Past, Status Quo and Future of China’s Territorial Planning

Since 1949, China has witnessed four development stages of territorial planning. （1） In the 1950s the territorial planning got its start. （2） From the 1960s to 1970s territorial planning declined. （3） From, the 1980s to 1990s the first major tide of territorial planning began. （4） From the end of the 1990s to recent times the new round of territorial planning is under deliberation. Since 1998, the Ministry of Land and Resources has carried out some related work, especially in organizing pilot projects, and early research on the new round of national territorial planning. According to the need for economic and social development and the current conditions in China, it is the appropriate for China to carry out the new round of territorial planning. However, the government should correctly consider the correlations between territorial planning and other plan- nings, and take appropriate development action, e.g. stressing main points for the basis of overall planning, building a territorial planning system that coordinate with national conditions, strengthening research on various supportive measures of territorial planning, summarizing and upgrading experiences obtained in pilot projects, strengthening international exchange and training talented personnel.     

China＇s Green Transformation： Efforts, Practices and Future

正I'm very pleased to be here at this side meeting,China's Green Transformation:Efforts,Practices and Future, co-sponsored by ACCA21 and UNDP.Since the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, people around the world have made numerous     

CDM Project Activities in China＇s Iron and Steel Industry：Current Status,Barriers and Development Strategies

China is now facing huge pressure from both the domestic concern of energy security and the global community's call for emission reduction commitment. As one of the major energy consumers and greenhouse gas emitters, China's iron and steel industry has a huge clean development mechanism (CDM) potential. This article both quantitatively and qualitatively analyzes the current status of CDM project activities in the iron and steel industry in China, including characteristics of approved project types, applicable methodologies, and potential technology fields. From the perspective of project implementation, the article summarizes development barriers such as high investment risk, difficulty in project identification, strict requirements on PPDs, long registration waiting time, and etc. Policy suggestions are also put forwarded to help better promote the development of CDM projects in the iron and steel industry.     

Progress of China＇s Agenda 21

After the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, the concept of sustainable development has been widely recognized all over the world. More than 100 countries, including C...     

China＇s Export Expansion, Export Structure and Energy Consumption

Since the reform and opening up, China＇s export trade has maintained a rapid growth; meanwhile, China＇s energy consumption has been increasing sharply. ＂High export and high energy consumption＂ has become the feature of China＇s trade and economic development. In this paper, based on the input-output analysis approach, the authors have conducted an empirical study on the export trade and energy consumption of 21 trade industrial sectors. The results show that, China is a big net exporter of embodied energy. Assuming that the export growth rate of embodied energy maintains to be about 23.6%, the average annual growth rate of the past 32 years, and based on the input-output data of 2005, by 2030 China＇s net export of embodied energy would be over eight times more than the aggregate energy production, which is obviously infeasible. As a country of very low per capita en- ergy, China must change its export pattern, encourage or restrain the export of different industrial sectors according to their energy consumption intensity, and promote structural change of energy- efficient exported products, so as to achieve the sustainable development. Accordingly, the authors put forward some suggestions.     

Technological Progress, Structural Change and China＇s Energy Efficiency

China has witnessed rapid economic development since 1978, and during the time, energy production and consumption developed at a tremendous speed as well. Energy efficiency which can be measured by energy consumption per unit of GDP, however, experienced continuous decrease. Theoretically, the change of energy efficiency can be attributed to industry structural change and technological change. In order to explain the transformation of Chinese energy efficiency, we adopt logarithmic mean Divisia index techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period of 1994-2005. We find that technological change is the dominant contributor in the decline of energy intensity, but the contribution has declined since 2001. The change in industry structure has decreased the energy intensity before 1998, but raised the intensity after 1998. Decomposed technological effects for all sectors indicate that technological progresses in high energy consuming industries such as raw chemical materials and chemical products, smelting and pressing of ferrous metals, manufacture of non-metallic mineral products and household contribute are the principal drivers of China＇s declining energy intensity.     

Climate Change Responsibility and China＇s Endeavor

The problem of climate change is a global challenge. It is closely associated with social development and human survival, and it has a significant impact to all countries on energy develop- ment, economic competitiveness, technological innovation, and way of life. In recent years, with the rapid economic development in China, there is a rumor that the rapid growth of China＇s carbon dioxide emission offset the efforts of the international community in reducing emissions, and China should bear the international responsibility corresponding to its significant role in greenhouse gas emission, which obviously are unfair and not objective. As this paper reveals, ＂China environment responsibility＂ that is the socalled ＂China environment threat＂ or theories, China has made a positive contribution to addressing the climate change in the past and China will still be the backbone on the protection of global climate in the future.     

Evolution Rules of Urban-rural Development and Inspiration for China＇s Agriculture

Based on urban-rural contrast coefficient, this article designs the agriculture relative development index （ARDI） as indicators measuring the intensity of urban rural dual structure which is comparable among the countries of the world. This article calculates ARDI of 40 countries from 1980 to 2004. The result shows that ARDI in the developed countries and most of the middle-income countries are rising and yet there are declines in most of the low-income countries. The result also showed that most countries＇ ARDI will see a decline at the earlier stage of industrialization, so their dual economic structure will also aggravate and urban-rural gap will widen. With the economic development, the tendency will change and ARDI presents a U-shape change overall. The turning point is when a country becomes a middle-income one.     

Population Growth, Available Resources, and Quality of Life： China＇s Post-Reform Economic Development

Two opposing intellectual traditions and their contem- porary developments regarding the relations among population, available resources, and quality of life as reflected in economic growth are reviewe...     

Spatial Variation and Space Optimization of the Development of China＇s Circular Economy

China＇s circular economy is still at the initial stage, whose development has many difficulties and problems requir- ing immediate resolution theoretically and practically. Due to the differences of re...     

Discussion on the Mode of China＇s Low-carbon Society and Construction Routes

In responding to global climate change, the idea of low-carbon economy emerges as the times require. Developing low - carbon economy is based on the construction of low-carbon society. The so called ＂t...     

Energy Efficiency and Emissions Reduction Potential of China＇s Industrial Sector

Based on the total-factor energy efficiency framework,this paper calculates China’s industrial energy efficiency and CO2 emissions reduction potential from 2000 to 2009 by utilizing the directional distance function and data envelopment analysis.The empirical results show that:China’s industrial overall energy efficiency is relatively lower while the emis-sions reduction potential is relatively greater,given the optimum production frontier.Significant indus-trial disparities of energy efficiency and emissions reduction potential exist.Energy efficiency and emis-sions reduction potential significantly show different tendencies of industrial dynamic variation.This paper suggests the Chinese government impose differential carbon taxes,flexibly utilize carbon market mecha-nism,strengthen energy-saving technological R&D,promote the utilization of renewable energy,and strengthen environmental supervision and regulation,so as to improve China’s industrial energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions.     

Influences of Border Carbon Adjustments on China＇s Foreign Trade

The EU, the United States and other economies, with the intention to implement unilateral trade measures Border Car- bon Adjustments, impose emission reduction pressure on develop- ing countries. Once ...     

China’s Import of Wastes and Its Implications

The trade of wastes in the world has been increasing and China has become the largest importer of wastes. This paper examines the import trend of different wastes and finds out that the total import volume to China approved by the Chinese government keeps increasing and the illegal trade can not be banned despite repeated prohibitions; therefore, China is not only ＂a world factory＂, but actually ＂a global garbage dump＂. In order to well understand the implications of wastes import, this paper further analyzes the resource and environmental effects and risks of different wastes imports as well as the strong driving force of wastes imports. Based on these detailed analysis and solid data, policy recommendations are put forward to reduce the demand for raw materials, to further strengthen the inspection of and supervision over the international trade of the wastes that can be used as raw materials by using the life cycle analysis and risk analysis, to improve the environmental standards and strengthen the disposal capacity, to re-export the raw materials produced from the imported wastes, to develop the long-term planning for the import of wastes and to promote international cooperation.     

Plan C： China＇s Development under the Scarcity of Natural Capital

The critical issue of China＇s modernization is whether it can free itself from the traditional modernization plan based on the relatively abundant natural capital, and innovatively create a developmental model of a large country under the scarcity of natural capital. This is why China is so keen on circular economy and economical use of resources. Focused on this issue, this paper summarizes the theoretical elements of the development under the scarcity of natural capital, points out that Plan C is the strategic choice for China＇s future development, emphasizes that China needs to enhance the new industrialization, new urbanization and new modernization based on the restriction of natural capital, and discusses the technological and mechanistic support required to realize the development under the scarcity of natural capital.     

Impact of Climate Change on Urban Agglomerations in China＇s Coastal Region

Climate change and urbanization issues are the two key factors that make humans liable to be affected by disasters, which are overlapped in urban agglomeration. The five big urban agglom- erations of C...     

China＇s Land Carrying Capacity Based on Man-grain Relationships

With population growth and increasing pressure on land resources, land carrying capacity （LCC） and food safety have been attracting great attention worldwide. From the point of man-grain relationship and by establishing LCC and land carrying capacity index （LCCI） models, this article firstly analyzes the spatial-temporal dynamics of LCC of China from 1949 to 2005 at county, provincial and national levels. Choosing 2005 as a representative year, this article then evaluates the LCC of 264 pastoral regions （semipastoral regions）, 663 urban regions and 592 poverty stricken regions of the country. The results show that： （1） from 1949 to 2005, with the increase of grain production, the LCC of China has been improved conspicuously, but due to the rapid population growth, the production can only maintain a low level grain consumption; （2） over the past 25 years （1980-2005）, the number of population overloading provinces decreased from 23 to 15 and the mangrain relationship has been improved gradually, but there were more overloading provinces than surplus provinces in China; （3） at county level, there were 1572 overloading counties in 1980 accounting for 68.26% of the total counties of the country and where were 649 million people lived, while in 1990, 2000 and 2005, the number of overloading counties were 1066, 1133 and 1087 respectively, which shows that the man-grain relationship has been improved obviously during the past 25 years; as for spatial distribution, the surplus counties were mainly concentrated in agriculture developed regions, such as Northeast Plain, North China Plain, middle and lower Reaches of the Yangtze River Plain, and overloading counties were mainly located in regions with poor natural environment and low grain production capacity, such as Northwest China, Tibetan Plateau and Loess Plateau and economically developed urban regions, such as Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai; （4） animal husbandry improved greatly the LCC of pastoral and semi-pastoral regions, while urban regions were overloading for increasing population pressure and more than half of poverty stricken regions were overloading due to critical natural environment and poor economic conditions.     

China＇s Total Emission Control Policy： a Critical Review

As part of a comprehensive environmental management system, many countries establish emission control targets for mass emissions of a pollutant. Such targets are often the key objective of an environmental policy, such as an emission trading program. In China, however, it is more than just an objective of one particular policy; it has become a concept that has influenced many national environmental policies and activities. The objective of this article is to review the implementation of the total emission control policy in the past 10 years and explore emerging issues in its implementation. The article has three sections： a summary of the implementation experience, issues with the design and implementation of the policy, and policy recommendations.