When a Billion Chinese Jump (64 page)

20.
Ma,
China’s Water Crisis,
p. 111.

21.
The diversion of the Tarim (Lop Nor’s source river) led to the total collapse of the dense poplar forests downstream that had thrived in the area for thousands of years. The roots of these hardy trees go down 10 meters—which allows them to survive in even the worst climatic dry spells. But once the river dried up, the water table fell 14 meters, dooming even these most drought-resistant of trees.

22.
Across stretches of Xinjiang there are similar cases of disastrous ecological mismanagement by the settlers. Lake Manas was once a giant body of water covering 550 square kilometers, but it dried up completely after
bing-tuan
teams built a reservoir on its main source. Abi Nur, on the border with Kazakhstan, has shrunk by more than half from 1,200 square kilometers since the 1950s as a result of an eightfold expansion of farmland. White salty dust from the exposed bed is carried across the Heaven range all the way to Urumqi, more than 600 kilometers away, eroding the quality of land in between, causing diarrhea in livestock and posing serious risks to human health. With less water to keep the desert in check, sand dunes threaten to take back farmland. In several areas, such as Jinghe, many farmers have abandoned their homes. Sand on the tracks repeatedly forces stoppages on the transcontinental railway that links Beijing with central Asia (Ma,
China’s Water Crisis
).

23.
They were chosen with three criteria in mind:
shan, san, dong
(in mountains, dispersed, in caves). As often as not, this meant locations where they
would be most inefficient and cause maximum damage to pristine landscapes. With war considered imminent, they were planned hurriedly and rushed into operation. Mao was under no illusions about the bespoiling character of the Third Front campaign. It was, as he said in a memorably earthy 1964 speech, the arse-end of a three-pronged war effort: “Agriculture is one fist, and national defense is another fist. To make the fists strong, the rear end must be seated securely. The rear end is basic industry.” Given this analogy, it is no surprise that many of the sites of “Third Front” factories resemble toilets.

24.
Which suggests some creative head-counting, given the government-imposed limit of twenty animals per person.

25.
The impact of black carbon and brown clouds on the Himalayas is a source of increasing concern (Randeep Ramesh and Suzanne Goldenberg, “Soot Clouds Pose Threat to Himalayan Glaciers,”
Observer,
October 4, 2009).

26.
In Xinjiang, the pattern of warming and drying is particularly complex. While overall ice cover has declined dramatically, a few glaciers have continued to expand. Much of western China appears to be getting moister. Traditional temperature patterns may be inverting. Winters are warming faster than summers. While the highest, coldest places are melting, the lowest, hottest areas appear to be cooling and growing wetter. Deserts are getting more rain. Some scientists in Xinjiang believe the deserts may be an ally in the battle against climate change. They found that the alkaline ground gulps more carbon dioxide at night than temperate forests. Similar results in the U.S. led some to believe that deserts might soak up half the amount of carbon currently emitted by the burning of fossil fuels. Similar findings have come from studies in Nevada’s Mojave Desert, where the sand soaks up about the same amount of CO
₂
per square meter as in some temperate forests. If confirmed, this would be good news because almost a third of the earth’s land surface is desert (Richard Stone, “Have Desert Researchers Discovered a Hidden Loop in the Carbon Cycle?”
Science,
June 13, 2008, p. 1409).

27.
According to the World Resources Institute’s history of CO
₂
emissions since 1900, China is third behind the U.S. and Russia.
http://www.guard-ian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/co2-emissions-historical
. Earlier starting dates also put China behind the UK and other developed nations.

28.
See
ch. 11
, n. 3 (Elvin, “The Environmental Legacy of Imperial China,” in Edmonds [ed.],
Managing the Chinese Environment
).

29.
Xie Yan of the Wildlife Conservation Society is extremely concerned about the impact of global warming on orchids and other species because rare species are concentrated in such small bands of land that they cannot easily migrate for survival. “I think there will be big problems caused by global warming. Many species are very sensitive to temperature, such as amphibians. They are narrowly distributed. If the existing nature reserve is not suitable anymore, they could go extinct. Some plants only have 100 or so in some locations. Many are critically endangered. Orchids are extremely threatened” (interview with author).

30.
Nomads were blamed by Han settlers for degrading land they and their ancestors had lived on sustainably for centuries. Tibetans, Mongolians, and Uighurs were targets of resettlement programs. Climate change was only part of the reason.

31.
Since the completion of a 4,200-kilometer pipeline from the Lunnan field in the Tarim basin to Shanghai in 2004, Xinjiang has been China’s biggest supplier of natural gas. Several other vast pipelines have been built or are under construction that will link central Asia’s oil and gas fields with the factories and cities on China’s eastern seaboard. Engineers have built roads to carry oil through the Taklimakan, a desert where the dunes encroach so rapidly that guards have to be posted every 5 kilometers to maintain the 400-kilometer rose-willow defense line against the sands.

32.
More ambitious still, a new Silk Road is under construction. Asia Highway One, as the modern version is prosaically called, will link Urumqi with Istanbul, passing through the resource-rich nations of Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Political ties are being strengthened through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which groups China, Russia, and central Asian states that together control a quarter of the world’s oil supplies.

33.
The share value passed $1 trillion soon after the firm listed in 2007.

34.
Introduction to Urumqi, Frommer’s (
www.frommers.com
).

35.
During holiday peaks, their sprinklers and snow machines use enough water every day to fill more than twenty Olympic swimming pools. (Josh Chin and Zachary Slobig, “Xinjiang’s Melting Glaciers,”
China Dialogue,
March 20, 2008).

36.
At U-Cang, in the north of the city, work is under way on an “ecological
park” aimed at nurturing a more sustainable lifestyle among residents. All municipal flowerbeds, lawns, and hedgerows are doused with treated waste-water. The skies are also clearer now that the huge coal-fired power plants have been ordered to wash their coal before burning it. Our driver Wu told us that the smoke from their chimneys has changed from black to white. See also Jonathan Watts, “China Plans 59 Reservoirs to Collect Meltwater from Its Shrinking Glaciers,”
Guardian,
March 2, 2009.

37.
The state media continues to give prominent coverage to her speeches. Her critics are marginalized. The best known of them is Dai Qing, who accuses Qian of irresponsibility for saying, “The coming generations are bound to have greater intelligence than we do? Let’s trust their ability to solve their problems” (Dai Qing,
Yangtze! Yangtze!
[Probe International, 1993]).

38.
The overseas Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer often linked environmental stress to ethnic tension as in this interview comment: “Han Chinese are brought in to water down our population … When the Chinese Communist Party first occupied us in 1949, only 2 per cent of the population was Han Chinese. Now, they number 60 per cent. There is also widespread environmental damage. Three lakes have dried up, our natural resources are exploited, and thus, the environment is disturbed too. In the early days Uighurs were able to work in agriculture and earn a living. Now, they no longer have this opportunity because so many Han Chinese have arrived. People resist such suppression” (Florian Godovits, “China’s Female ‘Public Enemy Number One’ on the State of China’s Muslim Uighurs,”
Epoch Times,
October 29, 2007).

39.
On July 5, 2009, decapitations, knifings, and beatings left 197 dead and 1,721 injured, according to government figures. The vast majority of the victims were Han. Uighur exile groups claim the toll is higher and includes more minority victims, but foreign reporters who were given relatively free access to Urumqi were unable to find evidence that large numbers of Uighurs were killed.

40.
She cited the specific case of the Miyun Reservoir near Beijing, which had been designed for an annual runoff of 1.4 billion cubic meters of water, but had actually received just 500 million cubic meters.

41.
According to government figures, Xinjiang now has 1.4 million hectares of farmland, accounting for 3.3 percent of the national total. Although much of it is used for cotton, the area is also famous for melons and other fruit.

42.
Plans for expansion concentrated primarily on San San, Turpan, and Harmi (“Expert Says Xinjiang Is the Land of Opportunity for Coal Liquification Projects,”
Caijing,
September 22, 2009).

1.
Since then, he has had to work harder to prove himself than his peers at more prestigious institutions. More than thirty years on, that effort is finally paying off. Li is now credited internationally for leading the team that discovered ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy technology, a groundbreaking tool for analyzing energy conversion; and for ultradeep desulfurization techniques that dramatically reduce the amount of sulfur emitted in the combustion of diesel. His more recent research on catalysis and solar energy has propelled him to a leading position in the clean-energy field in China.

2.
China is pushing ahead with key “clean coal” technologies related to the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle and Carbon Capture and Storage (IGCC plus CSS), a method which converts coal to nonpolluting synthetic gas.

3.
The government’s goal is to increase the share of the national budget devoted to science and technology to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2020, up from 1.4 percent in 2006. If achieved, this share would rank as one of the best in the world.

4.
Containing 16 billion barrels of oil.

5.
This figure was cited by Li Xiaoqiang, vice chair of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, in a speech on September 7, 2006, at Dalian’s “summer Davos” meeting. But it may be an underestimate. The International Energy Agency in its
World Energy Outlook 2006
noted that China will need to invest $3.7 trillion in new energy sources between now and 2030 (Li Taige, “Investing in a Better Environment,”
China Dialogue,
October 3, 2007).

6.
For example, Jeffrey Sachs, founder of the Earth Institute at New York’s Columbia University, who argued in the 2007 Reith Lectures that the best hope for the world was for China to develop or borrow technologies to sequestrate, i.e., bury, carbon from coal.

7.
In high concentrations, carbon dioxide can be lethal. In 1986, it bubbled up in Lake Nyos, Cameroon, and 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?”
Foreign Affairs
86, 5 [September/October 2007]).

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,”
Nature,
July 24, 2008). China’s ministry of science and technology has reported that 5 percent
of the nation’s total investment in science is being spent on basic research, according to Bruce Alberts, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. By comparison, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has reported that 17.5 percent of the U.S. total investment in science was being spent on basic research in 2007 (Bruce Alberts, “Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Sees Science as a Key to Development,”
Science,
October 17, 2008).