China’s Economic Growth: Difficult Balancing Act With Environmental Protection

The world’s second biggest economy is also the number one carbon emitting nation.

China has seen sustained economic growth in the past 40 years. It is the world’s second largest economy after the US since overtaking Japan in 2010. According to Goldman Sachs, America’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP, in 2015 was 17.95 Trillion US Dollars, while China’s was 10.87 US Dollars and Japan was at 4.123 Trillion US Dollars. Ma Zhong, a Professor and former Dean of the School of Environment and Natural Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing, forecasts that China’s economic growth could last at least 50 years.

“At the current growth of 6.5 per cent per annum, China’s economy is expected to overtake the US by 2030,” Zhong notes. However, China’s economic strides since 1978 when the country undertook sweeping reforms and opened up the Socialist economy to foreign participation have had a heavy toll on the environment. “Agriculture has become so developed that there is abundant food unlike three decades ago. Though the contribution of agriculture to GDP is about 9 per cent today, total grain production has doubled in the past 30 years from 304 million metric tons to 621 metric tons; with annual growth of 2 per cent,” Prof. Zhong explains.

China is now the world’s number one carbon emitter at 10 billion tons in 2013, with 90 per cent of CO2 emissions mostly from fossil energy, especially coal. Meanwhile, 10,000 tons of SO₂ were generated in 2015. Chemical fertilizer use increased by over six times from 8.84 million metric tons in 1978 to 60.22 million metric tons in 2015; with average annual growth of 5.4 per cent.  In 2015, chemical fertilizer was the number one cause of pollution, damaging soils and ec...