Environment vs growth debate heats up in China

"Green tightening" is the latest buzz phrase in China. Hardly a day goes by without the administration tweaking taxes or promulgating orders to crack down on industries that guzzle energy or belch pollution.

But official enthusiasm has its bounds. Last month, statistics chief Xie Fuzhan said China was indefinitely halting, after just one year, publication of its estimates of the damage that China's double-digit GDP growth is doing to the environment.

"There is no global standard for green GDP statistics," Xie said in explaining the decision at a news conference.

Analysts say he has a point. But they add political infighting is as much to blame as statistical uncertainties -- after all, China is able to calculate how well it is doing in reducing the amount of energy that goes into each unit of GDP.

"I believe it is mainly due to administrative problems rather than technical issues," said Shi Xiaomin, general-secretary of China Society of Economic Reform, a Beijing-based think tank.

The outcome of the debate is important for the course of a country that will soon overtake the United States as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and where hundreds of millions of people have no access to clear drinking water.

A year ago, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) jointly released China's first green GDP report, estimating the cost of pollution in 2004 at 3.05 percent of gross domestic product.

TURF WARS

The report received wide coverage in domestic media.