My former employer, CampusProgress.org at the Center for American Progress, has published a lengthy piece by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (a senior fellow at CAP) on U.S.-China environmental responsibility.

His central argument is that a leadership vacuum in both countries is a challenge to improving the environment. In the United States, he argues, the federal government lacks vision while many states are making progress on their own. In China, on the other hand, he points out that the central government is working hard on these issues but the challenge comes in spreading compliance to the provinces. The piece is full of good links, but much of the information will not be news to Transpacifica readers.

I’m taking advantage of Campus Progress’s generous republishing policy to include the full text here. The article was originally posted here.

The Greenhouse Heavyweights
Both the United States and China need climate change leadership.

By Tom Daschle
November 30, 2007

The United States and the People’s Republic of China are two of the 21^st Century’s leading superpowers. China’s economic development continues to dramatically outpace other countries. During the first half of this year, China’s GDP reached 11.5%, putting China on track for its 5^th consecutive year of double-digit growth. For its part, America remains the world’s leading engine of innovation, using our free market of ideas and capital to continue forging new solutions in science, medicine, and technology.

Regrettably, however, the United States and China have now ascended to world leadership in another much more threatening way: greenhouse gas emissions. The International Energy Agency has estimated that China will become the world leader in emissions by the end of the year. The Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency has reported that China is already there. Not to be outdone, the United States remains the world’s largest emitter on a per-capita basis. For every person in the United States, there are 6 tons of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. The United States and Chinese governments must not ignore these facts, but should instead embrace them as a catalyst for change. Indeed, the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) recent 17th National Congress and the upcoming presidential elections in the United States provide a historic opportunity for our two countries to begin a new chapter of global leadership in the fight against climate change.

(more…)

Among the several reasons this site has been slow recently is that I’ve had a glut of work. Yesterday, I covered Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s trip to China. The story appears in Tuesday’s Boston Globe business section.

Gov. Patrick pushes state trade ties with China

By Graham Webster
Globe Correspondent
December 3, 2007

BEIJING — On his first foreign trade mission, Governor Deval L. Patrick today told a Beijing audience that Massachusetts and China have had a “special trade relationship” that spans more than two centuries. Patrick noted that the first United States merchant ship to sail for China — in 1784 — had Boston owners.

The governor and a delegation of about a dozen business executives, and academic and state government officials are meeting with their Chinese counterparts to discuss biotech and clean energy. They are not expected to strike any business deals before heading home on Friday, after traveling to Shanghai for more ceremonies and meetings.

Members of the delegation will also meet with executives of China’s Hainan Airlines in hopes of establishing direct flights between Boston and Beijing, possibly to begin in 2009, according to Massachusetts Port Authority chief executive Thomas Kinton, who said talks have been underway for two years. [full story]

James Fallows notes, but does not really respond to, a criticism of his persistent posts on bad air quality days in China. A reader recounts the thoughts of a Chinese friend, who “pointed out that the focus on pollution before the Olympics is a phenomenon of the typical inability of the Western press to focus on more than one idea at a time, when they’re thinking of China (if at all).” Where are the stories about Beijing’s efforts to replace coal heat with electric installations?

Let me start by pointing out what Fallows didn’t bring up: It’s simply not an accurate representation of “Western” news coverage to say they only focus on the environment. Thousands of stories come up in Google News searches on China and human rights, or China and Darfur. The U.S. press is preoccupied much of the time with a possible economic and military threat from China. The way I see it, at least the English-language news world focuses on several major story-lines with China, and the environment is one. It may be more prominent because the environment (thankfully) is a major story overall, and China plays an important role in the global environment.

That said, it is not unreasonable to criticize a large number of North American and European press reports for a failure to put China’s present environmental problems in perspective, especially when it comes to air quality in the cities. I happened to have a brief conversation yesterday with a man who was at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in the late ’60s. He remembered burning coal for heat—the stoves glowing red in some cases because of the high burning temperature of coal. And he remembered façades blackened from centuries of coal smoke.

In Beijing, I told him, some neighborhoods have seen their streets dug up repeatedly over the last weeks in preparation for heating season as the city installed brand new electric heating systems to replace coal-powered radiators. This year, the hutong apartment I live in is heated by electricity for the first time (aside from space-heaters), and coal is no longer the primary source of heat here. Before the systems turned on this week, some neighbors were burning coal to keep warm on cold nights. No more.

The new heaters have timers. Mine is programmed to come on at 10 p.m. and stay on until 6 a.m. My landlord tells me we’re doing this because electricity is cheaper at night. But the key here is that I can turn mine off when I leave town. I can also turn it off if I’m warm enough under a good blanket and don’t need the leftover heat in the morning. (Now to better seal my windows before the deep freeze…)

The English-language press is not devoid of stories recognizing the efforts by Chinese authorities to improve the environment. It’s also not terribly rare to read an article that notes London’s blackened history. People in the United States need only to visit steel country and take a good look at the University of Pittsburgh’s iconic tower to see some old U.S. industrial gunk. (They might have cleaned it up, but you could see it when I was there for a wedding a few years ago.)

When Chinese state media stories argue that developed countries who have already gotten rich at a cost to the environment should be responsible for tightening their belts more than those still developing, it’s hard to argue. But just try to get that sort of thinking through the U.S. Congress, and notice how far the Kyoto Protocol got with that ethic partially enshrined.

A sense of responsibility for past emissions needs to accompany pressures on emerging emitters. Richer countries with cleaner environments should work with poorer countries in the process of development to slow environmental degradation. The air in Beijing is indeed quite striking when you come from the United States—especially for me, from a background in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. But as the same Rhodes Scholar told me when I mentioned that I balked at jogging in Beijing air, “get over it.” Whether or not it’s the only focus of the “Western” press, and even though I don’t believe Fallows intends to be demeaning or contribute to a paternalistic narrative, putting across the message that “holy moly these people have dirty cities” does not create the understanding we’ll need to put together real solutions in the future. And dirty or not, we all keep going through life here.

Stephen J. Dubner, of Freakonomics fame, is also the author of a children’s book. He recently discovered a misprint in one edition and “assumed the mishap was yet another Chinese quality-control issue concerning children’s merchandise,” he writes in the New York Times Freakonomics blog. But that’s not the whole story.

The publisher was suitably horrified to hear what had happened, and hustled to recall all the defective books. As it turned out, they were all part of a second printing. The first printing, which had indeed been done in China, was perfect. The second printing, meanwhile, had been done in … New Jersey.

I can just imagine some nice Chinese couple with young children ordering the book and finding that, all of a sudden, the story doesn’t make sense. “I’ll never buy anything made in New Jersey again!” they tell each other.

I’m never buying anything made in New Jersey, ever again!

Fukuda tells the Washington Post that Asia is Japan’s top responsibility, sending a signal to the United States on Japan’s expired Afghanistan refueling mission. This is also a departure from Abe and Aso’s aspiration to “Eurasian” reach.

It wasn’t too long ago that then-Foreign Minister Aso Taro declared that Japan would work for an “arc of freedom and prosperity” (自由と繁栄の弧) reaching across the Eurasian landmass. Aso’s rhetoric, which was to set out a foreign policy framework for the newly minted premiership of Abe Shinzo, made some people uncomfortable because of its echoes of history—no doubt partially because of Abe and Aso’s general hawkishness.

Now, after the implosion of the Abe government and the rocky start for Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo, a man who was initially seen as an agent for stability, Japan is changing its foreign policy footing. Ahead of Fukuda’s first visit to the United States as prime minister, he gave an interview to the Washington Post. “I believe the heaviest responsibility for Japan is to see to it that there is stability and prosperity in Asia,” Fukuda said, while also calling the U.S.–Japan alliance the “very foundation” of his foreign policy.

Japanese-U.S. ties have been destabilized (if only slightly) recently by the refusal of the Japanese legislature, where the upper house is controlled by Japan’s opposition, to renew Japan’s refueling mission in support of a primarily U.S. military action in Afghanistan. Predictably, this drew attention from U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on his trip to Asia last week. But as Tobias Harris writes, changes in China loom large in the U.S.–Japan alliance. Here’s Tobias, quoting Gates’ speech last week at Sofia University in Tokyo:

Most pressingly, the alliance has yet to coordinate an approach to China. To some, it is a bulwark against China. To others—and I think it’s safe to include Mr. Gates in this category—the stronger the U.S.–Japan alliance, the better able it will be to reach out to China and work on incorporating China into the regional security architecture. As Mr. Gates says of China, “I do not see China as a strategic adversary. It is a competitor in some respects and partner in others. While we candidly acknowledge our differences, it is important to strengthen communications and to engage the Chinese on all facets of our relationship to build mutual understanding and confidence.”

Fukuda’s emphasis on Asia, if not an isolated statement, could represent at least an orientation toward improving its relations with regional powers. It certainly would seem to reflect the reality of Japanese politics over involvement with U.S. military action.

–

Footnote: Gates’ not-adversary-but-competitor line also reminds me of Obama, for what it’s worth.

Waste from scuttled electronics is full of toxic chemicals, but it’s also full of valuable metals and other materials. That turns e-waste into ore, something something from which value can be extracted. Terry J. Allen at In These Times reports that up to 80 percent of e-waste from the United States goes to China. And what happens when it gets there isn’t pretty.

Most of the junk ends up in the small port city of Guiyu, a one-industry town four hours from Hong Kong that reeks of acid fumes and burning plastic. Its narrow streets are lined with 5,500 small-scale scavenger enterprises euphemistically called “recyclers.” They employ 80 percent of the town’s families—more than 30,000 people—who recover copper, gold and other valuable materials from 15 million tons of e-waste.

Unmasked and ungloved, Guiyu’s workers dip motherboards into acid baths, shred and grind plastic casings from monitors, and grill components over open coal fires. They expose themselves to brain-damaging, lung-burning, carcinogenic, birth-defect- inducing toxins such as lead, mercury, cadmium and bromated flame retardants (the subject of last month’s column), as well as to dioxin at levels up to 56 times World Health Organization standards. Some 82 percent of children under 6 around Guiyu have lead poisoning.

Allen writes that dumping toxic waste in developing countries is illegal under international law, but the whole process is labeled as “recycling,” leaving it largely unmonitored.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is on a trip to East Asia, beginning with China, and the United States and China have agreed on a military hotline. I’ve checked with the Pentagon (well, I asked a guy who works there), but I’m still not sure whether they’ll have a physical phone or what. Most important, will it be a red phone?

Meanwhile, it could be some time before the line is set up, the Financial Times reports.

I’ve been busy recently in Beijing and watching a lot of good stories go right by. You’ll forgive a Colorado native for using a baseball analogy: It’s time to make sure I don’t strike out looking. Here’s a quick summary of transpacific pitches I wish I’d had time to swing at.

Greener Beijing?
• Will Beijing’s air be ready for the Olympics? The Worldwatch Institute has a good summary of what’s being done, who’s doing it, and what the challenges are, from Yongfeng Feng, a journalist for China Guangming Daily.
• Alex Pasternack picks up on a Christian Science Monitor story on the emergence of short-term bike rental service in Beijing. Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned here is that folding bikes, trendy here despite being a pain to ride, have been banned on the subway recently to prevent overcrowding. Razor scooter, anyone?

Internet Filtering and Reactions
• Blogspot is blocked, again. It came back online along with Flickr, which I have just noticed is also blocked. Firefox users in the P.R.C. can use “Access Flickr!” to get those photo feeds back working.
• The U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs voted the Global Online Freedom Act (H.R. 275) out of committee. The law, according to Forbes.com, would “penalize U.S. companies up to $2 million if they cooperate with the technological surveillance of political dissidents or share technology and information used for ‘Internet-restricting’ purposes.”
• Rebecca MacKinnon has smart commentary as usual on this issue. Go read what she writes, but here’s her bottom line:
  

  GOFA’s intentions are honorable in many ways. I think many of the people who support it certainly have honorable intentions. I know and respect many of them, despite having had some pretty heated arguments with some members of the human rights groups who say they support it for strategic reasons. But from where I sit in Hong Kong, this proposed legislation comes off as something that my Chinese friends who hate censorship and surveillance would find arrogant, patronizing, and interventionist, with the likely result that it would kill U.S. tech companies’ ability to do business in China in the first place - a result which by the way they don’t think would enhance their freedom.

• Also from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I haven’t mentioned yet that Chairman Tom Lantos is calling Yahoo’s Jerry Yang back to Congress under suspicion of misleading Congress in previous testimony. Go check with MacKinnon on this, too. She’s been on the story since a civil society group published a document that contradicted Yahoo’s statement that they did not know the nature of the investigation when they turned over information on reporter Shi Tao to Chinese authorities.
• At Wired, a writer with firsthand experience being monitored on a reporting trip in China declares that the “Great Firewall” is futile. Maybe, but I had to enable Tor to get the full article to load. The article is a good read though for those interested in Oliver August’s experiences talking to Chinese dissidents.
• Wikipedia’s Chinese-language service was crippled by the mainland’s block, reports Eva Woo at BusinessWeek.com.

In other news…
• From the Tokyo Auto Show, Michael J. Dunne who works on China for J.D. Power and Associates, writing in the Detroit News, notes that the talk is about China, not Japan. My favorite is the writer’s casual contextual note about when his cohort got interested in China: “Fascination with the China market started when the Middle Kingdom first challenged Japan for sales leadership. Two years ago, Chinese bought 5.3 million vehicles, just shy of the 5.7 million cars and trucks sold in Japan.”
• U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said she sees protectionism in both countries as a threat to U.S.–China trade.
• Relatedly, Andy Scott at China Briefing Blog ventures a coinage for China’s WTO practices: “Compliance With Chinese Characteristics.”
• It’s not just the United States hosting the Dalai Lama. Japan’s doing it too.
• The questionably hyphenated Trans-Pacific Express will for the first time link the China and the United States with an undersea telecommunications cable.

The Council on Foreign Relations has compiled a summary of what the candidates for U.S. president have to say about China, or really, what they’ve had to say—most statements are vague and many are a few months old. The CFR compilation only tracks more prominent statements on China. Statements not directly related to China, say releases accompanying Obama’s support for a Senate bill banning lead in products for children, don’t make it in.

Here’s a summary of the major points for the major candidates. I’m adding in some recent commentary and links via my Google Alerts and other feeds.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D–N.Y.)
• Clinton’s most prominent statements on China came last March and included a few media appearances in which she called for the U.S. to reduce its dependency on Chinese lending. This came amidst a series of visits to China by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and a surge in media attention to the U.S.–China trade imbalance surrounding the Chinese stock scare that winter. CFR links to the same article that many other sources do when talking about Clinton and China. It’s the article that triggered my March 3 entry on this site.
• Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama both said they would support punitive tariffs against China if it doesn’t revalue its currency. The National Interest cites this among the reasons the United States and China may be headed toward a trade war.
• CFR also dug up a 2005 release on Clinton’s Senate website asking President George W. Bush to bring up human rights in talks with the Chinese government.

Sen. John Edwards (formerly D-N.C.)
• Edwards has kept quiet on China for quite a while. CFR notes the speech he made in 2006 at the Asia Society in which he declared the U.S.–China relationship his country’s most important bilateral relationship. The speech is something I never got around to writing about here, partly because the speech itself didn’t reveal much of interest. …
• … But, in the Q&A, Edwards did have something interesting to say on the China–Darfur issue. In response to a question from Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, he said:
  

  I mean, the starting place is something that we’re not doing, which is to make it a priority - to make it a priority that the Chinese are propping up these governments and in the case of Sudan, allowing a genocide to continue. I think the first thing is we have to make it a priority in our relationship with China. And the Chinese have to know that it’s a priority.

  That’s something to watch as the issue festers leading up to the Olympics. File it under “stuff he said that someone will quote sometime”—especially if he gains in the polls.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)
• Obama’s “neither our enemy nor our friend” statement is still the main enunciation of his view on U.S.–China relations. Instead, he said, the countries are “competitors.”
• CFR notes Obama’s speech at my former haunt, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, in which he said he’d “forge a more effective regional framework in Asia that will promote stability, prosperity and help us confront common transnational threats such as tracking down terrorists and responding to global health problems like avian flu.”

Next up: the Republicans.

I was delighted today to find a print edition of today’s International Herald Tribune in Beijing, a feat I thought impossible until the couple next to me drinking coffee could be seen peering over the top of their IHTs and deriding Thomas Friedman’s column (which curiously isn’t in today’s edition). I asked where they’d gotten the papers, which led me to an inconspicuous newsstand in a nearby mall. I also nabbed a paper copy of the South China Morning Post—an even better find, since its website isn’t free and Factiva is a poor excuse for an interface.

One of the only things you can get in the paper edition of the IHT that doesn’t seem to be online is its intriguing “In Our Pages” feature on Page Two. Yesterday, I discovered, marked the 100th anniversary of a speech in Shanghai by William H. Taft, then secretary of war and later to become the 27th U.S. president. I admit I’d never heard of this particular trip, but pulling up a couple of old articles reminds us of what U.S.–Asia relations were looking like a century ago, at least as far as U.S.-run media were concerned. Here’s what ran in the IHT today:

1907: Taft’s Speech in China

SHANGHAI: Disclaiming authority as an official spokesman of the American government, and insisting that he spoke as an American citizen, Mr. William Taft, at a banquet of the American residents of Shanghai, tonight [Oct. 8] strongly re-avowed the adherence of America to the “open door” policy. He said plainly that America would resort to every legitimate means to prevent injury to trade by the violation of the “open door” policy. He asserted that China would have the sympathy and support of America in every movement for her reform and uplifting, and congratulated the Chinese educated in America on teh part they are playing in the reform movement. He expressed satisfaction at the conclusion of the boycott and at the improvement of the relations of the two countries.

 The New York Times, which didn’t own the IHT at the time, had on Sept. 10, 1907, noted Taft’s activities before leaving on a 3-month trip around the world. Let me make a few newspaper nerd points before I quote the Times‘ account of the itinerary: (1) two weeks at sea from Seattle to Japan; (2) the age before newspaper stylebooks, or really, any consistency in formatting or typesetting at all; (3) periods in headlines.

“TAFT AT SEATTLE. / Makes Two Speeches and Will Sail for Japan Thursday.” concludes with this summary: “Leave Seattle Sept. 12; due Yokohama Sept. 25; Kobe, Sept. 29; Nagasaki, Oct. 4; Shanghai, 6; Hong Kong, 11; arrive Manila, 14, (via McClellan) and leave Nov. 4; arrive Vladivostok Nov. 11 and leave Nov. 12; arrive Irkutsk Nov. 16; Arrive Moskow, stopping two days, Nov. 23; arrive St. Petersburg, stopping two days, Nov. 26; arrive Berlin, stopping two days, Nov 29. Take steamer at Cherbourg about Dec. 4. arrive New York about Dec. 10.”

Diplomacy used to be something time-consuming. Imagine what stories you’d have to tell your friends in Washington when you returned from three months of travel with ample time to read, think, and consider what you see at each stop. I’m going to start taking ships.