China: U.S. professor: “China is an enormous success story in world economics”
by Xinhua Writers Gu Zhenqiu, Wang Xiangjiang & Baijie
NEW YORK, (Xinhua) — “I think China is an enormous success story, clearly in economics and it has had the most dynamic economic development in world history during the last 30 years,” a famous U.S. professor has said.
Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, said in a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua that “We all believe, at least I believe, that China will … relatively soon, within the next three decades perhaps … become the world’s largest economy.”
“So I think China has a unique position in the world. It’s not only the most populous country but it will become the largest economy in the world, and that’s rather natural because it’s such a large size with so many talented people but it means a special kind of responsibility,” he said.
However, “China also faces tremendous internal problems in its development, especially the environmental challenges because the water, the energy, air pollution and so forth, are major question for China’s development — also, the scale of the urbanization,” he said.
“This is a very complicated process but I think China has done a tremendous job of having rapid development,” he said. “Now it has to turn more attention to the physical environment and to the human well being in health care and so on.”
Sachs is also quetelet professor of sustainable development and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University. He is also special advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was director of the UN Millennium Project and special advisor to then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015.
Asked whether he thinks that China can maintain a healthy growth rate in the wake of the global financial crisis, Sachs said, “I do because I think in the last decade, China has been using its savings to invest in the U.S., but China has a lot of good use for its savings in China to deal with the infrastructures of China’s cities, to clean the water supply, to develop an efficient, sustainable energy system.”
China will be able to achieve the economic growth target of about 8 percent in 2009, if proper policies and measures are taken, said Premier Wen Jiabao in his government work report to the National People’s Congress’ annual session on March 5.
“So I think that China should deploy its savings domestically rather than financing the U.S. which is a big, rich country already,” he said. “China should finance its long-term development and if it does that, it means increasing the internal demand through building of infrastructure: highways, water sanitation, pollution control, new energy systems.”
“This to me would be very good investments for China and I think China is completely capable of doing it,” he said. “In fact, I expect China to be the first country to pull out of this global economic crisis.”
On China’s strategy for sustainable development, he said, “I think China needs such a strategy first of all because China has more than, well, about 20 percent of the world’s population, and about 7 percent of the world’s land area, and about 7 percent of the world’s water so China has a big squeeze of resources: land, water, air so it needs a sustainable strategy.”
“That’s very important for China. I think there are clearly some areas of success for China, like a developing solar industry but in fact, China remains a coal-based economy and that’s a big problem for China, for its air pollution and for the carbon emissions,” he said. “And, China has a tremendous amount of water pollution and there needs to be major investments in cleaning up the water ways of China and I think that’s one of the most priority areas for China in the coming years.”
At present, Professor Sachs is helping the Chinese government in hammering out the strategy for the mid-term sustainable development in China, known as China 2049 Program, which was named after the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
“We asked the question to many Chinese policy makers and leaders: What should China aim for in the 100th anniversary of the people’s republic in the year 2049? Where will the cities of China be with another 400 or 500 million people coming into the cities? How will the air remain clean? How will there be enough water? How will the food security be achieved? What kind of transport system? What kind of power system? What kind of health care system?” he said. “The Chinese scientific and policy counterparts of this project thought those were all very interesting questions.”
“And I think they are very important questions for China and for the world and I hope that we do a similar study about the U.S. situation so that we can also think ahead two generations,” he said. “So we’re starting this project in depth this summer in Beijing and we will have meetings with policy makers and analysis and scientists to work on the problems of water, to work on the problems of urbanization, to work on the problems of energy systems to work on the macroeconomic challenges.”
On the U.S. strategy for sustainable development, he said, “I think the U.S. has made some good policies in the last 30 years doing relatively well in cleaning up a lot of rivers and in cleaning up the air pollution.”
“The U.S. has not done a good job in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions so you can’t learn very much from the U.S. in this but in certain areas, in water pollution and in air pollution, the U.S. has definitely some good examples,” he said. “In terms of urbanization, the U.S. has some good examples but I also think it has some bad examples.”
“I think New York City is a very good example,” he said. “It’s a very densely populated city. It has public transport that is quite good. Its emissions of greenhouse gases are about one-third of the U.S. average so that’s a big plus, or maybe even one-fourth in some ways.”
“And so, New York City is a good example of a relatively sustainable city that still can do more,” he said.
“Los Angeles, on the other hand, I think is not a good example for China because Los Angeles is a big, sprawling city,” he said. “Whenever you want to go somewhere in Los Angeles, you have to get in a car and you drive and you drive and its tremendously energy using, it emits a lot of greenhouse gasses, it’s vulnerable to environmental change.”
On his message to China as the nation is going to celebrate its60th anniversary in October, he said, “First a message of a happy birthday. It’s a very wonderful anniversary.”
“And I think China has an enormous amount to be proud of because the recent decades have been decades of great accomplishment and I believe China will continue to have many, many decades of great accomplishment so I am very excited about that,” he said. “I believe China can play a major constructive role in the world on helping to solve global problems.”
“I know that in Africa, where I work a lot, we see China’s contributions more and more to solve the poverty problems, to building infrastructure, to building roads, to building the energy systems and I want also to thank China for that and also encourage China to continue to provide that kind of leadership,” he said.
On China’s role in helping the world reach the target of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), he said, “China is of course, has made great progress on the Millennium Development Goals because poverty and hunger have been very sharply reduced compared to the 1990s. So China has made tremendous strides.”
“China’s biggest remaining challenges are in the environmental area because that’s MDG number seven, so clean water, safe water, and environmental sustainability,” he said. “And China also is undertaking another part of the goals which is to ensure access to good health care all through the country. China is now scaling up its health care system and that’s a very exciting development.”
“But China’s role in the MDGs is not only within China but also internationally and there with China’s role in Africa, China is making a very, very positive contribution to help Africa achieve the Millennium Development Goals and I am very much hopeful that China will continue that leadership role as well,” he said.
Professor Sachs is widely considered to be the leading international economic advisor of his generation. For more than 20 years Professor Sachs has been in the forefront of the challenges of economic development, poverty alleviation, and enlightened globalization, promoting policies to help all parts of the world to benefit from expanding economic opportunities and wellbeing.
He is also one of the leading voices for combining economic development with environmental sustainability, and as director of the Earth Institute leads large-scale efforts to promote the mitigation of human-induced climate change.
Editor: Mu Xuequan