killed 1,700 people (Nathan Lewis, “Powering the Planet,” California Institute of Technology, 2007).
8. Li uses the energy from solar power to convert carbon dioxide into hydrogen, which might one day be used to power cars. This can be done in the laboratory but is very far from being commercially applicable.
9. All targets in this section are published in the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City Administrative Committee, Key Performance Indicators Framework 2008–2020 (www.tianjinecocity.gov.sg/).
10. In his previous job in the municipal construction bureau he had helped to redesign the city of Tianjin, which has a population of more than 11 million people. By comparison, the eco-project is modest.
11. The fate of Dongtan looked uncertain as this book went to press. Originally planned to house half a million people by 2040, the first phase was supposed to be ready by the Shanghai Expo in 2010. But construction has yet to start.
12. This is only part of the urbanizing shift, which is expected to bring 400 million people—more than the population of the U.S.—from the country to the city between 2000 and 2030 (Elizabeth Economy, “The Great Leap Backward?”
13. Wang is part of a vast pyramid of technocratic model-makers. At the top is the hydroengineer Hu. One step below him is a politburo of former engineers and scientists. Under them are a broad network of academic policy-makers in universities, institutes, and research academies. They, in turn, can call upon an army of professors, doctors, postgrads, and other researchers. In the past thirty years, China’s universities have churned out 240,000 PhD’s, 1.9 million master’s graduates, and 14.1 million bachelor’s degrees. Since 1995, there has been a fourfold increase in science and engineering degrees, with the latter total in China now greater than that in the U.S. and Japan. The number of students taking science or engineering degrees in China each year climbed from 115,000 in 1995 to more than 672,000 in 2004, putting the country ahead of the United States and Japan; about two-thirds of the Chinese degrees were in engineering. In 2007, Chinese scientists accounted for 32,000, or almost one-quarter, of the 142,000 foreign students receiving PhD’s in the United States, more than any other country except India, which accounted for one-third. China’s share of the world’s published scientific articles soared from 0.2 percent in 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2006, when it overtook Japan for the first time (Declan Butler, “China: The Great Contender,”
14. Project of Comprehensive Development and Construction of Tangshan Caofeidian Eco-City, June 13, 2008, Tangshan government website (www.tangshan.gov.cn/xiangmu.php?id=2278).
15. This upgrade is a major reason for China’s success in increasing energy efficiency by about 20 percent, and reducing pollution by 10 percent between 2005 and 2010.
16. “China’s Energy Consumption per Unit of GDP Is 3–8 Times Higher Than in OECD Countries” (World Bank Mid-term Evaluation of China’s 11th Five-Year Plan, February 12, 2009). Chinese scientists say this is only partly because of inefficiencies. A bigger reason is the structure of China’s economy, which is a global base of labor- and energy-intensive industries (interview with Wang Shudong of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics).
17. A factory official told visiting journalists in 2008 that the Shougang plant in west Beijing belched out a tenth of the particulate matter in the city’s air (Jonathan Watts, “Beijing Goes for Green with Olympic Clean-up,”
18. In 2001, the city had 251 “blue sky” days, the water quality of the Liao and Hun rivers was at the worst level (five), and green cover was 29 percent. By 2007, the number of “blue sky” days had risen to 323, the water quality of the Hun improved to level four, and urban greenbelt coverage was over 38 percent. Industrial pollutant discharge had fallen by more than 21 percent since 2002 (data from Shenyang Environmental Protection Bureau).
19. In three years, the city destroyed over 3,000 chimneys and 1,200 boilers.
20. Municipal planners have adopted his designs at Qiaoyuan Park in Tianjin, Tiazhou in Zhejiang, Qinhuangdao in Hebei, and Zongshan in Guangdong.
21. Much of the urban landscape is a legacy of Mao-era reliance on a tiny number of Soviet designs and a thoughtless rush of development in the 1980s and 1990s. The construction vice minister, Qiu Baoxing, has lamented the fact that almost all of China’s cities look the same. Orthogonal buildings, white-tiled walls, and blue-tinted windows (Jonathan Watts, “Minister Rails at China, Land of a Thousand Identical Cities,”
22. Because they ate seeds, sparrows were considered one of the four pests during the Great Leap Forward (the other three were flies, mosquitoes, and rats). People were encouraged to wipe them out by making so much noise with pots, pans, and fireworks that the birds were too afraid to land and died of exhaustion.
23. Of the 40 billion square meters of urban buildings, 95 percent are classified as high energy consumers (Pan Jiahua, “Building a Frugal Society,”
24. “China’s buildings are roughly two and a half times less energy efficient than those in Germany. Furthermore, newly urbanised Chinese, who use air conditioners, televisions, refrigerators, consume about three and half times more energy than do their rural counterparts” (Economy, “The Great Leap Backward?”). Regulations are often ignored or geared toward boosting the economy rather than minimizing consumption of scarce resources. There are few mechanisms to check whether people are following the rules. Wang Xuejun, a professor at Peking University’s College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, spelled out the challenges to me in an e-mail exchange: (1) lack of funds for enterprises to improve their energy efficiency; (2) lack of new techniques and experts in energy efficiency improvement; (3) cheap energy makes energy saving less cost efficient; (4) lack of policy incentives such as tax reduction and exemption; (5) improper statistical and reporting systems for energy consumption.
25. Shenyang aims to have 35 percent of households using solar power for water heating by 2015, compared with the national target of 20 percent, according to Wang. It will be tough to achieve. Reaching that goal will require the installation of more than 500,000 square meters of photovoltaic panels. Shenyang currently lags the national average with just 6.3 percent coverage of households.
26. For heating purposes, northern China is defined as everything north of the Yangtze River, much to the annoyance of people in Shanghai who miss out on the benefits of subsidized central heating.
27. Though not consistently. Several administrations have pursued policies to keep gasoline prices low. Even so, energy prices are not capped as they have been in China.
28. On my five visits to Pyongyang since 2002, I have never failed to be struck by the gloom inside buildings and the darkness outside at night. No capital in the world is better for stargazing.
29. The situation was worsened by largely self-imposed isolation, friction with the outside world, and an overemphasis on military spending.
30. Though perhaps not for much longer: Xinhua/NBS, “China’s Rural Population Shrinks to 56 Per Cent of Total,” October 22, 2007.
31. The Huangbaiyu design is a collaborative work by William McDonough, Tongji University, the Benxi Design Institute, and the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development. See also Mary-Anne Toy, “Green Dream Vanishes in Puff of Reality,”
32. Richard Spencer, “Man Faces Death for Ant Scam,”
33. In 2008, 360 out of 366 days were under level II on the national pollution index, which means less than 100 parts per million of particulate matter in the air. By Chinese standards this is great. But even Dalian would fail to meet the World Health Organization’s benchmark of 50 parts per million for almost half the year.
34. Bo later became China’s commerce minister and mayor of Chongqing Municipality.
35. In 2007, the per capita GDP was 51,000 yuan. Dalian regularly tops polls of China’s most desirable city in which to live.
36. Shanghai Automotive is working on mass-producing 100 percent electric cars, but they will need a recharging infrastructure that will not be in place until at least 2030. In the interim, China has moved into the hybrid-car field. The Shenzhen-based company BYD—which stands for Build Your Dreams—has built the world’s first mass-produced, plug-in hybrid sedan, the F3DM. The car has a gasoline engine that kicks in above 60 kph; up to
