 Well, good evening ladies and gentlemen. I am Steve Tsang. I am the director of the Sours China Institute. First of all, let me welcome you very warmly on behalf of Sours to the China debate 2017. On the subject of beyond ideologies, China's experience in confronting the global environmental crisis. This year's China debate is generously supported by China Everbright International to which I thank on behalf of Sours. The environmental challenges that we face today are global. According to a 2015 study by the University of California, Davis Believe it or not, about 10% of the air pollution in California's central valley originated from Asia, of which China is perhaps a leading contributor. I think at the moment, China leads the world as a polluter, but it also leads the world in investing in and in producing sustainable energy. How China confronts the global environmental challenges is there for a matter of crucial importance to all inhabitants of this amazing planet. And that is why the Sours China Institute has chosen this subject for the debate today. It's important to China. It's important to the world. It is therefore important to Sours. Well, for the debate, I will leave it to the chair to introduce. We are using a format that will engage with the panellists. It will also engage you members of the audience. And I'm very pleased to present to you a very distinguished and insightful panel who will bring experience in from different perspectives. The chair for this evening, for this panel debate is Isabel Tiltand OBE. She is first and foremost a research associate at the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy at Sours. I thought Isabel was expecting something else. Well, she is, of course, also, as you know, the founder and CEO of China Dialogue. An independent environment-focused non-profit organization which operates out of London, Beijing, Delhi and Sao Paulo. She is author and co-author of several books, and she hosts honorary doctorates from Bradford and Stirling universities. Seating to Isabel's left is Shaw Lee. Shaw is the senior global policy advisor for Greenpeace East Asia. He's based in Beijing. He directs Greenpeace, China's climate and ocean campaigns with particular focus on coal, air pollution, renewable energy and the fishery sector. Internationally, he coordinates the organization's engagement with the United Nations Climate Negotiations. He was also an Alexander-owned Hombach fellow in Berlin in 2015. Mixed to Shaw is Professor Prasunjit Dur. Oh, sorry, I apologize. I think we have to... No, that's not whatever. Sitting next to Shaw is Tom Burke. And Tom is the Chairman of E3G, the Third Generation Environmentalism. He's a visiting professor at both Imperial College and UCL. He's a member of the External Review Committee of Shaw and the Sustainable Sourcing Advisory Board of Union Labor and the Trustee of Black E-Community Arts Project in Liverpool. Sitting on the right-hand side of Isabel is Jennifer Turner. Jennifer is the Director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. Her work has focused on a variety of energy and environmental challenges facing China, particularly on water, energy and green civil society issues. She also serves as the editor of the Wilson Center's Journal, the China Environment series, and she most recently co-authored China's Water Energy Food Roadmap. Sitting to the further right of Jennifer is Professor Prasunjit Dur. I beg your pardon earlier. He is the Oscar Tang Professor of East Asian Studies at Duke University, born and educated in India. He also received his PhD from Harvard and was previously Professor of History and East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago and the Raffles Professor and Director of Asian Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. His latest book is The Crisis of Global Modernity, Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future. Now, before I hand over to Isabel, may I ask you to switch your mobile to silence mode? There's no need to turn it off. Indeed, you are encouraged to pose on social media. I think the hashtag for Twitter is on the screen right now. And if you are not a member of a university and therefore not automatically connected to the educational roaming network, you can use the gas Wi-Fi network. The sourced gas Wi-Fi network can sometimes be slightly temperamental. So, if it doesn't work immediately, please don't give up. Just try again. Thank you very much. Over to you, Isabel. Thank you very much. It's a really great pleasure to be in Sewers. And thank you very much, Steve, for the invitation to me and to the panel. As Steve said, my secondary role after being an Associate Fellow at Sewers is on China Dialogue where we publish all the time on environment and climate change and have for more than 10 years now. And in that 10 years, I think that the narrative, the predominant story about China and the environment was always dirty China building a coal plant every 15 minutes, that kind of thing. China on the edge of environmental collapse and polluting, you know, biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and so on. And whilst all that is certainly true, coming up on the rails in recent years, there has been another narrative, which is Green China, Clean China, China turning this great tanker around. And among the questions that we at China Dialogue get asked quite a lot is, so which is it? What can we believe? How much of it is greenwash? And I think that it's a great pleasure actually having been asked these questions to ask those who know much more than we do, as all these panellists do about the depth and the degree and the desirability perhaps of Chinese leadership. So this is an interactive discussion. We have some questions already from you. When we get to the questions, please wait for the microphone. And if further questions occur to you as we speak, please let me know. But I'm going to start off with the panel by putting to them the proposition that China after decades of pollution and being the bad boy is now a green leader, true or false? Jennifer. You were supposed to get a lead role first. No, because she knows I am indeed hardwired. I'm a very positive person. I've been working on China energy environmental issues for 18 years. I am still smiling. And I think that, but again, when you talk about your question is sneaky because you said, can it be a leader? All the best ones. Yeah, they are. So can China be a leader on, and let's just look at the pollution issue. And I would have to say, no, China is not a leader on the pollution issue, which doesn't mean I'm not optimistic because the change that I've seen, I mean, 18 years watching the increased interaction with China, with U.S. and I know European NGOs and think tanks and really making lots of changes. I mean, the number of laws and regulations that have increased, they stayed on the book for the longest time. Side anecdote here. Remember years ago, you'd ask, you'd say the taxi driver, oh, the air pollution is so bad. They'd say it's fog like it's pollution. It's fog, right? But now what happens when you ask your taxi driver the question? They say the PM 2.5 levels today are and give you a number. And they wax poetic about the importance of a low carbon economy. So there has been a shift. And I don't say that's not saying they're the leader yet. Because there are a lot of institutions that are put in place that you have these open information requirements, public participation requirements, and sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But it's being talked about. And I think that, you know, my optimism comes that, I mean, I'm not worried about China being the leader on pollution. I just want them to deal with it. But then on the question of the climate leadership, I think it's a mixed bag because, you know, you may be recognized from my voice, I'm from the United States, right? And we were, until recently, cooperating very intensively with China on climate issues. But it hasn't just been climate. I mean, for the past 40 years, U.S. government, NGOs, researchers, think tanks have really dug deep in working with Chinese partners. And I think in some ways, you know, our fingerprints aren't on a lot of the laws, U.K., similar organizations. But now, you know, when the U.S. and China came together for climate cooperation, I think together there was the beginnings of leadership. And right now I'm not sure, so I'm going to punt that climate leadership question. Is that good enough? That's a yes-ish. It's a yes-ish. It was, but I think, you know, it's like the U.S. and China, you know, same bed, same dreams now, that together we became leaders for the climate. And now that we've, I hate to say it, America, we've kind of, we've wandered off. We'll just leave it, we can talk about that in the discussion. And so, where, you know, what does that mean for China? You know, I think China made us better on the climate issue and vice versa. But I think Leashville, he's going to, and throughout the course of the discussion this evening, I think we're going to try to dig a little deeper into what do we mean by leadership. But Leashville, two or four. Two or four. Sure. Let me, I mean, at the outside, let me also thank Steve and Soa for the condemnation introduction. I'll try to be a little bit academic. Let me just try to define the term leadership first since we're in the university. I think, I mean, leadership, I mean, the leadership is sort of one of a very fluffy term. I think two different people, it might mean different things. But you know, sort of my way of unpacking the concept of leadership, in particular when it comes to climate leadership, I think there is sort of the climate leadership on the real economy side. You know, in the sense that China is opening up and reform its economic system is moving away gradually from an energy intensive, resource intensive economy. And then in that regard, on that front, China has indeed made a lot of progress over the past few years. The other side of leadership, I think, could be characterized as political or diplomatic leadership. Climate is a global issue. So there is a lot of politics and diplomacy involved. And I think when it comes to leadership in the political or diplomatic sense, China has also made a lot of progress over the past few years. If we recall back not too long ago, just to 2009, China was one of the bad boys that contributed to the failure, catastrophic failure of the Copenhagen climate summit. And I think over the past three to four years, the perception has been transformed in a quite significant and dramatic manner. And I think that's definitely got accelerated by the U.S.-China climate cooperation. Starting from 2013, the two presidents got together. They were great in Sunnyland back then to work on HFC, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases followed by, in 2014, the two countries released the key elements of their future climate plans. And then they also helped to unlock the Paris Agreement. So I would say on the political and diplomatic side, my answer would also be yes. But I think the real question now after the U.S. election is how far can China go given the U.S. political situation? I think that's going to be a true test to both the political willingness and the diplomatic capability of China. I can see some hope and some potential. I think the Davos speech that the Chinese president gave was a pretty good indication of his resolve to work and further invest in this area. China has also made some further comments and statements in this regard, which I think is quite helpful. But I think we also need to realize the caveat as well. I think there may be just very quickly three of them. One is how far the economic reform could go. I think to a large extent, the climate leadership offered by China over the past few years was rested on the economic 101. China is shifting away from coal, which is 80% of its emission. And the coal consumption is on a three-year declining trajectory. So to what extent that economic trend will continue? So that will be my first caveat. And then what will be the U.S. situation? Like it or not, the U.S. is still the number one economy in the world and what happens there have an impact on Beijing. And then caveat number three, we are also in a leadership transition year this year. We will have a nightingale party conference by the end of this year and a lot of key positions, ministerial or even higher, will be shifted. What will be the new team's position when it comes to international climate diplomacy? So I'll just offer the three caveats as my conclusion here. Thank you, Leesh. So Tom, you have watched this space for many years, environment, climate change. From your position, do you see China asserting leadership at this point? No. I think China is on some issues trying to meet the challenges and other issues not trying at all. So I don't think there's a simple question even on efforts and that's a long way from leadership. I think it's important to think of the environment as a spectrum of issues that ranges from air quality, water quality through biodiversity, out into climate change and other disturbances of major ecological cycles. And China clearly addressing, beginning to address quite seriously air quality, not that I can see yet really making a serious effort to address water quality, biodiversity, not a big issue. China pretty reliant on ocean fisheries for a supply of, important supply of seafood, not observably a leader in the effort to control fisheries. So I think quite a mixed picture there. I think there's a much more significant point. China had better become a leader on environmental issues because it is the most exposed, or stability in China is the most exposed, whether it's to the local issues like air quality that become a focus for civil society and civil actions, or whether it's on the very big issues like climate change because the Chinese economy stability in China is at risk if it doesn't become a leader. So that's the important thing. If you think of it very simply, if you, in order to maintain the party's hegemony, it had better maintained internal stability. If you can't maintain food, energy and water security, you can't maintain internal stability. If you can't maintain climate security, then there is no way you can maintain food, energy and water security. In order to maintain climate security, China needs the rest of the world to perform. It can't do it on its own with all the financial, military and other resources it has. It needs to engage the rest of the world and to do that it has to be able to lead. But if it's going to lead, then its behaviour at home and its behaviour abroad must display a level of consistency that's not yet apparent. The question of leadership. Yes, the question of leadership. Well, I'm going to be a classic academic and say yes and no, but there is a logic which I hope will emerge at the end of my comment. So yes, I want to focus on environmental governance within China for the time being. And here we have a very interesting contradictory situation, one which I think most people know that the central government is in fact presents itself as the representative of ecological civilization and its 13th plan is doing all this stuff with renewable energy, cleaning pollution, air pollution and things like that. But of course there is the problem of what message is the local governance is getting. And I think it has, it sort of began, there's a paradox here. It's like a good cop, bad cop situation to use in Americanism. There is a, it did not start willfully. The central government was representing itself not only as the representative of ecological civilization, but also one who cared for the poor in the rural areas and so on. And it abolished agricultural taxes. Well, that meant and all other local taxes that sort of gained it a lot of favour. But at the same time, the local government which was burdened with more responsibilities had no way to finance itself so it was forced to become the bad guy. And so there's this paradox that's going on. And it I think has related to the kind of gigantism that was always at the core of the Chinese state, the imperial state. We know about the water control and the Grand Canal and things. And reinforced by modern socialists and American ideas of gigantism. And it goes on in that vein. We're talking about dam buildings and South North water diversion and things like that. But it does not. So the way I see this paradox or this contradiction really in Maoist terms, playing out is that the central government has developed a constituency among, of course, big corporations, Chinese corporations among the biggest in the world now, hydro power corporations, the urban middle classes who are very concerned with pollution. But it has effectively kicked the can to the more hinterland areas, to the less visible areas. Now Chinese civil society has been allowed to develop and it has developed quite well in many ways. And there is a lot of judicial activism, not a lot. Some judicial activism that gives them some hope. But the main way is they're watchdogs. They cannot be more than watchdogs and they can bring the media. And the locals do in fact want to bring in the media and the local government does get scared when the media comes in. But you can't do that. That cannot be the full full fledged strategy as it were for doing this. So it has to become develop more of a responsibility towards the other kinds of pollution, other than air pollution and energy and fossil fuel emissions that have actually ravaged the countryside since the TVEs and now with intensive agriculture and other kinds of problems. So something there has to happen and interestingly we can see that there has been a growing force of civil society. But here is where the international thing comes in because once again China, I think can play a leadership role in the issue of renewable energy and so on, in which it has spent so much money, although there are some contradictions there. There are still all these coal plants. But at the same time what is happening is that many of the Chinese projects are brought, whether in South East Asia, in East Africa, in Latin America are in fact being, I mean there is a pushback in a lot of cases. I think one of the most interesting is Kenya in recent times. And so I would say that this kind of pushback and the interesting thing, and here's the optimistic, the yes part, is that the Chinese corporations and the government are responding in many ways to these social pressures bringing in. In Pakistan for instance, we can talk about this perhaps later. Am I overdoing my time? So that's the point that I do think that international civil society and in terms of intergovernmental pressures are having an effect. And that may be an interesting way in which the Chinese government does improve its record. Okay, so we seem to have fairly divergent views about the depth of commitment and what the drivers are, which I want to explore. But before I do that, if China, if we do declare China a green leader at this point, how many of you think this would be a good thing? If you think it's good and bad, you can have both hands the way percentage does. Just give us an idea of how many of you would welcome this development. Okay, so this is certain. How many of you would not, just in case there's a pushback? Not a lot. Okay, interesting to see that some people wouldn't, but that's great. So then we would, I guess, want to know how deep this is. And then we want to start picking apart some of the drivers. We've heard the proposition that, for instance, the central government is willing the ends, but not the means, you know, by cutting taxes for poverty reasons and therefore forcing local authorities into high-carbon growth or dirty growth. We've heard concerns about politics, about people being fed up with air pollution. And that's all right, but it's not really a kind of profound conviction. Is there much else going on here, Lee Schwart? Well, I think, you know, I think maybe just to pick up on the two points that you just made, I think one interesting thing, you know, at least for me, you know, working as a practitioner in China in this field, is the degree to which, you know, how this area, this field of environmental protection sort of reflects all the various socioeconomic challenges that China needs to deal with in its development. So central local tension, the lack of resource, the sheer scale of opportunities and challenges, right? And then when it comes to international diplomacy, international leadership, I think it's pretty fair to say that climate change is actually at the very forefront of China's, you know, foreign policy transformation. The country was, I mean, is relatively a late-comer to the international society, right? I mean, if there was a UN meeting 40 years ago, there won't be any Chinese diplomats. Is there a word you wouldn't say anything? Yeah, I mean, that was just a short four decades ago, right? So now, you know, the country is not only embracing the international system, but it's also trying to shape the system in its own way. So, I mean, it's not a sort of perfect comprehensive answer to your question, but I'm just trying to flag that. You know, a lot of the challenges, opportunities in China's development tend to be assembled in this particular field. So that's quite interesting. So the drivers? Yes. I mean, because if it is only a reaction to political discontent, one might argue that if discontent arises over a different issue, then the green stuff will go on the back burner again. Well, but the environment, I mean, when you look at polls out there, I mean, the Chinese public is incredibly concerned about the air they breathe, the food they eat, the water, it's all interlinked. And so the one form of legitimacy that the Communist Party has in China is economic growth. And now it's very clear that the level of pollution is threatening that growth. But it's not all negative. I mentioned briefly in my opening remarks that a lot of international NGOs, think tanks, and the World Bank guys too have been engaging in China. And the Chinese government, starting with Deng Xiaoping, open his arms. Come help us, because they knew that you know what was going to hit the fan, eventually with their development model. And there had been for a long time, and it's been very exciting in my job, about the political space that existed for Chinese environmental NGOs and lawyers and scientists to be this bottom-up pressure. And I think that also was an important catalyst, because that informed the public. But it wasn't all in China, it's always NGOism with Chinese characteristics. It wasn't always like the Greenpeace attacking kind of model, even though you don't always do that Greenpeace. But the kind of partnerships with the government. But now under Xi Jinping, we're starting to see a tightening of this political space. And that's where you get worried. And even foreign NGOs think tanks like me. When I go to China now, I have to get a temporary activity permit. So the Public Security Bureau is watching. And that does indeed have a bit of a cooling effect. And it's very unfortunate, because I think the positive solutions and energy that was coming from the NGOs, both domestic and internationally, that was a really vital driver. And so there's kind of a question mark. Tom, we could also argue that you're being a little hard on China. After all, everyone who had an industrial revolution beginning with Britain went through this curve of massive pollution, followed by cleanup. But one of the ways that we cleaned up was by moving the manufacturer offshore to China, for instance, amongst other places. So, you know, there's China, a fifth of the world's population, the factory of the world, trying to, and some manufacturing moving offshore, but essentially trying to clean up at home without that great safety valve that other economies have had. So isn't that a kind of whole new dimension to a problem? Yes, but we're not arguing about that. We're arguing about whether it's enough. We're arguing also about the degree to which this is a new moment, and China is taking leadership in it. No, well, I'm happy to... To complete that point. That it's a new moment, and that there's lots of activity in China, and that it's new, and it's beginning to address those challenges. Is it leading the globe to a set of, on a path to deal with a set of problems that have to be dealt with together? No, I don't think it is. I think there are both external and internal obstacles to that. You're right to point out that it's an unfair world, and that it's pity you come along later. You don't find the same opportunities. But you may find some of the same problems out there. Europe went through an extraordinary period somewhere between 1750 and 1850, rather similar, in a sense, to China, of massive expansion. It took a long time those days. It all happens a bit quicker now. But the social disruption that accompanied that economic growth was so great that Marx had written the Communist Manifesto by 1839, and the crowned heads of Europe were deeply concerned about both their heads and their crowns, and began a process that took another century of beginning to take on board the need to maintain the social conditions for growth. They didn't get there in time, first after the 20th century, deciding whether communism or fascism was our preferred form of totalitarianism. It wasn't a good experience. Now, you've got to be very optimistic to think that China will go through the same kind of process of social disruption without encountering some of the same stressors and tensions. And I'm not seeing the signs, and that's my test for whether it can provide leadership or not. I'm not seeing the signs that it's learned from that experience. It's now compounded because not only do you have all of those social tensions, but you have all these additional environmental challenges. So I see the transition to sustainable development, i.e. maintaining your social and environmental conditions for the growth necessary to meet people's expectations, as being an imperative for China. And when I hear, I mean, I think there's lots of commonality between what I think when I listen to Chinese leaders and British leaders. I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Please don't let me be misunderstood. What I look for is not the intentionality, it's the capability and the achievement. Right. And so presented, the country of your birth, the other Asian giant, is poised, as it were, to go to make the same mistakes or not. The next big worry in climate circles is will India, you know, coal up or will it really go solo? Will it insist on going through the arc? And I guess the question, I know you've written a lot about trans-cultural influences, is do you think that lessons from China, both negative and positive, would be taken well in India? Is that somewhere they would look, either to avoid mistakes or to acknowledge success? I think that the Modi government would be quite, what should I say, insulted by the question of whether they would. That would be my worry. But in fact, yes. But in fact, you know, look at, to get back to your drivers and you're thinking about these pressures as, or you're suggesting that these pressures may not be sufficient. And they may not be sufficient, but they're real. The internal and the global pressures. If you look at what's been happening, the new leftists, the new Marxists for governments are in fact environmentalists and foreign environmentalists, right? So there being, and at first it's with China started it, or maybe Putin started it, I don't know, but Modi followed. And it's a pattern that's emerging. In Indonesia also, you're beginning to get some of these things. So just to clarify, when you say the new Marxists, do you mean the way governments look at them is as though they were harboring revolution, right? They're subversive. Not revolution, but they're subversive and they have all this foreign influence and so on. Of course, that's always been a big bogey for them. And the one that works. So there is the subversive subversive. And so that's a very interesting response. If they are now seeing these people as the greatest, they nonetheless have to absorb some of the messages that are coming through with that. And I think there's enormous, I think the difference between China and India is that there is also a huge amount of solar energy and so on being generated in India right now. And Modi's doing the similar kinds of things. And there's a pattern. It's not learning from one to the other. It's a global... I have a theory of global circulatory history and that's going on. But what... I think the difference with China and India is that the environmental activism tends to be much greater in India. It started out with Asia's first environmental movement, the Chipko movement of the tree-hugging women in the Himalayas. And there's a huge Gandhian-based movement. And a lot of them have also had the funding cut because of foreign funding, right? As has happened. This is the pattern that's been followed. But I think the governments have absorbed some of the lessons. Now, the Modi government is, of course, much more loose with the environmental policy than was the previous government. So they are allowing a fair amount of mining and other kinds of activity. But the very interesting thing in India is that there's massive judicial activism and the judiciary not at the central level, at the Supreme Court level, but also at the local levels are, in fact, clamping down quite hard and beginning to recognise the rights of indigenous peoples in box-eyed mining areas and so on. And so there is, I think, some difference but also a lot of similarities. So that system is much more robust in India than India is in China. To date, who knows, nationalism is going around all over the world. I want to just hear a bit from the audience. One of the questions that, one of the arguments that was used against environmental concern for many years in China was, we can't afford it. We're not rich enough. When we're rich enough, we'll do it. And you do hear this, actually, there are shades of Trump's argument that environment destroys jobs and this is kind of red rag to an environmentalist. But I have a question. Esan Masoud, is Esan here? Esan. Do you want to, you wait for the microphone and then just look at one of the issues that I think you've brought up is how you calculate this. Yes, I'm Esan Masoud. I'm a science journalist and a researcher of research. I guess the question I had was that one of the impediments to what we're talking about is how we construct and measure growth and how the environment is always peripheral. It's always in the sort of halo, in the satellite outside the main components of economic growth. There has been in the past some thinking in China about greening our growth measure and the main measure being GDP and I just wondered to what extent that this is still a serious option or whether it's had its time, it came, it went and we're on to other things. Well, I think, you know, just on green GDP per se, I mean, there was a very vibrant discussion about 10 years ago within the Chinese political system and I think the reason back then that at least some people in the government really like to embrace that idea was that they already saw significant tension between, you know, economic development and environmental protection and this is a recurring theme, right? Ever since then, when, you know, when it comes to China's environmental governance, every single issue environmentally related, there is a tension. How much do you, you know, sacrifice the environment to what extent you protect it? I think just the green GDP idea per se is losing momentum since about 10 years ago but you do see other expressions of it, you know, in the, you know, as reflected in the various instruments that China is trying to pursue. So emission trading, for example, the idea of imposing higher environmental tax, you know, by bringing basically the external cost of environmental protection to the economic equation, you do see various examples that are, you know, not only alive but also being implemented. I think emission trading, that's the best case in point in this regard. Can I add here that with the, you guys heard that China's had, the government is on a war against pollution, right? Response, come on, yes, okay, thank you. Well, as part of that, you know, they issued some water pollution action plan, water, air and soil action plans. They revised the environmental protection law and within a number of these, you know, not only was that, that if a company, and most of them are owned by local governments, right, that if they pollute, your fine will be every day, it will be higher. But what I think is similar to your green GDP question is that local governments that do not meet their particulate matter, you know, 2.5 targets and other targets, they will actually lose development money and it could hurt their promotion. And I'm still trying to get my, my head around, there was an announcement by a number of bureaus saying that, that now government officials have lifetime responsibility for pollution that happened underneath them. God knows how they're going to enforce that. But, you know, they're striking fear into the hearts of the local officials, because they, which is, I'm sure local officials are rather annoyed because how long ago they were told futile, get rich quick, do what you can to build up our strength. And so, so local governments, you know, they're often accused of being the bad boys, if we can bring that term back, but a lot of times they don't often have the resources and the fact that now that as part of the solution to air pollution in eastern China is to move the coal-fired power plants and the dirty industries out in western China that's ecologically more vulnerable and poorer, you know, I mean, these guys need a little more help, but clearly the penalties are there. Because, again, the green GDP there just didn't work. Development versus environment. It's a very common framing. It is, and not a very good one. One of the problems Mr. Trump is going to face is that the renewables industry in the United States, which he doesn't like, employs about a quarter of a million people. And the coal industry, which he wants to revitalize, employs about 50,000. So you shouldn't confuse bad politics with bad economics. Most of all of what we think of as bad economics turns out on closer examination to be bad politics. These issues are nearly always about winners and losers, rather than they are about what's worth more and what's worth less. And I thought the point that President was making about the difference in India, about judicial activism, is so important. What essentially has been happening over the last 40 years is a sustained effort to extend the rule of law over the untamed frontier of the environment. And so I find it very difficult to imagine without real independent judiciary you could ever get the rule of law to resolve the real choices and dilemmas that there are in trying to square environment development would help if economists accepted that by and large their toolkit's not as useful as they think it is for addressing these problems. But it would be much better if we focused on the questions of how do you actually get the law to apply properly, and how you get an independent and properly resourced judiciary to make sure that that law is obeyed. Can I just... Yes. Can you interject one thing that we haven't brought up as kind of another driver, but something that some of the... My friend Ma Zhun, who's one of the leading pollution activists in China, the issue of green supply chains. When you say winners and losers, all right, how many of you have iPhones or other things like that that were made in China? Raise your hand. And you guys are the winners because it's cheaper than if they had actually employed environmental pollution control laws, looking at the whole supply chain, maybe it's beyond the scope of our panel, but thinking about the blaming China... Yes, of course everything is connected. But I do want to touch on the question of... I think established that there is a shift going on, but then there is a whole set of questions about how fast it is, could it be faster, what are the obstacles, and what are the technologies that would enable this to what degree China is going to be leading on those. And I have... I think we have some interest, certainly, is Gary Hayes here? No, Gary Hayes is not here. That's all right. It's quite a good question. You wanted to know about coal. Okay, but we have some other relevant and interesting questions. Sukhdev Khandola is... Forgive me if I'm mispronouncing your name, Sukhdev Khandola. Who asked, and if he's not here, I will ask on his behalf, who asked whether China had, at this point, begun to produce any radical and innovative technologies that would advance, would radically advance the turning to green. That must be something that you followed, Eshwar. Sure. Let me just point out the fact that when it comes to renewable energy, in particular, wind and solar, I think China indeed did a pretty good job matching where its economic structure... I mean, matching where the strength of its economic system to the very rapid scale-up of the renewable energy industry. I think that's a pretty good example. China, in a relatively short period of time, managed to help the world bring down costs of wind and solar equipments. And I think the sheer size of China's domestic market also helped for the bringing down the cost curve quite a bit. So I think wind and solar, that would be my answer to that question. But wind and solar are not radical new technologies. They were produced at greater scale, with greater efficiency. So there is a question around innovation in China, perhaps, and maybe that's a systemic question. That's right. I think, I mean, you are... Well, I think one interesting example. It's not a technology per se, but I would just encourage people to look at bicycle sharing. It's a pretty good example. Again, not science or technology, but it's a very innovative business model connecting the fact that everybody has an iPhone, has 24x7 access to Internet, with bicycle that is really allocated across the city. And you can just go there and scan the bicycle and then unlock it. You can cycle it anywhere to the city and then the next user could bring it and scan and do the same. So there are a lot of quite interesting and innovative business models and ideas, and those ideas and innovation is coming into the environmental field as well. So that might well be an additional and new driver to further clean up the environment. So I put my bat on that, actually. That's an interesting field. I love that you're disruptive technologies. Well, the world's largest coal company, Shenhua, was ordered to meet China's CO2 reduction goals was told by the government, you guys got to figure out the technology, the carbon capture technologies or use in sequestration. So I know that they're coming to the United States, they're investing money, they're looking for partners to develop a second generation that could be this kind of technologies because they know the coal use is going to keep happening, but they want to capture it. And there's also another area of remainder of the US-China climate and clean energy cooperation under Obama. There are these five areas of technology research that they're called Clean Energy Research Center. So they're collections of Chinese and US government, NGOs, businesses, and think tanks. They're looking at technologies around building energy efficiency, electric vehicles, clean diesel, cleaner coal, and also energy water issues. And these two groups are coming together and they're developing not only methods the way Lee Shuo was talking about, but actual technologies and joint intellectual property rights. And I think that, again, I'm talking about the wonder of US-China cooperation, but I think in some ways we fit together nicely because China often has the capital. They don't necessarily like being seen as this, but they are also the laboratory for experimentation. They can bring up to scale technologies that the US can't. First Angie, very quickly. No, that's okay. We'll come back. There's no doubt that China's an enormous accelerator of the deployment of low carbon technologies. It's investing more and developing more than I think almost anywhere else, but that's only one problem. You've got a whole bunch of problems which are not very susceptible to technology shifts, all the biodiversity problems. How are you going to protect your soil and the capacity of your soil to produce food? As said, oceans, fisheries, which are... So you have to separate those problems where technology can contribute from those where actually it can't and then you're looking for something else. And I liked Shuo's point about the way he was talking about the way you have to invent and be innovative about business models, not just technology. So it's how the system works and that's the kind of innovation, I think, increasingly the world needs and can possibly get from China is the way to integrate these different bits so they work together and add more value than the individual bit does. So, I mean, we've touched on the international impact of China and this weekend the Great One Belt One Road Summit kicks off in Beijing. There are these enormous infrastructure plans. China is a huge resource extractor in the rest of the world, buyer of commodities and now increasingly an enormous lender and investor in the rest of the world. If we are to consider China a green leader, surely we should look for consistency between internal policy and external impact. How far are we seeing that? Not yet. The One Belt One Road does... Well, in fact, the past performance on Chinese investment in doubt not accompanied by a lot of environmental impact assessment. And there's a thing when you look for innovation, part of your innovation is technological, part of it is financial. Can you come up with different financial models? Part of it's regulatory because one of the Chinese experience, for instance, where China is good managing, good managing engineering, does engineering very well, but trying to export the Chinese approach of engineering to Peruvian mines or African mines for that matter has not been a great success because it isn't just about the hardware, it's also about the software. And that was what worries me about the new bank and about the One Road Belt One Road policy about whether the software is being put in, the social software is going along with the money and the hardware. And I think China may relearn some of the lessons that the multilateral development banks, the World Bank, the other IFIs learned about why you have to put on conditionalities in order for the projects to actually work. Is James Hewitt here? James. A question from James Hewitt. We've just heard two aspects. China talking up its growth model and then the need for sustainability. Would the panel think that suggests that China has a duty to encourage governments overseas from which it is buying resources not to anticipate exponential growth in exploitation of those resources because there will be a lot of stranded assets and China's debt is becoming unrepayable at the moment. Thank you. Yeah, I actually wanted to respond to some of these related questions. People have responded to technology and the growth issue, growth and equity kind of thing. I think these have to be taken up not solely focused on China. These are global issues. The whole environmental problem is a global issue and here China does have a role and I think, you know, I've been very influenced and people have talked about immediate responses and I think geoengineering and technology and renewable are all very good but you often need governance and politics to implement them. You can have them all in your drawers and desks but it's really the last mile here that's very important and here I think you can only have a global and somewhat more glacial situation. It's an unfortunate term that I'm using because they're melting very fast and that is, and I'm very impressed by the British economist Tim Jackson who makes the argument that ultimately it has to be a discussion about what the meaning of prosperity is. And he has a whole scheme and like all schemes, I'm sure it has problems but this involves among many things one of the ways to think of the meaning of what, you know, there's the Bhutanese happiness model but Tim, it's not so funny. I mean they have some, encourage some possibilities there or utility model but then there's the issue of sustainable, what I call sustainable citizenship and what I think he calls he uses the Amartya Sen idea of capabilities as the goal of prosperity. I mean you endow somebody with certain capabilities and this doesn't require growth that is eternal and without which and the wealth of which goes to a very small part of the population. And so how do we do that? How do we manage to create that kind of debate? And it also involves transfer of resources and technologies from parts of the world that really did take a lot of the resources of the world of the natural resources, the commons of the world to become, to reach certain levels of standards of living and so on. So there has to be, I think that that north-south thing also has to happen, that north-south exchange but I think the way this will happen although glacial, we have to have a role for it is precisely through consciousness raising. And I think what we talked about is Chinese taxi drivers now talking about the levels of pollution and so on is the way to go because once you get that kind of constituency you can introduce these debates much more easily. And so I mean, you know, this is a hugely romantic thing what I'm saying because the reality of the world doesn't fit that but we can't leave it off the table is all I want to say. So I have two questions here from the audience. One on the degree to which China will lead internationally and the other about the impact on China at home and I want to start with that one. Is David Tyfield here? David, would you like to wait for a microphone? It's coming that way. Thanks. At least on the advertising, the event was framed in terms of the climate imperative for China and other countries to learn to work together. But what changes political, social, cultural are likely within China from the specific ways in which efforts to take environmental issues seriously are taking shape? Who is winning and who losing from these efforts? Who is heard and who silenced? Lee Schwartz, do you want to start on that one? I mean, the question is, is changing the environment also changing China? Is that really happening? Well, I think very much so. You know, I said, sure, you know, climate change is at the forefront of China's diplomatic transformation. I think to some extent you can also say environmental protection is at the forefront of the social economic transformation, right? You know, I think the way between how public sentiment is heard by the political system has definitely been transformed and changed throughout the air pollution episode, right? That started, you know, sort of the first big wave was helped by the US of social media back in 2012, 2013. So that definitely had a very profound change on the Chinese society. I would also like to point out, you know, the public perception environment has also been fundamentally transformed. I would sort of characterize the year between 2012 and 2013 as sort of a Chinese silent spring moment. Again, this is helped by the air pollution. And, you know, if you look at, you know, look at this survey done by the Pew Research Center, they asked the Chinese public what's your biggest concern? Starting in 2012, 2013, you see three environmental indicators that, you know, jump in a very significant way. Air pollution, food safety, water quality. These are, you know, becoming the topest concerns of the Chinese public very much on par with some of the conventional ones, you know, corruption, income inequality. So, you know, I think the answer is definitely yes. A lot of changes of the, you know, Chinese society over the past few years was sort of as a result of the environmental situation there. But, Jennifer, we've seen, I think, over the years, we've seen this expansion of space for people to take action, to argue, to advocate. But you talked a little while ago about how that space is closing. For formal NGOs, but what's really fascinating, in the last past year, one of my colleagues, we have a science and technology and innovation program at the Wilson Center. And one of the areas is citizen science, looking at how people are the ones that go out and measure data. I mean, Greenpeace always goes out and takes samples and is always nodding and shaming people. But this is a different kind of example where you have community groups, or sometimes they're NGOs. There's a group in Hunan province called Green Hunan, and they created a network of river walkers. They have about 400 people who go out and every, often every day, and they take water samples, take photos, and they've become a kind of early warning system that the local Environmental Protection Bureau has come to depend on. Now what's really intriguing with this is just two weeks ago, the Alibaba Foundation, you all have heard of Alibaba? They actually gave this environmental group, Green Hunan and some others, money to take this river walker, which are their citizen scientists, taking data, bringing it together, to get a snapshot of the water quality. Alibaba wants them to create one million river walkers across China, which doesn't necessarily mean that it's NGOs, but the idea that the Chinese public, according to your survey saying it, they believe they have a right to a clean environment and because of all this talk of open information, public participation, they now think they have a right to gather the data, which it could get dodgy, because the government could be threatened, but the fact that you have a business, one of the largest companies in China coming in and saying, we'd like to support this, and so it's glacial sometimes, moving forward, but again, remember my smile, my hard-wired optimism, I mean, I see it's a positive trend. Prasangit, who's not being heard in this? I think it is Prasangit, the people in the rural areas and so on, who do not get, bring media attention, like Wukong and things like that, who are suffering. And of course, the painful thing is that because we have this dichotomous, or this, what is the word, zero-sum game relationship between growth and, you know, prosperity, they too feel that they are losing out in every way. So it's the kind of West Virginia situation where they want these jobs no matter if it kills them, right? So how do you sort of address those kinds of very fundamental issues has, I think, has to be political and social awareness? Is Theresa Booth here? Theresa Booth. Nope. Then I saw Han go up there, so perhaps we could... Oh, I beg your pardon. No, sorry. Then we'll take this as the... Opening up. Open information in questions time. Thank you. In the West, the impetus for climate change measures often comes from the ordinary people. And it was interesting to hear the panel start to talk about what ordinary people in China can do because given that the dictatorship in China, usual historic response to public discontent, especially mass discontent, is the big stick and, you know, think Tiananmen Square massacre, the response to protests against the occupation of Tibet, endemic use of torture in jails. How can ordinary Chinese people safely tell their government and encourage their government to actually pursue green policies without bringing down some pretty nasty reprisals? Do you want to talk to that? Is it a fair analogy with other clearly difficult situations? Well, I'm saying, you know, again, I mentioned social media, right, in the role of social media in helping us cleaning up the air. I think that's a perfect example of people using social media to raise their frustration. And I think that's clearly registered by the political system. I think that's one way. But I would also like to point out, you know, sort of the other side of the coin, which is, I think a lot of analysis has, you know, gone into, you know, studying the, you know, how China cleaned up its air, at least to start that process. But I think one concern could indeed be to what extent social media could still be helpful in further cleaning up. What would be the new driver? Because we know the sheer challenge or the sheer reality is even if we are on the downward trajectory now in terms of improving the air quality in China, it's a rather linear change. We know, you know, for example, in Beijing it's going to take another seven to eight years to bring the air quality there down to the same level as the health organization recommend. So what could be the additional driver? I think that's a real question now. And I don't think a lot of people have to answer to it. So I think that would be the biggest challenge for us. We're getting very close to time. But what I'd like to do is to ask the panelists as a final set of questions, final question. You all expressed some reservations about the degree to which you would consider China a leader at this point. So my, and I would ask you to be brief, my closing question to you all is what would it take to convince you that China had become a leader? Percent it. Let's start with you. I think if we see some action, especially abroad, I think because that's where it'll start, on responding to the more direct pressures that they cannot use all the techniques that they have within society, like the Wei Wen and the stability-creating force and so on, which is paid more than the military, which the total bill for which is more, it's to localize resistance. I think that if they can respond to those pressures to have a more participatory involvement in those projects, it's happening to some extent in East Africa where there is an active and on the Mekong Delta to some extent. If those things can, if they do respond and we do see a strong response there, I think it can become a leader. Tom, you were among the more skeptical in the first round. What would it take to convince you that China had assumed leadership in this field? Independent judiciary and a free press. Go for it. At least just in the field of international climate governance, if China could step up by playing sort of a bridging role, for example, within the climate negotiation, I think that would require them to venture beyond its traditional diplomacy, which is hiding your capability, your capacity, your time. So that's actually pretty tall water for them. And I think, increasingly, you are starting to see signs of them stepping up their game so they can do further down that direction. Sorry, by the way, I don't mean the daily mail, it seems like. The bookend comments, we're both talking about public participation and free press. I'd like to see that, stop cutting the knees off the NGOs and letting that political space open back up, because it was actually leading. We're getting to the painful changes, when you're really pushing governance, where you're really making people accountable, that it's not just blaming the local government, it would percolate higher up. They kind of have to see that through. I'd like to see the political space open back up and not this kind of trying to cut out the foreigners again. That must, that's going to be a criteria to show that, okay, they're ready to, you know, to use these tools to up their game. May I ask a little question of the panel and so on? Which is that, the thing that has been more disappointing is that the cradle of Chinese NGO activism, which was Yunnan, the NGOs there, the environmental NGOs there were disbanded. Does anyone know how, why and what the, you know, what the effect has been? Because that would be a very important indicator, I think, if we found out more about that. Okay, so just in these closing moments, I think we have come to a set of issues that perhaps might throw some doubt on the desirability of Chinese leadership. We're looking at a country with no free press, civil society extremely constrained, no independent judiciary. So I'm going to ask you again, you know, if China were to assert leadership, would you think it a good thing? Yes or no? Yes. Yes. Still yes. Very good. Okay. Including leadership and the issues that are problematic. If the precondition is that we have to change in those areas. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. I'm sorry that we're out of time because this is a very large subject. And I'm sure that there's a great deal more to say about it. But that's all we have time for this evening. So please thank you for coming. Thank you for your questions. And please join me in thanking my panel. Indeed. Thank you very much, Isabel Hilton, for your moderation, which enabled us to have very good and interesting discussions on a very important subject. And thank you to all the panel members again. And thank you also to you, the audience, for your participation, particularly those who have raised questions. I'm sorry that we didn't have enough time for more free questions and engagement. But we do have a reception upstairs in the Brunei suite. You are all invited. The panelists will be there. And so there will be a bit more time and opportunity for you to engage with them. Well, thank you very much. Good evening.