receiving his investments. For Xi, this economic dominance is seen as a necessity if China is to thrive over the longer term.
This zero-sum calculation leaves little space for good environmental policy, explaining China’s environmental situation.
While it’s true that the regime has invested in more environmentally friendly policies in certain areas such as Zhejiang, such places are exceptions to the rule. Indeed, poor fishing policy in Zhejiang has caused environmental degradation even there. Across the mainland, lax environmental regulations pose particular problems in allowing polluters to pump their byproducts into rivers. This tolerance for industrial pollution stands in stark contrast to the Communist Party’s failure to help rural agricultural workers escape poverty.
Given a free pass by international climate activists, China continues to lead the world in its carbon emissions output. And once the coronavirus passes, China’s construction of new coal plants is likely to see its emissions increase even further.
Then there’s China’s approach to the oceans. Beijing itself admits that things aren’t great here.
According to government figures, an astonishing 200 million cubic meters of waste was pumped into Chinese coastal waters in 2018. And that’s just the start. China is quite happy to steal fishing access in the exclusive economic areas of other weaker nations such as Indonesia and Vietnam. As China’s fishing fleets pursue their quarry, they do so without any regard for ecology. Using indiscriminate fishing nets that literally scrape the sea bare, China’s locust-like 200,000 strong commercial fishing fleet has undermined marine habitats across the world. This is especially problematic in West African coastal waters, where sustainable fishing practices are failing in the face of the Chinese behemoth.
As with most things Chinese officials and their state media say, the rhetoric of Xi’s “two mountains” is quite different from the reality.
