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Description
China's massive industrial sector is an economic juggernaut, helping to drive national gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates of around 10 per cent per year. But while the country's highly productive factories and plants may be boosting national prosperity, their rapid expansion carries with it a serious environmental burden and costly energy inefficiencies that are increasingly becoming a barrier to China's sustainable development, thus contributing to climate change.
As Wang Yanjia, a scholar at Tshingua University, pointed out in his presentation at an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) event in 2006, national industrial expansion has become a mixed blessing for China. On the one hand, industry accounts for nearly half of its GDP, with revenue increasingly being generated by the private sector, which is nurtured by State policies, shifting toward a market-based economy. On the other hand, the industrial sector is responsible for about 70 per cent of national energy consumption and 61 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions, rapidly becoming a major contributor to global warming. It may not be... |
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