The Economist UK - 21.09.2019

68 China The EconomistSeptember 21st 2019

2 astrophic. The unwants countries to pro-

pose tougher targets by the middle of next

year and agree on these at another climate

conference at the end of 2020.

China does not encourage public debate

about this. Even as the country’s leaders

have been basking in the glow of global

gratitude for their climate-change efforts,

they have been tightening controls on

ngos. The state-run media rarely question

the government’s policies. But some Chi-

nese experts have been calling on it to step

up to the plate. In June an influential Chi-

nese think-tank, the China Council for In-

ternational Co-operation on Environment

and Development, said the country should

pledge that its emissions will peak by 2025

rather than 2030, and that by then non-fos-

sil fuels should contribute at least one-

quarter of the energy it consumes.

China has real incentives to keep up the

pace. It wants to reduce the economy’s de-

pendence on labour-intensive manufac-

turing and boost the role of high technol-

ogy and services. It worries about

dependence on imported fossil fuels: last

year 72% of its oil was imported and 43% of

its gas. The attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil-

fields on September 14th were scary for

China: the country had been by far the big-

gest source of China’s imported oil.

But some analysts doubt whether China

is ready yet to commit to tougher emis-

sions targets. The main reason is that the

economy is slowing faster than officials

would like. This year the aim is to expand it

by between 6% and 6.5%. That would be in

line with China’s long-term aim of achiev-

ing more sustainable, less frothy, growth.

But China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang,

said this week that even 6% has not been

easy to achieve, citing a global slowdown

and the “rise of protectionism and unilat-

eralism”—a veiled reference to the trade

war with America.

In August a senior Chinese climate offi-

cial warned that economic uncertainty

caused by the trade conflict, among other

factors, was making it less likely that China

would reduce its emissions any more

swiftly than promised. China’s leaders can

hardly be keen to put aside money for stiff-

er green policies while the economy is go-

ing through such a bumpy patch.

To keep the economy growing within

the target range, officials have allowed

more credit to flow to some high-emitting

industries such as steel and cement, and

cranked up coal-fired plants to meet the re-

sulting increase in power demand (and it is

building them apace abroad as part of its

Belt and Road Initiative, a global infra-

structure-building scheme—see Banyan).

After falling in 2015 and 2016, China’s car-

bon emissions began creeping upwards

again. Greenpeace estimates that carbon-

dioxide emissions grew 4% in the first half

of this year.

Large state-owned companies with

vestedinterestsinfossilfuelssenseanop-

portunity.InMarchpowerfirmsproposed

thatthegovernmentallowanother300-

500 coal-firedpowerstationstobebuiltby

2030,a 30%increaseincapacity.Officials

mustresistthetemptation.If not,theplan-

etisdamned. 7

Couldtryevenharder

Sources:WorldBank;GlobalCarbonProject

China,1990=100

0

250

500

750

1,000

1,250

1990 95 2000 05 10 15 18

GDP

CO2emissions

CO2emissions

gigatonnes

2.42

9.84

“F

reedom of teachingand of opinion

in book or press is the foundation for

the sound and natural development of any

people.” In China even uttering these

words in public may get a person into trou-

ble. But it was Albert Einstein who wrote

them, and he is officially revered. The quo-

tation appears on bookmarks at the gift

shop of the World Expo Museum in Shang-

hai, where the scientist’s work is being cel-

ebrated in an exhibition that opened in Au-

gust. Einstein visited the city in 1922, locals

are proud to recall.

Crowds have been flocking to see the

memorabilia, which will be on display un-

til late October. A big draw are Einstein’s

notes on special relativity, in which he sets

out the formula E=mc^2. There is no men-

tion of how controversial even the famous

theory once was in China. During Mao Ze-

dong’s Cultural Revolution, it was attacked

by some scholars in the Chinese Academy

of Sciences. They wrote a paper describing

relativity as “a profound reflection of West-

ern bourgeois reactionary political view-

points”. In an attempt to restore sanity

Zhou Enlai, who was then prime minister,

eventually stepped in. “The Jewish nation

has produced many outstanding talents.

Marx was Jewish, so was Einstein,” he said.

The exhibition does not, however, ex-

plore Einstein’s views on freedom of ex-

pression. These are revealed only among

the souvenirs, one of which is a biography

of Einstein by an American, Walter Isaac-

son. It describes the German-born scien-

tist’s nonconformity and hostility to state

control. “Tyranny repulsed him, and he

saw tolerance not simply as a sweet virtue

but as a necessary condition for a creative

society,” it says. But the book is on sale only

in English. There is nothing in Chinese at

the exhibition that reveals Einstein’s opin-

ions on political freedom.

This year, especially, the authorities are

keen to avoid tricky questions about sci-

ence and dissent. It is the 30th anniversary

of pro-democracy unrest in Tiananmen

Square that was crushed by the Chinese

army with huge loss of life. Among the

most vocal of the intellectuals who sup-

ported the protests were several Chinese

physicists: Wang Ganchang, who led Chi-

na’s nuclear-weapons programme; Fang

Lizhi, an astrophysicist who later defected

to America; and Xu Liangying, China’s pre-

eminent translator of Einstein’s works.

All three are now dead. Like the others,

Xu kept calling for democracy into old age.

Remarkably, however, Xu’s work is ac-

knowledged at the exhibition by a display

of a translation in his handwriting. Cura-

tors sought advice from Xu’s son and invit-

ed him to the opening.

But this is no political thaw. Since Xi

Jinping took over as China’s leader in 2012,

he has tightened the screws on dissent. Sci-

entists have not been immune. Zheng

Wenfeng, an associate professor at the Uni-

versity of Electronic Science and Technol-

ogy of China in the south-western city of

Chengdu, had the temerity this summer to

question the significance of the “four great

inventions”: the compass, printing, paper-

making and gunpowder. China cites these

as evidence of its ancient scientific pro-

wess. No patriot can question that. Mr

Zheng was duly punished with two years’

suspension from teaching. 7

SHANGHAI

An exhibition celebrates Einstein’s

genius but not his politics

Science and dissent

Relatively

revealing