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Opinion / You Nuo
SEPA's message is loud and clear
By You Nuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-07-30 06:53
Part of my career was spent in financial services. I was involved in the
listing of the first batch of Chinese companies on the New York Stock
Exchange, followed by many H-share and B-share companies in Hong Kong.
For a while I was also an analyst.
But since I returned to work on the Chinese mainland, I have gradually
developed a liking for one particular government agency. It is the State
Environmental Protection Administration, or SEPA.
It is not usually considered to be an economic department of the
government, although here in China Daily, we run a special Energy and
Environment supplement every week, after merging the two operations into
one.
Having no friends in that government office, not even contacts with any
related NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in the world, I have to say
SEPA is providing a valuable service.
Whether people agree to call today's China the factory of the world, or
whatever development models economists may propose for it, people must
accept: No factory in the world can be built on a dumping ground.
Do not argue with me about how to calculate the amount of waste and
pollution, and how to project their growth in a given period. Do not tell
me analysts do not have a shared model to quantify those things.
Some simple accounting based on an average household can be enough to
reveal the dangers of a single-minded chase at low cost, and without
regard to the environment.
Say an average Chinese household of two parents and one child has a
yearly income of 250,000 yuan ($33,000) a year.
If, in order to make their child grow faster than the other kids, the
couple keep feeding him hamburgers and French fries. In order to save
daily expenses, they buy all the cheap supplies they can get from
unlicensed roadside vendors - from groceries to bottled (or re-bottled)
water.
In less than 10 years, they would have saved probably enough to move into
a new flat. But if they continue to be obsessed about speed and low cost,
they would not mind living in a highly polluted area and buying cheap
household supplies, including paint and furniture.
By that time, however, the kid would be suffering from obesity and
diabetes, for which the parents would have to spend 100,000 yuan a year
for his treatment - from regular hospital visits to herbal prescriptions,
useful or not.
Then in another 10 years, the parents would be facing huge medical bills
for cancers attributable either to their unhealthy food, poor air quality
or to the poisonous emissions from cheap building materials.
When life and all other key factors are considered, the family's ROI
(return of investment) can only be negative. In journalists' jargon: Two
generations wasted.
That is why I appreciate what SEPA is doing for China. It is telling
people that they really cannot afford to wait when others say they still
can.
E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 07/30/2007 page4)
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