Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
PROFESSOR STEPHEN
CHAN AND
DR JING
GU
18 NOVEMBER 2008
Q120 Chairman: It is not that different
from what Europeans and Americans have done in Africa in the past.
The only difference, I suppose, is that we are beginning to acknowledge
that, in the end, it caused more problems than it solved and we
did not do enough to enable Africa to create its own space. I
just repeat my question: does it have to be an ideological or
indeed a philosophical or stylistic collision, or is there scope
for working in some degree of respect for each other's approach
but also some common rules?
Professor Chan: I think that the
different approaches, if you want to call them that, are characterised
not just by the end product of what is offered or delivered on
the ground but in terms of the background methodology. We have
no choice but to put in all kinds of conditionality in terms of
how our money is spent because we have audit committees, we have
all kinds of regulatory mechanisms here which safeguard the taxpayer's
investment in such projects, exactly as colleagues around this
table have been describing. The Chinese are not constrained in
that manner and are able to see things in a much more holistic
view because they do not have to disaggregate individual project
parts and make each one of them accountable and hope the sum adds
up to something which is holistic and meaningful. When you look
at what they are doing—this is another contentious issue—the
US $9 billion they are pouring into Democratic Republic of Congo,
basically to purchase very significant parts of mineral resources
in the southern provinces in DRC, where Western powers, as you
pointed out, have made their own ransack on earlier historical
occasions. What they are giving in return is in fact US $9 billion
worth of roads, railways, hospitals, clinics and universities,
of a sort that is unparalleled in the development assistance to
central Africa. If the Chinese follow the remainder of their methodology
in terms of actually building these things themselves, or largely
building these things themselves, these things will actually appear
without too much leakage in terms of the various subcontracting
mechanisms that take place, so that the people of that area will
actually see their roads, railways, hospitals, clinics and universities,
and you are talking about thousands of kilometres of road and
railway; you are talking about dozens of clinics; you are talking
about almost 20 hospitals; you are talking about two fully fledged
universities. So it is welcomed by African leaders for more than
one reason: sometimes you actually get a result.
Dr Gu: I think there is certainly
scope for a more extended West-China dialogue on African development
and for policy and technical co-operation. . China's involvement,
in terms of, for example, China's non-interference principle,
has to be understood in the context of China's pragmatic diplomacy.
It is a combination of the two, the principle of non-interference
and of pragmatism which guides China's engagement in Africa.
Q121 Sir Robert Smith: I would like
to follow up Professor Chan's point about how the Chinese model
delivers on the ground the actual physical projects that were
promised. Is there a record that they have shown follow-through
of how those are then going to be maintained and used?
Professor Chan: No. That track
record is slightly more lacklustre. For instance, if I sit in
the football stadium kindly built by the Chinese in Harare, they
put in the basic infrastructure of the stadium, so I can still
sit there and watch teams play. The electronic screens came courtesy
of the Japanese and they do not work any more—not because
they were badly manufactured but because no-one has kept them
up. The only reason you can actually still get to the football
stadium is because the road that runs by it also runs to the President's
suburban palace—which, incidentally, is designed so it resembles
a Chinese palace and not a mansion. So you do have this problem
of upkeep. Having said that, Chinese roads and railways in particular
these days have overcome a lot of the engineering naivetés
that accompanied their pioneering Tanzanian Tazara railroad effort
some decades ago, and they do tend to last much longer than, for
instance, Swedish roads. Swedish engineers are not able to divorce
themselves from the need for roads that take the weight of snow
upon them and this is not something that is going to be a major
problem in most tropical jurisdictions. The Chinese will bespoke
the civil engineering to local conditions, which to a certain
extent are much closer to their own local conditions in any case.
They do tend to last. Where you have the benefit of literally
concrete infrastructure is where your middle class sits in a concert
hall that has been built by the Chinese; where Dad takes kids
to a football match in a stadium built by the Chinese; they get
there by public transport, which is now probably Chinese mini
taxis, along roads built by the Chinese. Everything they see,
do and touch that day is of Chinese provenance and of Chinese
origin. That kind of spectacular showcasing of Chinese assistance
does what it is precisely designed to do: to showcase the fraternal
and sisterly relationships that are put forward as part of that
kind of politesse. That works. Where it does not work for the
Chinese is precisely in various elements of the private sector,
where the lower down the hierarchical chain you go, and the more
privatised, lone entrepreneurial level that you get to, people
are very badly educated in terms of simple things like race relations.
In Africa, whether it is implemented or not, you probably have
the most complex labour laws in existence, which are not implemented
for the most part, and the Chinese entrepreneurs would very likely
want to flout them, to great public and popular indignation. That
is giving the Chinese a very bad name and the Chinese state has
yet to offer some correctors to that.
Q122 Mr Singh: In terms of meeting
the Millennium Development Goals, China is well on track and in
fact, for Millennium Development Goal number one, reducing poverty,
without China single-handedly virtually meeting it, it would have
increased by 58 million and it is now going down by so many millions.
So China is playing a huge role in that, and also proving that
it is economic growth, not aid, which eventually will lift people
out of poverty. Having said that, do you see a change in China's
attitude in participating in multilateral aid processes in a new
way from the past? For example, I have a quote from DFID about
the High Level Meeting held in September on the MDGs. DFID say
there was an "unprecedented level of information exchange,
dialogue and discussion" between the UK and China. Is this
a new approach, something different, and what has prompted it,
if it is?
Professor Chan: I think the Chinese
are doing a charm offensive of openness across the board. You
might have seen an article in yesterday's Guardian or Financial
Times—I cannot remember—which profiled the new
public relations head of the People's Liberation Army, a major-general
who has learned all of the Western tricks of spin doctoring and
has begun doing wonderful press briefings, with very casual asides
to the foreign reporters, saying, "Am I being open enough
for you guys yet?". This is transparent already, so there
is a certain technique which is being learned, and I think they
would be prepared to do this to a certain extent. The precise
level of that extent we have yet to discover across the board.
As I was saying earlier, when I made the remark that they would
like to learn from DFID about the nature and the detailing of
our appraisal processes and techniques, that kind of thing, I
think—
Q123 Mr Singh: So would you say that
the money that China has given to the World Bank and to the African
Development Bank is all PR maybe, based on using the Olympics
as a springboard for Chinese PR influence across the world?
Professor Chan: What I wanted
to say—and I cannot substantiate because the Chinese keep
their cards very close to their chest, notwithstanding the public
relations offensive, and certainly from foreign academics like
myself—is that I should have thought that you are looking
at a twin-pronged approach to this whole issue. The first is certainly
cosmetic and "let's buy up front". I think there are
very much in the background all kinds of feelings that in the
longer term some of the projects with total lack of conditionality
are going to have to be moderated, and in that sense some of the
things that we do would be helpful to them. They are not going
to do it like us. I doubt whether we are ever going to see in
our lifetimes that kind of stringent methodology, but certainly
the shell of what we do, and some of the audit and appraisal processes
that we put into projects, I think, are very useful to the Chinese.
Just in terms of pre-project appraisals, for instance, just in
terms of environmental impact, that is something they know they
are going to have to learn if they are going to get into things
like offshore prospecting for petroleum resources, for instance,
because they need to have an environment in which they can operate,
and already some of their personnel are suffering the same depredations
of attacks, kidnappings, hostage holding, et cetera, that our
own Western companies have had to endure. They would like to put
into their equations all kinds of things to do with how to keep
the local population on side. In the past they have always been
able to say, "Look, we have a state tie," and Sinopec
can always put in the X number of millions of local assistance
that comes from the Chinese state as part of the sweetener, but
they realise they have to engage in a far more systematic way
with populations in this case. This is a hard learning curve for
them, and it is going to be a while before we actually see them
doing it in a meticulous way on the ground but, being a very patient
people, they will be trying to learn as much as possible from
DFID methodology, without, as I say, necessarily taking on board
that methodology for themselves.
Dr Gu: A point I would like to
emphasise is that China is on a steep learning curve, and in fact
China lacks a clear definition of its international role because
of its dilemma about its identity. It falls between developed
and developing countries. It takes time to get used to the new
role as a key international player. China has adopted a cautious,
step-by-step diplomatic and practical approach. With respect to
certain international development frameworks, Chinese participation
will depend on how it feels the impact domestically and internationally.
Q124 Sir Robert Smith: Obviously,
one of the big challenges facing the world is agriculture and
food supply, and particularly maybe the failure to unlock Africa's
potential. Dr Giles Mohan of the Open University suggested to
us that "Agriculture is an area where the Chinese have expertise
... Much can be learnt from China's agricultural model and China
has much expertise to bring to Africa as well as commercial muscle."
What sort of steps do you think China could take to transfer its
agricultural knowledge and skills to Africa?
Professor Chan: I think there
is already some evidence that the Chinese have been doing that
but it tends to be small-scale or, if large-scale, then particularly
circumscribed to certain projects, certain rice planting projects,
for instance. In terms of small-scale effort, the Chinese would
point out in their defence whenever we criticise their Sudanese
policy, for instance, that there is a very great deal of local
project assistance on the ground, local agricultural projects
of one sort or another. Having said that, "agriculture"
is a very volatile term in itself. What exactly do you mean? Are
we talking about making great improvements to subsistence levels
of agricultural production? Are we talking about trying to build,
perhaps even on a modest scale, forms of agri-industry? Are we
talking about trying to build forms of agri-industry that can
compete with our own? There are all kinds of very vexed questions
that the Chinese are not going to try to engage with because they
themselves are still trying to build those various levels of their
own agricultural productivity and they understand that they themselves
have to find a niche market in the world for their agricultural
products eventually. Bearing in mind how much difficulty they
have had from time to time in trade negotiations with regard to
their manufactures, they can certainly advise African states on
some of the lessons they have learned while at the same time—and
this is where the realpolitik of it comes in—they
would not wish the Africans that they help to become competitors.
If we are then boiling it down to how we can help the Africans
improve their subsistence agriculture as opposed to their exportable
agricultural products, then I think the Chinese have very little
more to teach the Africans than we ourselves, particularly as
that is precisely the sort of assistance that Africa does not
want. It would like to make foreign exchange with the sale of
its products. It would like to have a competitive profile. It
would like access to our markets. It would like to add manufacture
to the agricultural products. Why can they not grind their coffee
before it reaches our supermarket? There are all these vexed questions
that arise from a simple statement of what the Chinese can do
to help agriculture. That does not address what is, I think, a
fundamental aspect of the development debate.
Dr Gu: I agree. I think the key
is for African states to take the lead in identifying what they
feel they need, how China might be able to help, and how to get
what they need out of the China-Africa relationship. It is up
to the Africans.
Chairman: It is fair to say that
that is a position that the Committee supports, I think the British
Government supports, but the EU and the United States have slightly
different positions.
Q125 John Battle: Can I ask you about
business practices? I am thinking particularly about mining, because
sometimes there is a view that international labour standards
are not being observed by the Chinese in their contracts. In your
experience, are Chinese companies sufficiently rigorous about
international social and labour standards when investing in African
countries, for example, particularly in the natural resources
sector?
Professor Chan: I think the track
record is not a good one, and the fact that it became such a serious
election issue in the Zambian election before the last one just
a couple of weekends ago was a case in point, but not the only
case in point. This kind of resentment is more widespread. I think
the Chinese are facing the age old dilemma of meeting what they
would regard as productivity standards together with safety and
social standards in the care of their workers. There are also
all kinds of other working practices apart from health and safety
that the Chinese have yet to address, such as in many parts of
the mining sector which they now control the longevity of contracts
of the workers, and subsidiary benefits as well as salary. All
of these things need to be addressed. A great deal of the Chinese
research as to the environment into which they are going tends
to be very primitive so that again, if we stick to the Zambian
example, the fact that Zambia was a very early signatory to almost
every single International Labour Organisation agreement or protocol
on labour standards and safety seems to have escaped the knowledge
of many of the Chinese operators. Having said all of that, I do
think that lessons have been learned or are in the process of
being learned so I would not expect this kind of thing to continue
into the far future but, having said that, yes, I think a very
great deal of the criticism of our practice to date is completely
merited.
Q126 John Battle: Should DFID, for
example, or the UK, beef up African countries' capacity to press
for adherence to international standards with the Chinese, do
you think?
Professor Chan: Do not forget
that before the Chinese—again, if we just use the mines
in Zambia as a case in point—this has gone through a number
of stages after the nationalisation of the mines during the days
of Kenneth Kaunda, where safety standards were not always maintained
even in that era, and a very great deal of the opposition to Kaunda
that gave rise to the multi-party state came from a trade union
foundation. Frederick Chiluba, his successor, is very much a product
of that kind of mining sector dissatisfaction. This goes back
a long way. Then in the inter-regnum, when the mines began to
be privatised in Zambia and local operators were not able to operate
them profitably, nor safely for that matter, the Indians very
briefly came in and they also compromised standards while asset-stripping
before selling them on to the Chinese, who inherited certain practices
which had been for a long time in contradistinction to ILO and
national protocols and legislation. So the Chinese have had to
overcome the inheritance of a vexed history. The legislation has
always been there, the signatory to international conventions
has always been there from a very early stage, but not actually
honoured properly by anybody. The Chinese are now, of course,
very much in the public profile here trying to learn from that.
My key anxiety is not what happens in Zambia. I think they are
going to learn from that. The earlier reference I made to the
purchase of mining concessions in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
where there is significantly less adhesion to articulated and
legislated public standards than in Zambia, what the Chinese will
do there and what they think they might get away with there is
another case in point.
Dr Gu: Part of the cause of the
problem is to be found back in China and the issues of corporate
social responsibility to be found in the domestic situation. It
is well-known that China's dramatic economic growth has come with
a high social and environmental cost, with corporate social responsibility
a low priority for the government, and consequently it has not
filtered into the enterprise culture. This remains the case with
Chinese firms in Africa. There is a pressing need to get these
enterprises more engaged in the landscape of social development
in Africa. Indeed, the Chinese government cannot really anticipate
the behaviour that might embarrass China and has taken time to
work out its approach to issues of corporate and social responsibility.
. This is where China could be benefiting from international dialogue
and international expertise.
Q127 Chairman: So it has not come
as a complete surprise to find workers in African countries, in
different countries with different systems, do have democratic
outlets and standards and active unions which they have to engage
with, and indeed, obviously, they have had recent issues in China
itself. Clearly, there has been public outrage against safety
in factories and so on.
Professor Chan: Let us say the
Chinese are engaged in a learning curve, both at home and in Africa.
Q128 Mr Singh: Could I just touch
on China's biggest investment in Africa, which is in the Congo,
a $5 billion deal. I have a couple of questions on that. Is this
deal equally beneficial to both the DRC and to China or is the
benefit balanced in China's favour? Secondly, there is some commentary
which states that part of the reason for the recent fighting and
rebellion going on is antipathy to this deal by the Congolese
people of that region, that it does not benefit them at all. The
third part of this question is: how will China protect its investment
if everything starts going dreadfully wrong, as it seems to be?
Professor Chan: I think that is
a very complex issue and it is totally correct to try to address
it in the three parts that you have suggested. The current fighting
in eastern Congo I do not think is related to where the Chinese
hope to be locating the centre of their mining industry. That
is not to say it is a totally safe area. This entire region—it
is quite a large region—has been the site of contestation,
often of a very violent sort, including among other African powers
in a militarised way. Robert Mugabe was able to buy off a number
of his generals by allowing them mining concessions that had been
illegally looted in that part of Congo. What they have done is
to have found a particular part of Katanga province for the Chinese
where the prospective returns could be very significant, bringing
it all on tap or on stream in the first instance and then insuring
against market volatility and also insuring against possible local
breakdowns in terms of law and order. These are things which I
think the Chinese have probably done all kinds of cost benefit
projections and equations over. In the very best projections,
and if market rates are maintained, if market prices for these
commodities are maintained as they are now, relatively high—in
the last three years anyway they have reached a relative high—the
Chinese will make a killing in terms of the profitability of what
they are about to acquire, much more than the US $9 billion or
£5 billion they are going to put into it. Conversely, they
could lose just about everything. If you look at the track history,
the volatility of market prices globally of things like copper
has been a rollercoaster ride. Zambia has been made or broken
by exactly this cycle of incredible prices or incredibly low prices.
In so far as the Chinese would want to avoid market prices and
that kind of competition and use these minerals directly for their
own industrial projects back home, that is another case in point.
However, if it becomes cheaper to buy these things without risk
from other suppliers, and the cost of extracting the stuff themselves
and shipping it all the way home, even that option starts to look
less attractive. So there is a major loss option that the Chinese
have to confront. In terms of fighting and also in terms of protection,
yes, the Democratic Republic of Congo is going to remain volatile
for a very long time. It is related, of course, in the area of
current contestation to the whole regional meltdowns, involving
Rwanda, the Tutsi and Hutu residual difficulties, although I would
not want to essentialise it quite as much as that. There is a
Congolese agenda of an internal nature at work here as well. Nkunda
very cleverly serves both but that kind of fighting could easily
spread to the part of Katanga province the Chinese are interested
in, although it is not likely to in the immediate future. Until
you have actually solved the essential problem of governance in
DRC and put into place far stronger local public administrative
structures that work and can be relied upon to work, any kind
of investment of this scale—and it is a massive scale, as
I have tried to outline—on the part of the Chinese (a) yes,
could lead to huge profits, or (b), could be one of these great
hostages to fortune.
Q129 John Battle: It is often said
when the Chinese do their projects—not so much the roads,
where they employ local labour but some of the management is shipped
in; in the football stadium in some cases all the workers were
Chinese and Africans in Harare were saying "Why can't we
have the jobs?" and there is some dialogue going on there,
but is there any reliable data on the proportion of employment
created by Chinese investment that goes to the nationals of the
African countries they work in? Are there any tables or any indication
or is it just a project by project negotiation, and really the
African saying "What crumbs are left can we have?"
Dr Gu: I think it is more the
latter. It is project by project. There is no official data on
the proportion of Chinese labourers and African labourers. I think
things are evolving. Many Chinese labourers came to Africa a few
years ago. In recent years many African countries such as Ghana
and Nigeria have issued new regulations regarding the proportion
of Chinese labour in Chinese factories or joint ventures. I think
things are evolving.
Q130 Chairman: We have covered some
of this ground and I know, Professor Chan, you have said that
it is more of an African struggle with China than the other way
round but in that context, there are two ways of approaching it.
One, to what extent does China's engagement in any conscious way
address things like sustainable development, the international
issues that people are concerned about, governance and transparency?
You say human rights; I would not expect China to be the lead
champion for human rights but the basic rights people expect.
Has the African response caused some degree of consternation in
China? If you take, say, Sudan or Zimbabwe, clearly, the African
Union is trying to sort out things in Sudan and Africa is divided
over Zimbabwe. It is no longer easy just to say Mugabe is fighting
against former colonial powers because, clearly, he is fighting
Africans. In all of this context does China have a conscious view
that actually what it does has repercussions that affect its standing
in the world? Does it positively think it needs to do something
about governance, sustainability and so on?
Professor Chan: Yes, they were
certainly taken by surprise in both of the key examples that you
used, Sudan and Zimbabwe. I would differentiate the two however.
The Chinese support for Robert Mugabe is not nearly as extensive
as Mugabe wished. His articulation of a "Look East"
policy when our sanctions began to be applied has been a complete
failure in terms of the scale that he hoped assistance would come
by. The Chinese in fact have made very hard-headed, realpolitik
calculations in Beijing that Zimbabwe is not worth a candle past
a certain limited point. We have not yet reached that point but
there is a cut-off that the Chinese have very much on their minds,
and I think Mugabe knows that. They are not going to play the
Western game of the sort of hectoring rhetoric that was mounted
on Mugabe and which has been resisted by the African Union itself
as being too hectoring for its own good and our own good. On the
Sudanese issue, yes, they were very greatly caught by surprise
by the vehemence of international condemnation for the laissez-faire
attitude they had towards government action, particularly in Darfur,
but they are trying to learn from that. I accompanied the Deputy
Chair of the African Union to Beijing to talk to them about Darfur
precisely, and they were caught very much by surprise when he
articulated the African Union doctrine of non-indifference as
opposed to the age-old Chinese articulation of non-interference,
and proposing that there might be, as it were, some effort to
meet the newly enshrined principle of non-indifference. They themselves,
as a result of meetings of that nature, increased the size of
their peacekeeping deployment in Darfur but did not do what we
suggested they should do, which was to provide mobile infrastructure,
helicopters, to enable the peacekeeping forces to function, because
at this moment in time they do not function. So the Chinese were
prepared to move a little but not beyond a certain point. Having
said that, they wanted their appointment of a special envoy to
mediate in the Darfur crisis, or at least to talk in slightly
sterner words to the Sudanese authorities, to be regarded by the
West as a serious gesture, and in fact that envoy did talk in
quite serious terms to the Sudanese authorities, perhaps to very
little immediate effect but, as part of a growing concert of pressure
on Bashir's government, and recent things like Bashir's announcement
of a ceasefire in the Darfur region, the Chinese might rightly
say that they played a small, modest but perhaps important role
in that concert of pressure on President Bashir. They want to
be part of the game. At the same time, they do not want to be
excoriated simply for being Sudan's largest customer in terms
of petroleum resources, most of which does not actually go directly
back to China in any case but is sold on the international market.
Q131 Chairman: As I said earlier
on, there is a hint of hypocrisy there in terms of Western interests.
We are all scrabbling for resources and the West certainly does
not have clean hands.
Professor Chan: No. The Chinese
have been actually to that extent quite good in not labouring
the point that all they are doing is what we ourselves in the
West have been doing. Having said that, in answer directly to
your question, yes, they have been very surprised. On my visits
to China I have tried to find out where their advice comes from
in terms of who feeds up the information to their higher policymaking
echelons. I think the policy research base in China on Africa
both within government arms and in affiliated quasi-academic organisations
like the Academy of Social Sciences and in the universities themselves,
I would have thought their level of knowledge is exactly parallel
to the very old-fashioned introduction of Development Studies
as a discipline at Jinhua University, except that across the board
I would have characterised the deep, detailed, scholarly knowledge
of Africa as primitive. That is what is getting fed through and,
if you look at the operational methodologies of Chinese embassies,
which are very self-contained—they have become like self-enclosures,
without significant meaningful engagement with the local population
beyond official engagements—I just think the Chinese are
operating in an information vacuum and they are greatly surprised
when they realise not just that the world, and Africa, views them
in a critical light but they are also surprised by the fact of
"Why did we not see this coming?" They are going to
have to ask questions about how they information-gather and disseminate.
Q132 Chairman: I wonder if I can
answer Dr Jing Gu in that context—this is over-simplistic
and I apologise for that but there has been an argument that China
is looking for South-South relationships, so that they can look
to Africa and say, "You have been exploited colonially. We
have natural common bonds. We should work together." But
have they then found that Africa is rather more complicated than
that and Africa's relationships with its former colonial powers
are not all hostile; there is kind of an intermeshing which actually
means that China is not operating in such a simple environment
as perhaps it thought?
Dr Gu: Yes, I think you make a
very good point in that the China-Africa relationship, as I said
earlier, is much more complicated and both China and Africa have
a lot of growing up to do. They are both in the learning process.
Also, there are many actors involved, so we have to differentiate
between the actors because they have different interests. I think
in this respect China is open to dialogue with the West on pathways
to African development.
Chairman: That is obviously a
little bit of what our Committee is going to China to discuss
but it is good to have from you an indication that that is the
sort of response we will get.
Q133 Sir Robert Smith: You touched
earlier on the inequalities that still exist very much in China.
How much do you foresee any improvements in rural access to health
care and other social services taking place? Do you see that coming
quickly or is it a long process?
Dr Gu: I think it is a long process.
The inequalities in health provision are recognised problems for
China. Increasingly access to health services is by private means.
The government has started on health reform and investment but
the scale of the problem is so large and costly. There is a need
for much more knowledge and expertise to address this issue. A
training programme on health for provincial and county level staff
would certainly be beneficial. I think maybe DFID should engage
in this aspect.
Professor Chan: I agree with that.
You have massive problems of scale in China, with a whole range
of social services and health of course has been one of the greatest
human costs. To a certain extent you have very key areas of China,
particularly in the countryside, that have never grown out of
the level of provision from the barefoot doctors era. It has not
got any better than that, although the barefoot doctors phenomenon
has gone very seriously out of fashion. In terms of providing
fixed infrastructure of clinics and hospitals, there is a real
difficulty; in terms of logistical access to such facilities that
exist, there is a real difficulty; in terms of the recognition
of providing certain medical facilities for the spread of things
that have been long denied officially or discouraged from being
debated officially, like HIV, for instance and having provision
of that sort made available reliably locally. All of that is again
very much behind the actual spread of epidemics. So there is a
very great deal that needs to be done but not just in health care.
I would have said the same thing in terms of advanced educational
provision. In my business, for instance, we would look seriously
at candidatures for admission to graduate school from the top
20 Chinese universities, which are absolutely superb, but we would
not look twice at anything below that. I am sorry to be so brutally
honest.
Sir Robert Smith: You touched
earlier on the urban/rural issue. Is it inevitable with development
that the rural is going to migrate to the urban or should there
be any kind of strategies that try and make rural life ...
Chairman: I think it would be helpful
to asked John Battle to come in with a consequential question.
Q134 John Battle: Apparently there
is talk of land reform, particularly in the rural areas, and the
breakdown of collective ownership. Is it feasible in our lifetime?
Do you think it will happen? Will they look at the whole of land?
It is not only a Chinese question in a way; it is a massive international
question, but particular to China is whether they will do in the
rural areas what they are doing in the cities.
Professor Chan: I have no comment
or expertise on whether or not that kind of reform will ever be
facilitated in our lifetimes in the rural areas of China. In terms
of rural/urban migration, I think you have to look at a very curious
aspect of this. It is not, as far as I can tell, except in a very
limited number of cases, the migration of entire families from
countryside to city. What it tends to be for the most part, but
again, the data, the figures, are not available in the Chinese
case, is the migration of people who are breadwinners or who expect
to be breadwinners precisely so they can feed the bulk of the
family who are back in the rural areas. It is a much more selective
form of migration than meets the eye.
Dr Gu: China has started land
reform. Recently China passed a land law but the issue is very
complicated. Land reform in China cannot just be treated as part
of purely economic development reform. It has to do with social
and political reform as well, because you have to give the farmers
more power to enable them to know what they are doing.
Q135 John Battle: China is under
pressure in some ways in the international arena because it is
building coal-fired power stations. In the climate change debate
China is the villain. I wonder to what extent does China now address
this? I know they have signed up to some of the Kyoto Convention.
Where do you think in the policy in China climate change and economic
strategies and sustainability are converging? Are they getting
ahead of the game or are they always following behind the rest
of the world on this agenda, and really saying "Look, we
want to develop economically and that is the price you pay"?
Dr Gu: I think on this issue China
has to balance the different interests of different interest groups
within China. In recent years China has certainly realised the
seriousness of the problem so it has been actively engaged in
international dialogue on climate change. For example, next week
there will be a very high level Geneva-China dialogue on climate
change and trade issues.
Professor Chan: The alternative
to coal-fired power stations in the Chinese sense is either hydro
or nuclear. Both options, of course, have interesting difficulties.
The whole Three Gorges dam, for instance, has an economic benefit
perhaps but an environmental despoilation of its very own. The
scale of the problem is a mess and will not be remedied by a wave
of a wand. If we look at a member of the European Union, for instance,
Poland, and its dependence on coal as a commodity and as a source
of energy, they cannot solve the problem even with a very great
deal of European advice and assistance. Something on the scale
of the Chinese provision of energy through coal is not going to
be changed overnight. Having said that, it has been an issue of
People's Assembly debates about economic benefit versus environmental
despoilation.
Q136 John Battle: There was an interesting
conversation around the air pollution in Beijing during the Olympics.
"Can we get rid of it just for the Olympics?" Was it,
again, to use your expression, just window-dressing for the Olympics
or do they really worry? People are going round with masks on
their faces, riding bikes, in Beijing, trying to protect their
children against breathing in bad air. Is there a long-term strategy
to clean up the cities?
Professor Chan: No.
Q137 Sir Robert Smith: There was
a switch to gas around Beijing as a generating power to try and
reduce ...
Professor Chan: All these measures
were last-minute things which were put in place at the Olympics
and, with a lot of luck, they worked. Beijing is just awful at
the best of times. You just get used to it. A year before the
Olympics—because I used to be a competitor internationally
myself—when I was visiting Beijing on a particularly bad
day, I said, "You can't expect anybody to run a marathon
in this environment. They are just going to die." There was
no perceivable recognition on the part of the authorities with
whom I spoke that this was actually a problem for athletes. Only
when international pressure really mounted was it that they took
these extraordinary steps to make the Beijing Olympics work but
they are not going to do that for all of their cities all the
time. This is going to be a very slow, staged process.
Q138 Chairman: The Chairman of Shell
UK about three weeks ago said in this building that we have found
however many billions we have to deal with the financial crisis,
and he claimed this was a Keynesian solution. He then said that
we need another Keynesian solution to deal with the climate crisis
on the same scale. He basically said we managed to mop up the
financial crisis but unless we anticipate climate change, we will
not have a big enough mop. China has specifically called for 1
% of GDP to be diverted to dealing with climate change. Is that
a real initiative in the sense of saying, "Actually, if we
can find that money, China wants to be part of the process of
solving the problem because we are suffering from it and we also
want to grow," or is it a rhetorical challenge?
Dr Gu: I think China is trying
to address the pollution issues and also the other issues relating
to climate change. There is certainly scope for the UK, DFID and
other departments, to build up on the existing UK-China sustainable
development dialogue, particularly on sustainable industry and
agriculture. One potential benefit of the working relationship
which DFID has with China is to cooperate on these environment
related questions. I think China is actively engaging in international
dialogue and domestic dialogue on this issue.
Q139 Chairman: What can the UK do?
I preface this by saying we are very good at setting targets but
we are not quite so good at delivering the policies that will
achieve them. What can the UK do in terms of its relationship
with China to help deal with the problem?
Professor Chan: They are better
at building nuclear power stations than we are, and that probably
is the long-term option, with the drawbacks that all of us are
aware of. I do not think there is very much we can do except to
remain engaged in a debate in so far as it affects all of us,
ourselves and China. But I do not expect the Chinese to progress
radically beyond rhetorical subscription to things to do with
the environment at this stage, particularly if they are going
to maintain their level of productivity sufficient to maintain
their own development goals and also to have sufficient reserves
to bail us out in our credit crunch crisis. There is nothing in
the short term, I am afraid, that is going to be meaningful.
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