The Economist USA - 21.09.2019

(Barré) #1

48 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

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