The awards show was both a sign of the importance Beijing places on the green-GDP campaign, and the problems it faces.
The TV spectacle is a production of the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), a cutting-edge bureaucracy that has been using publicity to pressure the provinces into embracing the idea of factoring environmental losses into overall GDP growth statistics. After the green-GDP concept emerged overseas in the late ’90s, SEPA and the National Bureau of Statistics enlisted provincial and local authorities in 2004 to try to quantify green GDP. After much number crunching, the team (including Gao) released the first national green-GDP report in September, tallying total losses at $64.5 billion.
The controversy was immediate. Truth be told, the green-GDP concept remains fuzzy to many, as officials struggle to calculate losses due to myriad factors, from water pollution to land erosion, industrial accidents to lost workdays, that are hard to put numbers on. Months before the September report, SEPA on its own calculated the losses from absenteeism, illness and death at $200 billion, or one tenth of the annual GDP. By one measure, says SEPA deputy director Pan Yue (who wrote a closing song for the awards show), environmental losses are negating all of China’s economic growth. Experts say incomplete data was one reason for the discrepancy.
Another was politics. In the past, economic-growth statistics were a huge consideration in whether a local cadre shot up the career ladder. Now the notion that you have to be “green” as well as profitable, though not yet formalized, has bureaucrats worried. It is forcing some local apparatchiks to face the uncomfortable fact that they’ve been trading environmental quality for the sake of quick profits. “Local governments ask, ‘What do I want first: environmental quality or money?’ Of course they take the money,” says one government adviser on green GDP, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t cleared to speak on the topic. In fact, says another adviser, a breakdown of pollution-related losses by provinces was edited out of the September report’s publicized version because “there was a fear of offending the localities.”
In part, complying with complex green-GDP benchmarks on energy use and pollutant emissions is a huge headache. In recent weeks official news reports have disparaged local authorities for either balking at the new benchmarks or fudging their numbers in response. A few tried to wiggle out of the exercise altogether. “Some provinces and municipalities said they wanted to withdraw from the green-GDP trials,” state media quoted Wang Jinnan, head of the research team conducting green-GDP pilot projects, in early December.
Still, the SEPA publicity machine seems to be getting results. A growing number of mayors–from cities such as Changshu and Wuxian in southern Jiangsu province–are beginning to champion the green-GDP concept, says rural expert Wen Tiejun, who’s been designated a “green ambassador” for China. Other local cadres may soon have no choice. At a key meeting of Communist Party leaders later this year, Wen says, the country should start to see “big changes in the degree to which environmentalism counts toward evaluating cadres.” Within a few days of the taping of the awards show, several provincial officials denied privately that they were dropping out of the green-GDP effort. “They [said] they were still very enthusiastic about participating,” says a source involved in the campaign. And why not? It may soon win them an award on national TV.
