Urban China by Xuefei Ren

Author:Xuefei Ren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

ECO-CITIES

Local Chinese officials have until recently tended to view economic growth and environmental protection as incompatible. With their own career advancement in mind, local officials have focused largely on boosting economic performance as measured by GDP growth, while environmental performance has languished at the bottom of policy agendas. Consequently, the Chinese economic miracle has been accompanied by a significant increase in environmental degradation and acute public health crises, as evidenced by numerous incidents of water and air pollution, skyrocketing levels of carbon emissions, energy-inefficient new buildings, the rapid loss of farmlands and forests, and the emergence of hundreds of so-called cancer villages.9

In response to the unfolding environmental crisis and growing popular discontent over environmental degradation, the Chinese government announced in 2005 that the nation’s eleventh Five-Year Plan would follow a different model – shifting from “growth first” to “sustainable development.”10 In 2008, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) was established, and an impressive number of environmental laws, regulations, and policies have since been promulgated (Qi et al., 2008). At the local level, there has been intense competition for the National Model City for Environmental Protection (NMCEP) designation and a wave of construction of eco-cities.

The national government has experimented with a number of programs to incentivize local governments toward environmental protection. Enacted in 1997, the NMCEP incentive program was among the earliest. According to the MEP, by 2012 some 83 cities and districts in more than a dozen provinces had attained National Model City status, the majority of them located in the more developed coastal regions.11 Specific criteria for becoming a National Model City include meeting a set of requirements for air and water quality as well as reducing emissions, as assessed through an initial site visit by MEP officials and annual follow-up visits after National Model City status is awarded. The whole evaluation process can take three to five years and requires collaboration among many different departments (Li, Miao, and Lang, 2011).

Recently, a more prestigious program, awarding the designation of “eco-city (shengtai chengshi),” has replaced NMCEP as the most desirable sustainability award for city governments. Similar designations, such as eco-provinces, eco-counties, eco-villages, and eco-districts, have proliferated. As of 2011, 14 Chinese provinces were striving to make themselves into eco-provinces, and more than 1,000 cities and counties had announced plans and timetables to achieve eco-city or eco-county status.12 A separate program – certifying “eco-villages” – aims to promote sustainable urbanization of rural areas. Other incentive programs have been launched as well, such as the “low-carbon pilot program” in five provinces and eight cities, and the “new energy demonstration cities program,” aiming to be active in 100 cities by 2015.13 The competition for these awards is intense; Shenzhen has just boldly announced that it will become the first low-carbon city in the country.14 At the neighborhood level, there has been the “green community” program that aims to raise public awareness of recycling, energy conservation, and sustainable living (Boland and Zhu, 2012). Local officials are compelled to pursue sustainability awards by peer pressure, career and reputational concerns, and the desire for place distinction.

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