China’s Environmental Challenges and How the World Exacerbates Them

At the COP26 U.N. Climate Change Conference held in Glasgow in early November, two leaders were notably missing from the dais. Vladimir Putin of Russia was a no-show, and so was Xi Jinping, China’s president and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Was this hubris on the part of both leaders, a signal that attending such global conclaves is beneath them? Or was it motivated, particularly on the part of Xi Jinping, by a desire to avoid being confronted with public criticism of a sort he doesn’t have to deal with at home?

Despite Xi’s absence, COP26 produced an unexpected joint statement from China and the United States, giving both nations something to take home. Chinese special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua was able to state that “We need to think big and be responsible,” while the U.S. special climate envoy, John Kerry, took a political tone by saying that “I’m absolutely convinced that that is the fastest, best way to get China to move from where it is today.”

Perhaps the United States also needs to move, by literally moving its polluting companies out of China.

When companies around the world began climbing over one another in the 1990s to take their manufacturing plants to China, emissions and environmental protection related to that production weren’t much on the minds of the Chinese policymakers who welcomed in foreigners and their hard currency investments.

In opening itself to the outside world for investment and technology transfer, in truth neither the Chinese government nor the majority of foreign investors focused on the environmental impact of what they would build and produce in the thousands of foreign-invested factories that sprung up throughout the country.

Indeed, most foreign companies who went to China quietly cheered China's lax environmental regulations and enforcement, including the world's best-known names and brands. Going to China to manufacture meant that American, European, and other Asian companies could largely shed the burden of lengthy and expensive environmental feasibility studies and their requirements. What could take years to approve in Europe or the United States generally passed scrutiny in China in a matter of weeks, if that. The environmental impact feasibility study was a two to three page document that economic zone officials helped investors to fill out. If anything was suspect or damaging, it usually did not show up in the final report to officials whose job it was to approve the project.

Since those early days, China has made significant promises to counter a warming climate and to reduce the harmful effects of pollution. Top leader Xi Jinping has pledged that emissions will peak before 2030, and that China will become carbon neutral before 2060, quite a goal for the country that is today the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases.

But there are challenges for China that most other countries don’t face. The first is incessant international condemnation as the worst emitter in the world; China doesn't react well to criticism, particularly from overseas. The second is that China remains the “world’s factory,” a country that other countries use to produce their goods, with the United States still being China’s biggest buyer.

LEED-Certified: An Object Lesson in Getting the Chinese on Board

Into this landscape has come the green building movement. However, the international standards for green building, such as LEED from the United States and BREAMM out of Britain, set the certification bar so high that it seemed impossible for Chinese builders to meet them, for Chinese environmental bureaus to encourage them, and for Chinese citizens to take them seriously.

Or perhaps not.

Indeed, if there is one object lesson that can illustrate a path forward to further influence and encourage China’s active cooperation on climate change and other environmental issues at national leadership and local levels alike, it is the story of the introduction and eventual explosion of LEED Certification throughout the country.

LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a green building standard initiated in 1993 by senior scientist Robert K. Watson at the National Resources Defense Council, an American environmental protection non-profit. It eventually developed into a completely integrated system of standards covering green building and operations.

According to Green Business Certification Inc., LEED is “an international symbol of sustainability excellence that signifies a building is lowering carbon emissions, conserving resources, reducing operating costs, prioritizing sustainable practices, and creating a healthier environment.”

It was not until 2005, however, that the first LEED certification was given in China. The recipient was an office building in Beijing belonging to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

This was followed in 2006 by a LEED-certified office and showroom in Shanghai, under the leadership of Ray Anderson, founder of Interface, Inc., which manufactures modular, interlocking carpet systems. Anderson, who had become a committed environmentalist, was eager to bring not only his business but his sustainability standards to China, and in doing so he insisted that anything Interface built must meet LEED certifying standards.

In then attempting to expand the LEED concept outside of a major city, Interface took its requirements for LEED specifications and certification to a provincial manufacturing economic zone near Shanghai, where the company intended to build a plant supplying the Asian market. Needless to say, local leaders and even the company’s project consultants rolled their eyes at what seemed like overly stringent and irrelevant specifications that would be impossible to achieve in a country in which even the language of those specifications was not in common use. On top of that, the standards required a degree of site survey and approval not seen in that part of China. In practice, Chinese builders were accustomed to a grab-and-build approach, and had little time or patience for the niceties of a project’s environmental impact.

Nonetheless, happy to support the investment, the economic zone and local officials did their best to help the company meet their environmental objectives. However, it was seen as a one-off, perhaps even an amusing experience; no one involved in the project could have anticipated what happened next with LEED certification in China.

China today has more LEED-certified gross square meters than any other country in the world outside of the United States. A CBRE and U.S. Green Building Council report noted that LEED-certified projects in China had a compound annual growth rate of 77 percent since 2005.

And the buildings are in demand. Spaces certified LEED Platinum, the highest level of certification, have an average occupancy that is 10 percent higher than traditional offices, showing that occupant awareness of and demand for LEED Platinum is strong and growing.

The amusement over strict standards in building is gone. Although by no means ubiquitous, the term of “LEED-certified” has come to mean quality and sustainability in China, in a very few short years. Why? What happened?

Simply put, “LEED-certified” became a brand, much as “ISO-certified” had become a brand in China in the 1990s. Being LEED-certified has conferred status, pride, prestige, and overall, “face” for the builders, and for those associated with such projects. LEED-certified spaces now garner praise from Chinese leadership, and increase business for those who can achieve the standards.

In the international context, China has achieved something else that it covets: recognition as a leader in yet one more thing. In this sense, LEED project counts are like an Olympic medals table. China is proud to have achieved the most LEED certified buildings of any country outside of the United States. Being number one (or number two, in this case) is a huge motivation for a Chinese leadership and citizenry that are competitive and globally ambitious.

If the world is looking for a way to motivate China, then the LEED story offers some lessons: Brand the requirement. Offer the chance to achieve a tangible, prestigious goal. Define a standard, and offer global recognition for it. A China that bristles at international criticism is also a China that preens at international respect.

The Environment and Health

Certainly the cultural background to promote higher environmental standards is there. Chinese culture is psychologically fastidious about health and sanitation. One might question that premise in travels around the country, as what some would see as unsanitary conditions aren’t always seen as such by locals, but the belief in principles that promote a long and healthy life is there, if not always backed up in real world practice.

This mindset supports the cause to protect the environment. Chinese know very well that degradation and destruction of the environment is a factor that can cause everything from birth defects and illness to disabilities and premature death. Ordinary Chinese are outraged at what many see as the theft and misuse of their land and water resources, and the level of protests and petitions to the government show it.

Indeed, the ubiquitous use of Chinese traditional medicine is an indicator of the Chinese people's attention to their health and their belief in preventative remedies. Conversely, anything that is recognized to pose a risk to health – such as pollution – is regularly and severely challenged by Chinese citizens throughout the country.

This is good for the environmental protection movement in China, but it is not good for the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.

Domestically, the CCP needs to quench protests at the local level to defuse citizen backlash for the harm, degradation, and destruction of both land and water resources, which unchecked and often corrupt development has brought. Yanzhong Huang, author of “Toxic Politics: China’s Environmental Health Crisis and Its Challenge to the Chinese State,” writes that “the number of ‘abrupt environmental incidents’ in 2013, including protests, rose to 712, a 31 percent jump from the previous year. Citizen petitions related to environmental issues increased from 1.05 million in 2011 to 1.77 million in 2015.”

On the international stage, China seeks status and prestige for its environmental protection efforts, hoping to gain political, economic, and military leverage in a world which it still does not seem to comprehend. It is unlikely that at the senior leadership level there is too much genuine concern over the planet warming up a couple of degrees Centigrade. But as a threat to China’s political standing domestically and internationally, that 2 degrees is indeed a hot issue.

The World’s Biggest Exporter of CO2

As mentioned above, the rest of the world has some responsibility for the level of China’s emissions, as a significant percentage of those pollutants are created in the production of goods for other countries. Leading the list is the United States.

Carbon Brief reports that “Around 22% of global CO2 emissions stem from the production of goods that are, ultimately, consumed in a different country. However, traditional inventories do not include emissions associated with imported goods.”

The report goes on to state that China is the largest net exporter of CO2 by far, with the second largest – Russia – exporting only a fifth as much. Not surprisingly, the United States is the largest net CO2 importer, importing around twice as much as Japan. The majority of China's carbon exports go to the United States, and the majority of U.S. carbon imports come from China.

In other words, the United States does indeed bear responsibility for a portion of China's pollution. And China, while of course recognizing this, does not rock the boat of the financial boon that exports to the U.S. represent. After all, China is still an export-strong economy.