China is currently the world's second largest producer of greenhouse gases (emitting 11% of the global total) and its emissions will increase substantially during the coming generation. Rapid economic expansion and the continuing reliance on coal can be expected to more than double its recent carbon dioxide emissions. Providing enough food for a population which is still growing at high absolute rates will require the further intensification of farming, resulting in higher releases of methane and nitrous oxide. Consequently, China is expected to become the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases sometime between the years 2010 and 2025. In this context, Smil provided background on China's environmental policies and discussed the country's population, agriculture and energy use, and their potential implications for climate change.

Since China "joined the world" in the 1970s, it has signed about two dozen international environmental treaties. One reason it signed these accords was to prevent Taiwan from doing so; another was to place itself in good standing in the international community. Though it signed these treaties, it has largely failed to implement them domestically. For example, though China is party to the convention on endangered species, there is a significant illicit market in these species in China. Internally, though China has set forth strict limits on pollutants, enforcement of these standards is quite poor. Actual levels are often an order of magnitude higher than the legally allowable limits. In terms of Montreal Protocol provisions, inadequate funding is hampering a transition from CFCs. In terms of the climate convention, there is nothing to enforce, as the Berlin mandate specifically calls for no new commitments by developing countries.

The Beijing Declaration of 1991 states the developing world's position that the rich countries are responsible for the rise in greenhouse gases both in terms of current emissions and in a cumulative sense. It says essentially that the developing countries will not do anything to limit their emissions until they reach the developed world's level of per capita emissions, as well as its historical cumulative emissions. This means they should not be expected to do anything in the foreseeable future. If anything is wanted of them, not only does the first world have to pay, but has to give very substantial sums over long periods of time.

In terms of climate change, there is the perception that China is the big wild card. How they will develop and how much coal they will burn are open questions. They may surprise us. Like the yin/yang symbol, China is a unity of great opposites - hope and despair, light and dark, good and bad. This can be seen by examining certain key factors: population, food, environmental problems, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Population

Population has preoccupied every Chinese administration. This concern is even expressed in the Chinese language: the word for population is "the people's mouths," showing their concern for how many mouths there are to feed.

There are now 1.2 billion people in China and the population is growing at a rate of about 1.1%. While this low level of growth is a great achievement, it still results in enormous numbers of additional people. In 1950, the population growth rate in China was above 3%. The great famine of 1958-61 killed 30 million people, but made only a temporary dent in the population. During the late 1960s, population growth rose sharply. Finally, during the early 1970s, China began a massive population control effort which culminated in 1979 with the introduction of the one child program.

This program has been extremely successful in the cities where the labor unit controls many aspects of life. However, this policy does not work nearly so well in the countryside. There, fertility is still well above two children per woman.

There are 13 million new people added each year in China, so even the indisputable achievement in population control still results in the addition of more than the entire U. S. population in 20 years. Smil estimates there will be 1.3 billion people in China by end of this century, and 1.5 billion in 2020.

Food

As far as food production, China feeds more than 1/5 of the world's population (22%) with 1/11 of the world's farmland. They are currently upgrading their farmland figures from 95 million hectares to 129 million hectares. So the good news is that China has a great deal more farmland, but the bad news is that it still is an open question if it will be able to feed all of its people in the future because its production methods are not sustainable.

Smil says that China opened up to the world in the early 1970s because it needed fertilizer to intensify its agriculture and feed its people. Geopolitical concerns were not the only motivator. They had energy to produce fertilizer but needed the most modern techniques to synthesize ammonia. The company which held the most efficient process was M. W. Kellogg of Texas and its Dutch subsidiary. The very first deal signed after President Nixon's visit to China was for the world's 13 largest fertilizer plants from this company.

China soon became the largest producer of nitrogen fertilizer on the planet, and with the boost in food production provided by these enormous amounts of fertilizer, China's average per capita availability of food rose virtually to the same level as Japan's, 2800 kilo calories per day per person. An average of 200 kilograms of fertilizer per hectare is applied to Chinese farmland. In intensively cultivated provinces, the average is 350 kg of nitrogen fertilizer per hectare. This is not a sustainable practice. The only place on Earth on which nitrogen fertilizers have been applied this intensively over long periods of time is in the Netherlands, and now a large share of Dutch underground water is contaminated by nitrates. This can be expected to occur in China in the coming decades.

In addition, China loses more soil to erosion than any other country in the world. In North China, where the largest area of loess is found, erosion losses by wind and water average over 200 tons per hectare per year. The average for China as a whole is about 50 tons ha/yr., compared to the U. S. average of less than 20 tons ha/yr. Through soil erosion losses, China loses as much nitrogen each year as it applies in nitrogen fertilizer.

In absolute terms, China has more irrigated land than any other country. (In per capita terms, a number of nations, above all Egypt and Israel, have more.) Half of all farmland in China is now under irrigation, but only about half of this area receives all the water it needs. One reason for this is that like farmers in California, peasants in North China pay only about 1/10th the real cost of delivered water. Where there is intensive surface water irrigation, it has resulted in alkalization and salinization of soils. In average terms, China appears to be flush with water, but 3/4 of it is south of the Yangtsze. North of the Yangzi, an area in which 500 million people live, there can be a year to 18 months in which it doesn't rain at all and then it all comes down in three downpours. A massive geoengineering project to reverse the flow of China's rivers is being considered and would require a great deal of energy.

Energy

China has the world's largest coal deposits, the largest hydro electric capacity but a limited amount of oil and natural gas. Chinese use 25 gigajoules per person per year of total energy compared to the Japanese 100 gigajoules. Currently, 75% of China's primary energy consumption comes from coal. About half this production comes from small mines and is unsorted. Coal mined in the north must be moved south by rail, resulting in 50% of the burden on Chinese railways. Burning coal in steam locomotives is extremely inefficient (5% efficiency) and a shift is being made to burn the coal in efficient power plants (35 -37% efficient) and run the trains with electricity. In total, China now burns 1.15 billion tons of coal per year. In addition to generating over 70% of China's electricity, coal also provides more than 50% of the feedstocks for chemical industries, and 90% of heat for households.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

In addition to the large increases in CO₂ emissions expected from the continuing expansion of coal use, large increases in the other important greenhouse gases are expected as well. As China develops its natural gas reserves, more methane losses are expected to result from recovery activities. In the agricultural sector, more rice will mean more methane, and more fertilizer use will mean more nitrous oxide (N₂O). N₂O is 200 times more effective at trapping heat than CO₂, and China is already responsible for more than 20% of the world's N₂O emissions and this percentage is growing. In terms of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), another significant greenhouse gas, China is now the world's largest refrigerator producer, with the goal of providing a refrigerator for every Chinese family. With these increases in CO₂, methane, N₂O, and CFCs, China will become the world's largest producer of GHGs in absolute terms sometime between 2010 and 2020.

China seems to be operating under the delusion that there are no limitations to its development. Instead of developing efficient public transportation systems, the Chinese are building six-lane highways through rice fields, and their eventual officially-stated goal is to have a car in every Chinese family. (There are now 300 million families in China and a total of 660 million cars worldwide).

In discussing how to influence Chinese development so as to reduce expected increases in GHG emissions, Smil points out that the most dynamic sector of the Chinese economy exists because of the U.S. In 1995, China enjoyed a $40 billion trade surplus in its dealings with the U.S., giving China an interest in maintaining good relations with the U.S.

A debate exists as to whether GHG emissions are primarily a problem of the developed or the developing world. At present, and up until about 2025, the key problem is over-consumption by the developed countries. But after that time, the developing world, led by China, will swamp the rest of the world's emissions. An obvious way to positively influence this situation is for the rich nations to help China and the other industrializing countries to develop in a more efficient manner.