Yes, the Chinese government cares about the environment but to a certain extent…. the most important thing to understand is that the priority in China remains the economic growth – and this has only intensified over the past year with the global financial crisis. The ultimate goal of sustained economic growth is to maintain social stability and the Chinese government’s priority of a ‘harmonious society’. Therefore, the government acts on environmental issues when they pose a direct risk to maintaining this ‘harmonious society (i.e. pollution of factories leading to protests, etc…). To the extent that environmental protection will impact the China’s economic competitiveness or ‘flexibility’, then the government is unlikely to take restrictive measures.

For the consumers, I would say that environmental awareness is increasing, of course, but it is very different from what we see in Western countries. Consumers / Citizens in China care about what directly impacts themselves and their families (health, etc…), and thus local and critical issues such water pollution tend to be hot topics, while climate change remains a global / conceptual issue that consumers do not link to their daily lives, and other environmental issues. The latest environmental protest in the south of China which happened this week was due to a very NIMBY approach (not in my backyard, i.e. local residents refusing the construction of some industrial facilities near their homes), rather than a pure concern about the environment itself.

I don’t know if I managed to give a relatively good picture of the situation. it is extremely complex as it varies from issues to issues. If you want more information on the topic, I would recommend you to have a look at the Insights Paper on China’s Position on Climate Change, published by Edelman Shanghai, and that I recently blogged about.

Cheers, and thanks for reading,
Perrine

How significant of an issue is this for the government, as well as average people in China?