‘The West is polluting China’
Hou Dongmin

IN SOME sense, China is responsible for environmental problems and its environmental protection mechanism needs to be improved. But the saying that “the West is polluting China” is not a prejudice, so further understanding of what this saying means is needed by both developed and developing countries, including China. Against the backdrop of economic globalization, the phenomenon of pollution transfer is an inevitable result of industrialized countries’ ailing development mode. After the end of World War II until the early 1970s, Western consumerism began to rise and soon developed into the mode of “high-speed production growth, high energy consumption and high pollution,” which came in for severe criticism. Since 1972, great achievements have been made in the global environment movement, but almost all of the achievements are in developed countries, while environmental deterioration remains in developing countries.
After the 1970s, while economies and consumption continued to rise, the environment was also greatly improved. It seems that high-speed production growth and high energy consumption will not necessarily lead to environmental degradation. The result is a goal of developed countries and also a world consensus to achieve sustainable development while increasing consumption. The environment awareness during this period and also the method of dealing with the relationship between economic development and environmental protection are also applauded by many developing countries. Since the 1970s, although the theory of sustainable development is contrary to the Western consumption model, economists and the public seem to have paid more attention to the so-called positive effects of the latter. Declining expenditure by the Americans is always read as the most sensitive negative signal to the world economy. It seems that the whole world is pleased to see the Americans forever boost their rising consumption levels.
As a matter of fact, efforts to improve the environment since the 1970s are largely made to solve some “urgent” environmental problems in Western countries, especially those that are detrimental to local development, such as air and water pollution. In terms of “chronic problems” like resource overexploitation and greenhouse gas emission, which will exert a global impact, the international community has failed to take effective countermeasures. In the meantime, ever rising Western economic and consumption growth is imposing heavier pressure on the global environment. First of all, economic growth and rising consumption demand lead to a sharp increase in resource consumption. For example, Only One Earth, a famous Western environmental report, used to indicate that if every two Americans possess an automobile and their average age is 65 years old, then 10 tons of steel is consumed during their lifetime. In the mid-1970s, Americans had 120 million autos, but by 2004, although the population was less than 300 million, Americans owned 240 million autos, while the average life expectancy had reached over 75 years old. Currently, the per-capita annual crude steel consumption in the United States is about 330 kg. Therefore, there is no fundamental decrease in the developed countries’ excessive resource consumption.
For Western countries, to improve the consumption level while cutting pollution, the inevitable choice is to move businesses with a high pollution rate to the developing world and then import increasingly cheap daily consumables there. The fact that the American market is inundated with China-made commodities is an inevitable result of this trend at a time when China’s export-oriented economy has developed rapidly. In this sense, Western countries’ efforts to relieve environmental pollution since the 1970s is only relatively effective within their own borders, but by transferring heavy polluters to developing countries and increasing import of daily consumables, they are increasing the negative impact on the environment in the developing world. According to the New Economics Foundation, if the world population begins to consume resources in the way Americans do, 5.3 earths are needed to sustain the human race’s consumption; French and the British consumption, 3.1 earths; Spanish consumption, 3; German consumption, 2.5; Japanese consumption, 2.4 and Chinese consumption, only 0.9.
By saying the West is polluting China, it also means that the Western consumption model is exerting a subtle influence on China. China is being polluted by the West not only by accepting polluting enterprises from the West and providing the latter with more and more consumables, but at the same time, the energy-consuming production and consumption model is also subtly influencing China. It turns out that after the end of World War II, the soaring production efficiency and expanding production scale make companies depend more and more on people’s consumption, featured by throwing the old stuff and taking new ones. That is why Western production and consumption models are having such a terrible impact on resources and the environment. It was pointed out by Western scholars some time ago that, if there were no immediate renewed demand for durable consumables like autos within a short period of time (compared to the normal guarantee of the product), the auto industry would find it hard to survive. This is a common phenomenon in the process of consumable production. To some extent, the Western development mode is getting integrated with high consumption and overuse of resources.
Unfortunately, with a rising economic growth and purchasing power in China, the Western lifestyle begins to influence China’s development mode and dominate Chinese consumers. Today, the Chinese economy is increasingly becoming part of the world economy, and particularly, it is developing an increasingly close relationship with developed countries. China’s textile industry and the production of household appliances, computers, cell phones, automobiles and so on all depend on consumers’ quickly refreshed demand for new commodities. If the demand suddenly disappears, the impact on all the industries and employment will be unimaginable both for China and the world economy. If when billions of people have been lifted out of poverty and begin to demand more for consumption, the earth environment, on which human survival depends, will be put under huge threat. At present, China is producing so much cotton cloth that there is actually 7 meters for every one of the world’s 6.5 billion population and one pair of shoes for each person on earth. By the evidence above, China consumes fewer resources that the major developed countries. However, this is a result calculated on the basis that China’s 900 million farmers are living in a very frugal way and there is a large number of people living with low- and moderate-level incomes. But with the growth of population and the rise of people’s incomes and consumption level, it’s an urgent question how to build up a sustainable method of consumption and development in China.
The saying that the West is polluting China is a more profound understanding of sustainable development. This saying actually reflects the sustainable development problem that the whole world is now faced with. As the United Nations Environment Program said when drawing a conclusion of the global environment movement in the 20th century, sustainable development remains far from a reality. The establishment of a new growth mode demands profound understanding and also action. As far as China is concerned, on one hand, it should keep resisting the Western consumption model, from the standing point of sustainable development, and play an active role in the campaign to change the Western development mode of “high-speed production growth, high energy consumption and high pollution.” In face of the increasingly difficult international negotiations on global climate change, China should pay more attention to implement the suggestion put forward by the New Economics Foundation, that the focus should be shifted from commodity producers to commodity consumers. While making a commitment to carbon dioxide emission reduction, Western countries should by no means increase the emission in other ways like import and export trade. This is not only in the interest of China, but lives up to the requirement of global sustainable development. On the other hand, domestically, it’s necessary for China to enhance the whole nation’s awareness of environmental protection. In this regard, the country does need to learn from the West and upgrade its industrial structure. It’s also necessary to find out an energy efficient development that encourages moderate consumption, but of course, this is by no means an easy job. [blurb] Against the backdrop of economic globalization, the phenomenon of pollution transfer is an inevitable result of industrialized countries’ ailing development mode.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)

New challenges for US diplomacy
Dr Moeed Pirzada

THE emerging political structure in Pakistan may present new challenges to both the US and Pakistani diplomacy in the region. And it will be interesting to see how both sides continue to strengthen a relationship that is of utmost importance — to them and the region at large. Last week the visiting US Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte and US Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Boucher had a taste of this new noisy, boisterous and less than deferential Pakistan, where many were prepared to raise questions never aired so audaciously before. In many respects it was a rougher microcosm of the neighbouring India where the Bush administration has found it so frustrating to sell its grand nuclear deal.
But while listening to the cacophony of political bravado the thing that must have worried the US diplomats the most was that there was no one single person or institution available anymore to be threatened with mid-night phone calls; that can negotiate, promise and guarantee the results on the continuing war against terrorism. In a report, the New York Times termed this as the ushering of a ‘new diplomatic order’ and later in an editorial termed the Pakistani leaders desire to review Pakistan’s role in the war against terrorism as ‘worrying’.
In an earlier column in these pages (Where exactly lie the next fault lines? KT, Mar 20) I had argued that soon the coalition parties may be compelled to take different positions on this issue. This started to manifest last week. Whereas PM Yousaf Raza Gillani’s cautious pronouncement that negotiations are possible with militants who lay down arms has raised eyebrows in the US media it must be the stand taken by Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, and the junior partner in the coalition government that must raise hackles inside the State Department.
Nawaz, in a hurriedly called Press conference, after his meeting with the US diplomats, asserted that whereas his party wants peace everywhere it doesn’t want Pakistan to become a slaughter house for peace elsewhere. Yet the differences between the two coalition partners on this issue may be deeper than discernable from the surface. PPP created political space for itself inside Washington beltway, over a two-year period, promising that if given the chance back in power it will impart greater legitimacy and effectiveness to the war against terrorism.
This was the position again reiterated by Hussain Haqqani, the PPP’s designated Ambassador at large and soon to be Pakistan’s Ambassador to Washington-during an interview with Los Angeles Times. It will be hardly an exaggeration to suggest that Haqqani was Ms. Bhutto’s principal one- man think-tank in the US providing continuous intellectual wherewithal to her strategy of winning and developing support for a comeback. Sharif on the other hand is being counselled by Tariq Fatemi, a nationalist figure from Pakistan’s Foreign Service whom many in the US diplomatic corps remember with some trepidation.
Add to this the fact that whereas PPP has relied upon its traditional vote bank in interior Sindh and southern Punjab, Sharif, who swept Punjab and its middle class vote, upstaging Gen. Musharraf and his support base, had fashioned his campaign around issues of national self-respect and sovereignty. Given this context both parties will find it difficult to move far away from their commitments and public image.
But this is not the only problem that challenges the minds.
Responding to the changed signals — or confusion — from the politicians, the so-called Tehrik-e-Taleban-e-Pakistan (TTP) the main extremist outfit has produced its own olive branch. And the nature of this “olive branch” only shows the kind of disconnect these neo-Luddites have with the world around them; they are prepared to offer peace to Pakistani cities in exchange for their right to continue Jihad against the US and Nato in Afghanistan. Well, this may entice some idiotic street opinion but is hardly helpful to the political decision makers- who will soon be confronted with the task of balancing budgets as well.
But these militants, lost in time warp, with their vision blocked by the rugged mountains all around, are trying to utilise some redundant paradigms of the past.
After all only a generation ago they and their fathers were utilised by the US and Pakistanis to wage a war of attrition against the occupying Soviets from sanctuaries inside Pakistan. The US certainly utilised this concept against the Soviet-backed regimes in many other theatres of conflict, across the world. India successfully employed the same paradigm against erstwhile East Pakistan by allowing the Begali insurgents to operate from the safety of West Bengal. And Pakistan — till 9/11 — was following the same against India in Kashmir. We must admit: all are naked in this Turkish hammam.
9/11 gave us the new paradigms of collective security where all were prepared to fight a common enemy — the terrorists- under the leadership of a global hegemon, with whom no one could reasonably disagree with. The assumption is that old fashioned pursuit of state interests is dead. But is it really true?
US media and think-tanks have continuously harped on the theme that Pakistani military establishment is playing a double game, saving some of its “jihadi assets” to be used later. Interestingly the Pakistani chatter mill has always pointed out the large number of Indian consulates close to Pak-Afghan border, foreign inspired insurgents in Baluchistan and activities of Indian Border Road Organization as evidences of a US double game in the region. But Mirza Aslam Baig, the former army chief, recently wrote and distributed an unusually provocative piece: “Challenges for the new Government” accusing US and India of running an intelligence command operation at Jabul-us-Seraj, north of Kabul with forward posts at Sarobi for missions inside the NWFP and at Lashkargah and Nawah for supporting insurgents inside Pakistani Baluchistan.
These accusations look wild on the face of it and in all probability may be exaggerated; after all why will the US attempt destabilising a nuclear Pakistan? But unfortunately such conspiracy theories are widely believed across Pakistan. And one thing they point out is that the old fashioned pursuit of state interests and insecurities is not dead. In the months ahead, US may find it better and more fruitful to define the struggle in this region less in terms of the war against terrorism and more in terms of regional stability. In any case, it may need to inspire greater trust about its role of a neutral, above board, global hegemon.

—Khaleej Times






Indian Embassy involved in smuggling of secret nuclear weapons technology
Amjed Jaaved

A REPORT published in the Washington Post, dated March 14, 2008 has confirmed that Indian embassy in Washington D.C., and some Indian- government agencies had conspired with the international electronics executive Parthasarthy Sudarshan, aged 48, to obtain secret weapons technology from U.S. companies. The involvement of the Indian embassy came to light when Suderhsan pleaded guilty before a federal judge in Washington D.C. on March 13, 2008. He was executive of a Singapore-based firm Cirrus Electronics with subsidiaries in South Carolina (United States) and Bangalore (India). His accomplice Gopal posed as ‘international-sales manager’ of the company. The duo coordinated illegal smuggling of the sensitive equipment to India via other countries. At least two Indian Embassy (Washington) officials played a pivotal role in smuggling of the sensitive contraband. One of them was Manik Mukherjee, Counselor (Defence Technology). He officially visited Rochester Electronics Inc. Newbury Port, Massachusetts to witness testing of microprocessors. Mukherjee signed the ‘Inspection and Acceptance Certificate’ on behalf of the Indian government for 377 selected micro-processors. The other person was S. Janarthanan’ Mukherjee of Aeronautical Development Establishment;
The FBI holds evidence of tri-Iateral e-mails between Janarthanan and Cirrus Electronics (Sudershan and Gopal). The embassy officials remain to be charged before US District Judge Ricardo Urabina, for abetment in illegal export of missile and navigational technology to India. To US authorities, Gopal secretly shipped sensitive material, via Singapore, to prohibited Indian entities. He did so without obtaining an export licence from the US Department of Commerce under US Arms Export Control Act and International Emergencies’ Economic Powers Act. It is believed that the equipment was used in the nuclear capable Agni-III missile. This inference is based on the fact that the consignment of the equipment was sent directly to India’s Vikram-Sarabhai Space Centre, Bharat Dynamics Private Limited, and Bharat Heavy Electronics Limited. In another case, a Minnesota company, MTS Systems Corporation, confessed that it used forged documents to export equipment needed for India’s nuclear programme. The company was sentenced to two years’ probation and a fine of 400,000 dollars. The Washington Post report has sparked concerns about military use of the civil nuclear cooperation envisioned under the 123-agreement. Democratic Congressman Edward Markey has urged the US Congress to “re-assess the nuclear deal in the light of the FBI indictment’.