distribution of commodities which were now being distributed by provincial governments.33

34

Material allocation conferences have emerged as a particularly important means of administering commodity distribution in the 1960's and 1970's. Meetings are convened once or twice a year to bring together suppliers of important raw materials and intermediate goods with major enterprises which require these goods for meeting their production targets or investment plans. Significantly, however, these meetings are typically arranged on a functional, vertical basis rather than on a geographic basis and national planning agencies and ministries play a key organizing role. Thus they bring together all major suppliers and users of certain commodities from all over the nation rather than suppliers and users of all commodities within a single geographic region. Although there is little information available on how the actual contracts between enterprises are arranged at these conferences, the continuing role of national agencies and the branch lines of administration suggest that these conferences provide a mechanism for continued central government control of inter-provincial transfers of resources.

VII. SUMMARY

The system of economic planning and management introduced in the late 1950's is perhaps most usefully understood as a combination of relatively decentralized day-to-day management combined with relatively centralized control of most basic resource allocation decisions. The widespread implementation of dual rule and the resulting enlargement of the scope of provincial economic plans has increased the ability of local governments to carry out a horizontal, geographic coordination of economic activities. However, the center has maintained control of many basic resource allocation decisions. This control is used to insure a high rate of overall investment, to allocate a large share of investment resources to the producer goods sector, and to achieve important equity and distributional goals.

The success of the Chinese planning and fiscal system in carrying out substantial geographic redistribution stands in contrast to India, another large state with a commitment to reducing inter-regional disparities.35 Unlike the Chinese case, where all tax rates are set nationally, Indian state governments have some independent tax authority, giving rise to substantial inter-state variation in tax effort. Furthermore, the Indian planning and fiscal system does not contribute substantially to a reduction of inter-regional inequality. Poor states do not receive proportionately larger amounts of federal shared taxes and other forms of federal aid. The Chinese case, by contrast, is marked by greater uniformity in tax effort and a substantial redistribution through the fiscal and planning system.

33 State Council, "Several Regulations Concerning the Improvement of the Materials Distribution System," Sept. 24, 1958, Compendium of Laws and Regulations of the People's Republic of China, vol. 8, p. 100.

34 Barry Richman, Industrial Society in Communist China (New York: Random House, 1968). pp. 712-718.

35 Thomas J. Eapen, "Federal-State Fiscal Arrangements in India," in Revenue Sharing and Its Alternatives: What Future for Fiscal Federalism? Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress, 1967, vol. 1, p. 471.

CHINA'S ENVIRONOMICS: BACKING INTO ECOLOGICAL

LEADERSHIP

By LEO A. ORLEANS

CONTENTS

Page

Commentary

116

China at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment_ Health and Sanitation..

117

119

The quality of man's environment is usually impaired by man himself. He does this in two basic ways. First, by reproducing and thereby increasing the pressure of people on a given and finite land area; and second, by his determination to improve the economic and social conditions under which he lives through the utilization of scientific and technical knowledge as it becomes available to him-that is, "development.” When the concern is limited to population density, environmental problems are essentially limited to sanitation, but with development and industrialization, a wide range of new hazards to environment is created. It should therefore be instructive to look at the People's Republic of China, where the world's largest population and impressive industrial development combine to create conditions that could, potentially, cause serious environmental degradation. There is another important reason to consider China's policies and programs as they relate to environment. Rightly or wrongly she has a reputation for having a real concern for the well-being of the individual and, in this regard, for following a course of economic development that has not ignored its consequences on environment. This paper will attempt to examine China's policies relating to the environment, to consider how successful she has been in implementing them, to look at the eco

*I should like to express my thanks to Leon Slawecki of the Council on Environmental Quality for his comments and suggestions.

nomics of the problem, and finally, to comment on whether China will succeed in avoiding the environmental problems currently afflicting most Western industrialized nations.

China at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment

As a backdrop to the review of China's domestic policies and programs in the environmental field, it is interesting to review the stance she has taken and the image she has projected to the international community.

The growing awareness on the part of the nations of the world regarding the accelerating degradation of the earth's environment culminated in a 2-week United Nations Conference on Human Environment, which took place in Stockholm in June 1972 and which was attended by 113 nations-in itself a significant milestone. Although one might reasonably assume that a conference whose aim is to improve the various aspects of man's relations with his physical surroundings would be apolitical enough to produce considerable unity even among representatives of diverse political and economic systems, this was not the case. Dissensions dominated the discussion both in and out of the official meeting.

In the consideration of environmental problems, just as in most other fields, there was a very fundamental difference in perspective between the rich and the poor countries the developed and the developing countries. It was well summarized by Indira Gandhi when she rote that "The rich countries may look upon development as the cause of environmental destruction, but to us it is one of the primary means of improving the environment for living, of providing food, water, sanitation and shelter, of making the deserts green and the mountains habitable." And Maurice Strong, the Executive Directors of the United Nations Environment Program, presented the difference more graphically: "To a man faced with immediate starvation and other diseases of poverty, the risks he runs from contamination of the seas or the atmosphere seem so remote as to be irrelevant. To him factory smoke smells of money-and of jobs and needed consumer goods. And what if fly ash and sulfur dioxide afflict the surrounding area?" 2 In other words, the less developed countries (LDC's) are not prepared to accept the urging of the industrialized nations not to repeat their same mistakes, but to consider the problems of environment during the process of development rather than later when polultion becomes too difficult to manage. The LDC's are generally much more interested in development per se which, they feel, is the only way to bring material benefits to the population and they maintain that air and water pollution is a reasonable price to pay for such development. Furthermore, they attest that it is the rich who disturb the ecology and pollute the world, pointing out that one-third of the world's population consumes 85 percent of its resources, and quoting the estimate that a newborn child in the United States uses 25 times more of the world's resources than does one born in Asia, Africa or Latin America. The pollution of primary concern to LDC's is that of human misery due to poverty,

1 Indira Gandhi, "The Unfinished Revolution," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, September 1972.

2 Maurice F. Strong, "One Year After Stockholm," Foreign Affairs, July 1973, p. 691.

malnutrition, disease, poor housing and illiteracy. These, they say, are the immediate problems of the third world, maintaining it would be both expensive and premature to alter national priorities in order to establish environmental standards urged by the West. No wonder it has been suggested that "to preach ecological prudence to an Asian or African leader would be tantamount to advising Mao Tse-tung to invest in the stock market.” 3

Dedicated environmentalists appreciate the argument but resent the attack on their motives. They point out that industralization along traditional lines does not necessarily solve the problems of poverty and misery among the masses. Rather, it tends to increase the gap between the poor, who suffer the most from social disintegration while benefiting the least from high-consumption-industrial goods, and the rich minority, who do profit from this type of development. Industrial pollution should not be considered a status symbol as LDC's leaders tend to believe. Aid for development should be continued, but local conditions and needs must be considered and the development undertaken within a more traditional framework. In other words, in response to the LDC's, it is possible to pursue development in a way that would minimize environmental risk.

Since the Cultural Revolution in 1966 representatives of the People's Republic of China had attended only a few scientific conferences and their participation, for the most part, was passive. There was understandable pleasure, therefore, on the part of the other countries when word came that China would be participating in the Conference on the Human Environment-the first major U.N. conference following her admittance to the U.N. (In a dispute over East Germany's unsuccessful attempt to gain admittance to the Conference, the Soviet Union ended up by boycotting it.) Because of China's reputation for concern for the quality of the environment and of human life, many felt that China would be a constructive contributor to the conference, able to suggest new solutions for many of the world's environmental problems. Those familiar with China's international tactics, however, predicted-correctly, as it turned out— that the dichotomy between the LDC's and the advanced nations was ideally suited for political capital, not to be passed up by Peking. Although a 27-nation Preparatory Committee (excluding China, who was not yet a member) spent 2 years on a carefully drafted United Nations Declaration on the Human Environment-one that was thought to be acceptable to all the participating nations-China's first parliamentary move at the conference was to call for the creation of a committee consisting of all 113 participants to review this draft and to consider China's 10 formal amendments to the Declaration. Actually most of the points made by China were not that different from the original sections of the Draft Declaration; they were simply restated in the inimicable style used by China when addressing the international community. An example of her intemperate language and her effort to politicize the conference was contained in Point 3 of the declaration:

We hold that the major social root cause of environmental pollution is capitalism *** seeking high profits, not concerned with the life or death of people,

3 Richard A. Falk, This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals of Human Survival (New York, Random House, 1971), p. 30.

and discharging poisons at will. It is the policies of the superpowers that have resulted in the most serious harm to the environment. The U.S. has committed serious abuses in Vietnam, killing and wounding many of its inhabitants.

Such attacks on the superpowers-often including completely irrelevant issues-garnered considerable support of the Third World nations. Also supported by the LDC's was China's insistence that the conference unequivocally affirm national sovereignty and the complete autonomy of each nation with respect to environmental standards-a point most upsetting to the environmentalists who believe in the philosophy that ecological networks inevitably cross national lines"only one earth"-than to the representatives of governments.

Without detailing the heated disagreements prompted by China's introduction of what many considered to be extraneous issues (such as America's use of defoliants and mass-destruction weapons in Vietnam), it is enough to note that China's resolutions did not wreck the . conference as feared. After almost a week of secret meetings, the Working Group managed to come up with a compromise acceptable to the Conference, and the Conference did eventually accomplish, basically, three major goals: (1) It approved a 7-point Declaration on Human Environment; (2) It approved 26 principles and 109 recommendations as part of the Action Plan for the Human Environment; and (3) It recommended the establishment of a new institution to coordinate environmental activities (United Nations Environmental Program [UNEP] in Nairobi, Kenya).

That China's rhetoric at the Stockholm Conference was not what might be considered constructive is not to suggest she had nothing to contribute to the forum. On the contrary, although China's experience with problems of environment has been uneven, she has nevertheless done much to promote a health ful environment and has done it in ways that are different enough to warrant study and consideration, particularly by other developing countries. In Stockholm, however, China's goal was to gain worldwide attention, to stress once again that "politics are in command" and to woo the sympathy of the developing countries by pointing out that environmental problems are solely the result of overconsumption and social and economic injustice as practiced by the advanced nations of the world.

HEALTH AND SANITATION

Because of the size of China's population and the incredibly poor conditions under which the people lived prior to 1949, the new regime's primary concern was not with fancy ecosystems-a distant concept of trivial priority-but rather with the simple and immediate requirements of improving the human environment at its most basic level. It was not with toxic materials released into the air and water or problems created by the indiscriminate use of energy and abuse of resources, but rather with living conditions in general and most specifically with problems relating to sanitation and public health. It is here perhaps more than in any other field that China has achieved the type of success to be envied not only by all the developing countries but also by many of the industrially advanced nations.

4 Stockholm Conference Eco, June 13, 1972, p. 5.