Through much if its troubled past, China has come a long way and has become an improved country. Though the years, China greatest problem was in their mass population. Many problems in China stem from the population problem, energy has now become a threat as China becomes more and more technologically advanced as well as more industrialized. However, China is working very hard to achieve sustainability.
Sustainability is achieved through many aspects of a country’s economy and society. Population, wealth distribution and hunger (along with many other factors) are what prove if a country is sustainable or adequate to live in. Overpopulation.com tells us that overpopulation has been a major problem in China. In 1979, they adopted a “one-child policy” in order to help solve this problem. China was able to enforce this policy because they are a communist nation. Although this policy has not shown a great decrease in population, it has in fact kept China’s population fairly the same over the past two decades. The one-child policy will not show great results until the children who were born under this policy become older.
China’s economy had continued to grow substantially over two decades as well. Although industry is indeed helping China’s economy, energy problems and extreme pollution are now beginning to show signs of a potentially big problem in the next few years. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke tells us that China’s economy has grown on an average of ten percent a year over the past twenty years. This economic boom has provided peasants with many more job opportunities. The Chinese government has also provided the economy with yearly assistance. As China is experiencing this industrial boom, they are now facing a major energy problem. Over the next few years, China will become a major importer rather than an exporter. Oil is a major product that China will need to have imported, and if the economy continues to grow, oil will become a major need for all of Chinese citizens.
China still continues to be one of the worlds highest producing and exporting country. China still remains the world’s second largest producer of coal. Throughout the past few decades, China has used its energy very strategically. With the Chinese government observing very closely, China began to use self-sufficiency, using only the energy that the country could provide. But as China’s economy has grown at an alarming rate over the past few years, an analysis of China’s Domestic Energy Production shows energy production has begun to fall behind, and China’s policy has not achieved the desired results. Although China has an abundance of coal, which supplies seventy percent of its energy needs, its oil and hydro power only provides ten percent of the energy needs. As China continues not to meet their oil needs, they have bet a net importer of oil since 1993.
Electricity production continues to flourish in China. In 2000, China ranked as the second highest producer of electric power in the world. But since China has an unbalanced geographical distribution and an arbitrary pricing system, China is now suffering from overproduction. So although electricity is in plentiful supply, power shortages can occur in more populated areas such as cities in on the east coast. Thermoelectric power accounts for 75% of China’s electrical energy generation. Over the past few years, the governments has been trying to concentrating the power and also attempting to use cleaner forms of energy such as gas-fired, nuclear and hydroelectric generators. Tian Guoliang and Xu Xingkui show China is also attempting to restructure the distribution of its energy. The Chinese government is taking the large energy distributor in China and dividing them into smaller distributors, hoping to maximize the power efficiency by introducing new competitive mechanisms. However more and more pressure is being placed on the electrical efficiency as China’s electrical production jumped nearly ten percent in 200, and another seven percent in 2001. China now needs to look for a way to equally distribute the power into the places that need it the most, for example, the cities on the east coast.
As China still has to focus heavily on being energy efficient, the government has recently been promoting the use of environment friendly natural gas. The Chinese government is doing as much as possible to encourage the use of natural gas. They are now developing preferential financing, pricing regulations and tax reductions to encourage the investment of natural gas. As China is a rich in natural gas, they are also attempting to increase foreign investment in this area as well.
China is among the world leaders in the production of petroleum; however, they are also one of the world leaders in consuming oil as well. China, over the fast years, has witnessed a steady decline in the output of oil. This has now put China in a situation where they importing record amounts of crude oil. If China does not make a major oil discovery in the near future, imports may supply over 50% of the country’s needs, making China become a major consumer of oil and dwindling the barrels even faster than they currently are. However, China could also greatly expand their oil production with their huge oil reserves.
Due to all of these circumstances, China is the fastest growing economy in the world, and is now the second largest economy after the United States. The Chinese government has worked hand-in-hand with society in order to provide the best for the citizens. With a market economy, all decisions are made on the open market; the government has no say in what goes on. Economic and production decisions are made by the states. The results of the booming economy, no government interference, and energy have shown mixed results. GDP, agricultural output, foreign investment, and standard of living have all shown a significant increase. Negative results have come from corruption in the government, unemployment; and pollution on nearly every level still poses major problems that the Chinese government needs to correct.
I believe that China can achieve sustainability in the near future. Although the country is becoming more of a consumer, high production still remains in coal and electricity. The one-child policy, if tightly followed, will eventually decrease the overpopulation problem that China faces, but this will take many decades. Also, if China can equally distribute jobs, and energy to places that need help the most, China will become a better country to live in. China will always be a high producing country, if they can take more steps to fix the overpopulation, pollution and energy problems, they will attain sustainability in the very near future.
