rapport beijing

8/18/2019 Rapport Beijing

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Marie Pla & Jérôme Douaud, for Urbanistes du MondeSeptembre 2015

THE GOVERNANCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUESAT THE CITY-LEVEL OF BEIJING

City of Datong in Shanxi province, Jérôme Douaud, 2013

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1. Our study

Our goal was to examine the governance of environmental issues at the city-level of Beijing: we decided to focus on four fields in order to have a comprehensive understanding of this complex network. We thus studied municipal waste management, green building certificates,

energy supply and energy mix, as well as the transportation system.We will begin by discussing our findings regarding governance in Beijing before discussing the four research topics we just mentioned to offer a wide perspective on environmental issues at the city-level of Beijing.

2. Methodology

This report is based on a month-long field research in Beijing during which we interviewed a variety of actors: NGOs, public agencies, private companies (involved either in energy

supply or urban services), a Tsinghua university professor and consulting firms. The short duration of our stay and the difficulty we faced to meet officials both limited the scope and quality of data we could gather. However, even if our research cannot always be based on scientific data, we managed to gather enough information to propose a broad analysis of environmental governance in Beijing.

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3. Beijing’s context

Before analyzing the results of our research, we will begin by discussing the characteristics of the city as well as the salient traits of its governance.

Since China’s rise as a major economic power, much attention has been drawn to air pollution issues in its cities. Beijing, as the country’s capital and facing among the most severe pollution conditions - due to harsher winters than in the South and thus a bigger use of coal for heating purposes, was particularly pointed to by foreign media. For instance, the 2008 Olympics raised concerns about athletes’ health because of the levels of air pollution that were observed in the city at the time; and Beijing often made it to the headlines because of its outstanding concentration of PM2.5.This context must be kept in mind as China, in its attempt to attract foreign investors , had to tackle the issue of air pollution of its cities to make them more attractive; therefore achieving international standards was a key component of China’s environmental policy .

Beijing is both China’s capital and one of its leading cities, which implies that it is a crucial display of China’s success for the Chinese Communist Party as well as for the City Government. This double role leads to a problem of double governance and potentially overlapping competencies as the CCP wants to keep the upper hand on the capital’s evolution.

This double governance can also be understood as a competition between the two entities: for instance, the announcement made last year of moving parts of the local administration to the suburbs of Beijing (Tongzhou district) can be seen as a way to keep the City government at bay from local affairs. This competition between both governments partly explains the

governance issues that the city of Beijing faces.

However Beijing’s peculiar governance features do not remove the city from the overall trends that China is experiencing. Indeed, just like in other Chinese cities, national dynamics of rural migrations and urban sprawl to serve the real estate sector feed Beijing’s growth. Indeed, local governments are inclined to selling arable land to developers to inflate their GDP growth figures: such phenomenon can be observed throughout China, and is key to understanding Chinese urban dynamics. Our point here is to insist that despite Beijing’s specificities, we can nourish our analysis with examples and comparisons with other cities.

4. Governance

As mentioned earlier, Beijing is a precious tool for the Chinese Central government to showcase the country’s accomplishment: from what we could witness, policies were first tested in a number of pilot cities before, if successful, potentially being used in Beijing. Indeed most actors that we met during our fieldtrip mentioned that they had projects in various Chinese cities (Wuhan, for instance, with the French development agency and a French-Chinese intergovernmental project managed by Vivapolis) but rarely did they do so in Beijing. This observation entails that most policy innovations are not taking place in the capital, but rather in the rest of the country.

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Beijing’s governance is also characterized by the ambiguous and moving role attributed to civil society and a strong compartmentalization of sectors, which we will illustrate further below.

Civil society

NGOs are actors of urban governance throughout the country, collaborating with local governments on specific projects (Greenpeace, WWF), as well as acting as consultants (in the case of NRDC). For instance, the WWF is conducting a “low-carbon city initiative” with a few cities like Baoding in Hebei where they implement concrete solutions to reduce greenhouse gases emissions with a number of tools (the improvement of industrial processes, the promotion of building efficiency or testing new finance instruments for renewable energy industry).

China has undergone periods of liberalization as well as periods of hardening of the regime: Xi Jinping’s rule, the current CCP leader, fits under the second category. Public participation

has long been a struggle: indeed, according to NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), public environmental litigation is illegal if you are an environmental NGO. However, the grip on civil society tightens as a law is being drafted to revise the status of international NGOs : the Foreign NGO Management Law would drastically limit the scope and 1

possibilities of action of these organizations. This political context has repercussions on urban governance as well, leading to a significant decrease in civil society involvement.

The lack of transparency may sound obvious under such a regime, but the implications it has with regards to urban governance deserves some explanation. This phenomenon goes hand in hand with low public participation, as citizens may not even be made aware of urban projects in their neighbourhood. According to Sinapolis (a research centre), the Guloudajie

urban renewal surprised inhabitants as they saw construction begin without having been previously informed. It seems that this lack of transparency is much stronger in Beijing than in other Chinese cities, which can be linked to the issue of double governance we discussed before.

Strong compartmentalization of sectors and a lack of integrated thinking

Through the example of eco-cities projects in China, we can highlight a structural problem appearing in Chinese governance. Eco-cities are still pioneer projects in China. Tianjin sino-singaporian eco-district is among the most famous but the whole country developed 230 projects of this kind. However, none of these eco-cities were successful: corruption for

instance appeared to be a major obstacle. Furthermore, the example of Dongtan eco-city near Shanghai , like many similar projects, faced a wider political problem. Following 2

Kenneth Lieberthal’s analysis (1997), relations between the governing structure and policies, for instance environmental policies, are undermined by a top-down fashion that divides goals layer-of-governance by layer-of-governance. Taken from a traditional communist vision of politics, it impedes a successful implementation of a lot of policies, not only environmental ones. It induces that units of the same rank, on the same

1 “ ” Jìngwài fēi zhèngfǔ zǔzhī guǎnlǐ fǎEnglish translation:http://chinadevelopmentbrief.cn/articles/cdb-english-translation-of-the-overseas-ngo-management-law-s

econd-draft/ 2 Eco-cities in China : Ecological Urban Reality or Political Nightmare ? , Silvio Ghiglione & Martin Larbi,Journal of Management and Sustainability; Vol. 5, No. 1; February 20, 2015

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http://chinadevelopmentbrief.cn/articles/cdb-english-translation-of-the-overseas-ngo-management-law-second-draft/http://chinadevelopmentbrief.cn/articles/cdb-english-translation-of-the-overseas-ngo-management-law-second-draft/


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layer-of-governance, cannot issue binding orders to others . It is for example the case of ministries, which cannot give any order to provinces. This creates mistrust in the overall governance between different scales. It also can be seen as a way for peripheries to lie to the centre, what increases corruption.

This analysis can be furthered through the works of Jonathan Schwartz (2003), who demonstrates the different layers of law. Falü , literally meaning “Law”/”Act”, is published by 3

the State. It’s a vague and general Act, most of the time explaining goals but not means. The State Council then publishes fagui , followed by the Ministry, which publishes guizhang (regulation). The periphery thus choose the tools it wants to use to determine regulations. However, this system remains defective because of the lack of compliance with the State to ensure that objectives are achieved.

For instance, even though the Central government has acknowledged environmental issues for quite a while (indeed, they make up a significant part of the Beijing master plan since the 1970s), local authorities remain clueless as to how to achieve environmental goals.

Thus, most eco-cities were not successful because local authorities and the conceptors did not understand local features (Silvio Ghiglione & Martin Larbi give the example of a green-city project where garages were built in every house even though none of the inhabitants owned cars). This can be at least partly attributed to the absence of consultation of civil society, which would prevent such aberrations.

Jing-Jin-Ji governance

The creation of Jing-Jin-Ji , a mega-metropolitan region encompassing the cities of Beijing 4

and Tianjin as well as Hebei province (about 100 million people), has given rise to hopes that Beijing will overcome its lack of integrated development. The main goals include a

better integration of transportation, governance and resource monitoring , main problems of Beijing we discussed beyond. It also includes a more harmonious development between Beijing and the closest regions , since there is a tremendous development gap between the city center and peripheries (Tianjin is a very important 5

harbour, concentrating storage, manufacturing and import capacities; Hebei concentrates most factories and agriculture resource of the region). Though, even if this announcement is the core project of the coming revision of Beijing master plan,the real power and means this new administrative entity for Beijing and its surrounding will have remains unknown. The lack of information available on this project due to its early stage made it difficult to study it in depth. No one actually knows which shape it will take, whether it be a new layer-of-governance or just a stronger cooperation summit for existing administrations and

governments. But it should be kept in mind as a tool that has the potential to tackle a number of issues that we discuss in this report.

3 (law/act), (law/decree), (regulation)4

, Jīng jīn jì , for BeiJING - TianJIN - Hebei (JI being a synonym)5 http://www.lqz.cn/gsnews/tcxx/201507206748.html, , , 2015/07/20

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5. Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM)

Waste is an insightful topic, as it illustrates both the consequences of a rising middle class

(an increase in waste output) as well as the governance capacities it then demands (waste collection points and control over informal dumpsites).

In Beijing, there is a dual waste management system whereby rubbish is collected either by the municipality or by informal waste pickers. These two systems diverge with regards to recycling: indeed, even though recycling bins were introduced in the city in 2008, people do not actually sort their waste. Urban dwellers do not separate because the waste did not remain sorted in the collection process (inhabitants saw the different bins being emptied in the same truck) at the time, probably due to the lack of infrastructure to implement it. The municipality is thus faced with a prisoner’s dilemma: should it enforce a separate collection despite the absence of source-sorting? Would educating the public suffice? Or is there an

issue of lack trust preventing successful implementation?The state’s incapability in implementing source-sorting makes waste-pickers the major actors in this field: it is estimated that 200,000 informal collectors collect and recycle 30% of Beijing’s waste .6

The informal sector works differently and generates its income with recycling. An underprivileged population is generally in charge of waste picking: this process includes going door to door, rummaging through garbage cans, etc. They then sell it to the picker; while the “waste collector” works with bicycles, small vehicles or on foot, the picker tends to use a truck. Pickers are specialized in certain types of waste: plastic, glass, paper, etc. They then sell their merchandise to buyers, so either to an informal landfill or through large

recycling markets.

These markets, which used to be along the 6th Ring Road, were removed by the authorities before the 2008 Olympics and seem to have resurfaced further away from Beijing. Informal landfills on the other hand, formed what photographer Wang Jiuliang called “the 7th Ring” in his 2008 project “Beijing Besieged by Waste”. He spent two years photographing and pinning on a map the illegal dumpsites he encountered, amounting to the astonishing number of over 500 landfills.These two examples illustrate the displacement of environmental harm at play in waste management: rubbish, and the transactions that come with it, are pushed away from the city. There undeniably an issue of space: as the city expands, it is difficult to keep refuse within

its walls for sanitary reasons. Yet, the destruction of recycling markets also shows a political will to remove the informal economy, even though there does not seem to exist a fit structure to replace it yet. However civil society seems to have played a role in the evolution of waste management in Beijing: as we were told in an interview, rumor has it that Xi Jinping himself watched Wang Jiuliang’s documentary and made it a priority to remove and transfer these illegal dumpsites.

6 Judy Li, Ways Forward from China’s Urban Waste Problem , The Nature of Cities, 2015http://www.thenatureofcities.com

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Figure 1. Wang Jiuliang, Beijing besieged by Waste, 2008

The removal of recycling market and of taking in charge informal landfills brings a considerable amount of waste in the hands of the city government. As Beijing’s current landfills were designed ten to twenty years ago, and now receive twice the amount of waste they were planned for, they are not a fit solution to the problem. This situation lead the government to turn to incineration: building an incineration plant is heavily subsidized,

therefore people have strong incentives to build such units. However incineration is not a sustainable manner of dealing with waste in China, given the proportion of food waste, which ranges from 50 to 70% of municipal solid waste : as a comparison, food waste represents 13.9% of American municipal solid waste (Environmental Protection Agency). Organic waste is difficult to burn, especially given the high concentration of oil in Chinese food which demands higher temperatures to be consumed, and thus requires significant quantities of coal to keep the incineration process going, leading to high green-house gases emissions.

Another key aspect of this issue is the production of waste itself : as Beijing’s population increases and has access to mass consumption, waste increases as well. The city produces

an estimated twenty thousand tons of garbage a day , and this figure increases by 10% every year . The propaganda posters we could observe in Beijing mostly pointed to using less energy and water, saving paper and not wasting food. Indeed, government efforts focus on individual behaviour shifts rather than tackling the consumer society framework that is a major impediment to such evolutions. Dealing with the growth in waste output is a major challenge for the municipality of Beijing, and we did not find strong evidence that it will be done in a sustainable way.

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6. Transportation

As the city is sprawling rapidly, the public transportation system is still growing and not complete yet, as new subway lines are still being constructed each year. Beijing subway has the highest annual ridership in the world, with 3,41 billion people using the subway per year, 7

which translates into more than 9 million riderships a day. Three problems thus emerged in the transportation system with Beijing’s development: a certain lack of intermodality, an incomplete polycentricity of the city and an increasing reliance on the private car.

Lack of intermodality of the public transportation

The city’s governance lacks integrated thinking, as most decisions are taken by different actors and are not coordinated. This phenomenon is particularly visible in the transport sector when examining inter-modality: bus stops and metro stops tend not to coincide, illustrating the absence of collaboration between the relevant administrations and companies.

Metro stations are also really far from each other: indeed, the average distance between stations is about 2 km , while it is only about 570m in Paris . As a consequence, 8 9

mixed-mode commuting is a necessity for most Beijingers , who live either in residential areas somewhat far from metro stations or in the suburbs. The situation is even worse for the latter, who have to rely on several different modes of transportation (bicycle, shuttle bus, public bus, metro, taxi) for everyday commutes.

Beijing’s urban sprawl was encouraged by the fare ticket price, which cost 2 yuan (around 0,3€) until 2014, when a distance-priced fare ticket was implemented. This decision led to a significant increase of the transport share in households’ budget.

All of these factors thus led to an increased reliance on the private automobile, the simplest means of transport available in the city: car-use however has well-known negative externalities, such as air pollution and congestion issues.

Incomplete polycentricity

Beijing 2004-2020 master-plan points out a dynamic of “two axis - two belts - several centers” . Beijing developed a kind of incomplete polycentricity because of two superposing 10

structures. The first structure is Beijing’s main road grid: this skeleton is made of concentric rectangles which are in fact the Beijing ring roads. The city road system is only built on perpendicular avenues (for historical reasons). The most famous ones thus inspired the two

axis:- the West-East line, Chang’an Jie, with the political and military center on the West, and the economic and financial center on the East;

- the North-South line, the historic line crossing the Olympic park, old traditional hutong districts, Tian’an Men Square until the Temple of Heaven in the South.

7 , (2014-02-12). " 2014 ",retrieved 2015-02-128

227 stations for a system length of 456 km in Beijing9 302 stations for a system length of 219,9 km in Paris10

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Figure 2. Beijing master plan scheme, “two axis - two belts - several centers”

The second important structure is the consequence of the development of several centers in the city, designed by successive master plans to avoid a massive cluster in the historic city-center. These different centers are responsible for specific sectors, such as high-tech and universities in the North-West, political in the center, financial in the East, manufactures in the South-East, etc. Polycentricity is perceived as a solution to Beijing’s congestion issues

by local authorities.

However these different “centers” are not connected to each other efficiently: for instance, distance from Zhongguancun high-tech center to Guomao financial center takes about 40 minutes by metro and a little bit less by private car without traffic jam. It appears that the city’s polycentricity, though addressing the crucial issue of Beijing’s congestion, was planned without sufficiently acknowledging the existing road infrastructure and without providing the required transportation networks to connect new centers.

Planning for a polycentric development was a relevant way to address Beijing’s congestion issues. However, the structural lack of communication between the local DRC (development

and reform commission) and the Transportation department actually leads to a not sufficiently integrated transport system.

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Figure 3. Map of Beijing highlighting the five inner rings and main roads

Increased automobile dependency

As we mentioned before, people often suffer from the lack of inter-modality and thus resort to multi-modal commuting, using both public and private means of transportation. China’s economic growth also led to the emergence of a significant middle class in Beijing; and those who gain access to the consumer society have strong incentives to invest in a car in order to overcome the city’s inefficient transportation system. Therefore, the number of private cars is increasing fast as the middle-class keeps on growing: the city has now gone past 6 million private cars. 50% of the vehicles on the road only represent 10% of the traffic 11

, while 90% of the riderships on the road only represents 25% of the traffic, which implies

that most of the road space is taken up by private cars. Traffic jams indeed have become a major issue in Beijing and congestion during peak hours becomes unbearable. As a consequence, private cars became the first source of air pollution in the city, representing around one in four PM2.5 particles in Beijing.

Despite the public health issues, it is difficult to stand against car-use in China because of the importance of the car industry in the national economy. Indeed, the Central Government promotes internal market growth, and through for instance the purchase of Chinese automobiles. Due to national goals, reducing car “consumption” is not an objective in spite of the acknowledged negative externalities that it leads to in Beijing.

However, we witnessed innovations at the individual level to cope with Beijing’s mobility issues that have positive externalities on the city’s air pollution. For instance, a significant number of urban dwellers ride electric scooters. It is difficult to obtain figures about electric vehicles use since the legislation on vehicles from 1999 states that electric scooter are illegal. Therefore this phenomenon points to astuteness and energy from Beijing’s citizens individual initiatives, that ultimately result in a meaningful trend addressing issues ahead of the municipality.

The city’s regulation on vehicles also includes a large part on alternative circulation, whereby when pollution levels are high three days in a row, alternative circulation is enforced until the

11 Pollution atmosphérique et développement urbain en Chine , Benjamin Guinot, Perspectiveschinoises, p67-77, 2008/4

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air is breathable again. Beijing also tries to mitigate car emissions through the development of 3700 buses fuelled with natural gas inside the 5th Ring, the development of public bicycles since 2011 - echoing an international trend of developing this mode of transportation, and the city government is considering developing a public electric car system in the near future.

7. Green buildings and construction

Beijing’s annual population growth was 3,8% between 2000 and 2010, six times more than 12

the national average, and 4,61% between 2010 and 2015. The current population is estimated to 21,5 millions inhabitants (2015), and the UN forecasts the city’s population to 13

reach 27,7 millions inhabitants in 2030.The fast-growing urbanization of Beijing thus induced a massive need of investment in the construction sector. Such a fast growing population creates a demand for housing, and a

need for new construction. While construction concentrated 12% of Beijing city overall investments in the nineties, it reached an astonishing 50% of the total investments of the city in 2002 .14

Unregulated construction

Beijing, unlike other Asian cities like Shanghai or Hong Kong, has developed horizontally and not vertically. Historical reasons may explain a part of this choice, since the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City (about 60 meters high) used to be the highest building in Beijing and no building could overpass it as a form of respect to the imperial power. Even if this tradition does not rule Beijing urban planning anymore, it still remains

relevant to a certain extent: most buildings in Beijing are massive in width, but not in height, even if vertical buildings have developed since the late 2000s with the development of Guomao CBD and suburban residential areas.

Through the coming revision of the Beijing master plan , that should be published at the end 15

of 2015, the government announced its intention to change the “big pancake spread” 16

model of the last decades. The urban sprawl caused by the lack of regulated construction induced a rarefaction of available land in Beijing municipality. Besides, horizontal urban model is not energy-efficient, because it increases pressure on energy and water resources for the municipality. “Control” thus became the key-word of this coming revision. This 17

control can be declined in two different domains. On one hand, urban sprawl needs to be

limited by regulating real estate sector. Tax reforms and the launch of renovations to densify

12 Beijing population data:http://www.geopopulation.com/20110714/demographie-chine-la-population-de-pekin-augmente-6-fois-plus-vite-que-la-moyenne-nationale/ 13 Though, lots of interviewed people do not believe to this figure because of the migrant workers andpeople not registered to the hukou system, China’ city registration system. Most of the people sayBeijing’s population is up to 23 or 24 millions inhabitants nowadays.14 cf. Beijing city master plan 2004 - 2020, :

http://www.bjghw.gov.cn/web/static/catalogs/catalog_233/233.html 15 http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2014-08-05/023930630164.shtml “ ”, ,

, 2014/08/0516 tui dabing , the chinese expression used by politics to evoke horizontal urban sprawl17 kongzhi

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http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2014-08-05/023930630164.shtmlhttp://www.bjghw.gov.cn/web/static/catalogs/catalog_233/233.htmlhttp://www.geopopulation.com/20110714/demographie-chine-la-population-de-pekin-augmente-6-fois-plus-vite-que-la-moyenne-nationale/http://www.geopopulation.com/20110714/demographie-chine-la-population-de-pekin-augmente-6-fois-plus-vite-que-la-moyenne-nationale/http://www.geopopulation.com/20110714/demographie-chine-la-population-de-pekin-augmente-6-fois-plus-vite-que-la-moyenne-nationale/


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Beijing city-center will be decisive actions to regulate this sector. On the other hand, energy and resources uses are not sustainable anymore. The construction sector thus need to implement higher environmental standards, through the tools of green buildings certificates for instance.

A tax reform ?

The tax system in China has an important impact on investments and governance at the 18

city-level. The complexity of the tax system lies in the tax sharing system , implemented in 19

1994, that enables transfer between local and central governments. Since China’s administration is based on five layers-of-governance (central government, provincial government, city, county, village), this division induces a heavy cost on the State financial balance. According to Lou Jiwei , in 2011, 85% of the governmental expenses are 20

transferred to local governments. Besides, local governments are expensive and inefficient, because of the cost of civil servants first (on 8 million civil servants in China, only 6% work for the central government), but also because of their wide range of activities such as

monitoring the pension system.Therefore even if local governments receive a considerable amount of money from the central government, they have a real need for auto-financing to achieve their objectives because of structural inefficiency. This need has been satisfied until now, above all in remote regions but also in Beijing suburbs, through selling land to real estate developers without any environmental consideration. As a result, tremendous residential areas have been constructed in the suburbs, favorising urban sprawl, creating pressure on land resource and even leading to ghost cities like Ordos in Inner Mongolia.

As a solution, a new tax reform implementing a property tax in the whole country may be implemented in 2017 , after Chongqing and Shanghai pilot-cities have experienced it since 21

2011. This property tax aims at giving negative incentives to limit the real estate boom and investments. If the tax goes to the local government, it may also be a new solution for auto-financing. However, experts are divided on the impact of this property tax , that could 22

indeed limit construction but also induce higher prices and distort the current market.

Development of green building certificates

As standards evolved in a lot of countries, China is also developing more and more “green building” certificates. Certificates aim at encouraging developers to follow higher environmental standards, gathering a wide range of criteria for energy efficiency such as automatic lightning systems, materials and window quality, reducing heating and cooling

losses and so on. China has its official standard called “Green Building Labelling System” (GBL) . It was launched in 2006 to identify energy efficient buildings with an award of one to 23

three stars. The system distinguishes two different labels: the Green Design Label and the

18 La fiscalité en Chine: d’une réforme à l’autre , Romain Lafarguette, et Hewei Zhou, 14 avril 2012,China Analysis, no. 3819 fenshui zhi20 « La reconstruction de la relation du gouvernement central et des gouvernements locaux» , LouJiwei, 31 mars 2012, Caijing,21 http://french.china.org.cn/china/txt/2014-11/04/content_33963113.htm : la Chine prévoit d’introduire lataxe foncière en 2017, Liang Chen, 201422

«Xiang Huaicheng: La réforme sur le partage fiscal n’est pas encore finie », Ma Guochuan, 2012Caijing23 lüse jianzhu pingjia biaozhun

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Green Operations Label. The first one can be obtained straight after the launch of the project, whereas the building has to operate for one year at least after the completion of the project to obtain the second one. Thus, it is not surprising that there have been 1,471 green design labels in China since 2006 against only 99 green operation labels awarded since the design label has a lower threshold. A few building applicants distinguish themselves for

taking the lead in this development, such as Wanda, specialised in public and commercial buildings, but also Wanke or Greenland, more focused on residential areas. For some developers looking for a wider recognition, international certificates may be preferred for higher standards and operation controls. The american US certificate, named LEED for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”, is the most famous one in China. For instance, the Olympic village applied to this certificate.

Such certificates can be understood as marketing tools for real estate developers, as environmental concerns have also morphed into a wide range of international norms. However the environmental impact of certain “green building certificates” may be questioned: indeed, a number of them are awarded before construction starts, based on the

building’s plans, and there is no follow-up ensuring that these plans were executed. Therefore, “green building certificates” can be used as a marketing argument without necessarily having to pay the real cost of respecting the high environmental norms. Moreover, as these environmental standards are costly, developers can also add a premium to the building’s price and benefit economically from this situation. Though pessimistic, this scenario only aims at pointing to the loopholes of green building certificates: we are not arguing that developers never keep their commitments, but rather that there is little constraint to do so.

Eventually, if cities like Shanghai showed a real interest in green certificates, as the government settled a goal to reach 30% public green buildings by the end of 2015 , green 24

buildings development sometimes seems to be closer to a showcase development since most buildings in China have really poor energy conservation systems. But the green refurbishment of existing buildings may turn into a really interesting business in the next few years as the construction boom is slowing.

8. Energy conservation and industrial shift

Since coal consumption is one of the main causes of air pollution in Beijing, the government took action to change the energy mix at the city-level.

Individual initiatives motivated by economic incentives : the example of solar water heaters

The rapid development of solar water heaters (solar panels placed on individual rooftops) reduces the demand for fossil-fuel energy. They can be found in a lot of residential areas in Beijing and above all in the villages surrounding the municipality.Solar water heaters spread much faster than photovoltaic power plants because PV plants need to be connected to the city electricity power grid and sold first to the grid company (and there is no debate around auto-consumption yet), while solar water heaters are autonomous and economical. This example illustrates the existence of individual initiatives which, put together, form a greater trend of cleaner energy sources.

24 www.econet-china.com

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A new regulatory frame to reduce coal use and carbon emissions

The city began a shift in energy supply at the end of the nineties. A city-scale plan in 1998 made for the Olympic Games appliance included a rapid increase to gas consumption for 25

domestic use instead of coal. The last law in 2014 also forbid street barbecues using coal to restrain small particles causing air pollution.Different announcements and reglementations also illustrate the government’s will to ensure a cleaner air in Beijing municipality. Factories, including coal factories but also all kind of polluting industries have been little by little relocated far away from the city center. In 2014, all coal factories producing under 400 MW were closed. The bigger ones were moved out from the 5th Ring Road. Only two exceptions remain: the two autonomous coal factories of Tsinghua and Beida University. Such exceptions may be understood as a result of the complexity of Chinese multi-level governance we evoked before, which puts Beijing’s largest universities at the same level as the municipality: they are thus not obliged to enforce city-level reglementations.

Relocation of coal factories will continue until 2017, since a recent announcement from the government promised to completely remove coal from the municipality by this date. The energy mix will thus replace electricity from coal with electricity from gas for 70% of the total supply of Beijing’s electricity by 2017.However these decisions do not mean that coal-fueled energy will disappear from the country, but rather that coal factories are displaced from Beijing to other regions, like the surrounding province of Hebei. Therefore the evolution of Beijing’s energy supply may not improve overall air quality as much as expected: it can be considered as a displacement of environmental harm , as Beijing’s air quality may improve but poorer regions could suffer from an increased reliance on coal.China seems willing to better Beijing’s energy supply, but does not have the means to do so

in the rest of the country. These policies therefore have an impact on a small geographical area and are limited at a wider scale, but they remain relevant enough at the city-level. Other actions and reglementations are also implemented in addition to relocation policies, such as coal washing and quality reglementation for instance. In the end, even if control is not fully implemented, the situation still tends to be improving.

A long path onto the “smart city” technology

Beijing’s electricity transmission system remains old and not efficient enough. For example, most of the public buildings and residential areas still work on a central heating system. Thus, electricity supply and demand are all managed by central authorities, and there is no

economic incentives to regulate consumption or promote energy efficiency. This central heating system also prevent from developing new smart grid technologies to improve customers’ energy efficiency.

The heating and cooling systems could also be improved. Several foreign companies try to implement their technologies in China. However because of the regulation system, cogeneration and trigeneration urban grids were not successful, because the law does 26 27

25 Hao J.M. et Wang L.T. , « Improving Urban Air Quality in China », J. Air & Waste Manage. Assoc.,

55, 2005, p. 1298-1305. 26 Cogeneration: also called combined heat and power (CHP). Cogeneration is the use of heat engine orpower station used to generate electricity and useful heat at the same time.

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not oblige linking buildings to heating or cooling systems, and there are no economic nor ethics incentive to do so.

9. Case study: Will the Shougang project bring about a shift for urban

governance ?

Figure 4. A picture of the Shougang industrial site in Beijing

The Shougang corporation is an emblematic state-owned enterprise of Beijing for it is the second most important steel company in the country. Because of the Olympics’ plan to control air pollution, the 8,63 km2 factory, close to the 6th ring of Beijing city, was relocated in Hebei province in 2005.

The Shougang case is interesting for urban governance as it seems to differ from any other case in Beijing before. The industrial site was supposed to be demolished since 2005, but the corporation managed to obtain specific ownership rights in January 2014 as Shougang was deemed “industrial patrimony”. Thus, the local government was not able to take control of the site nor to demolish it, and the Shougang corporation started a reconversion of this industrial site. The combination of a “private” initiative, or at least not ruled by the government, and the the effective enforcement of patrimony law in China are already two components showing a significant change in urban governance.

Our interest for Shougang project does not stop in those two points though, since the company is trying to implement since 2014 “the new Shougang high-tech area” that would

essentially concentrate tertiary activities. The government has already approved the new urban plan of the area. The new project would include an important transportation development with 3 metro lines, 5 metro stations and a tramway line. It also includes an ambitious environmental programme. Through this project, Beijing city would like to integrate the C40 club where it is already an observer city . The C40 is the world urban initiative 28

encouraged with the COP21 for sustainable cities innovations. Thus, the Shougang project

27 Trigeneration: also cooled combined cooling, heat and power (CCHP): simultaneous generation ofthree kind of power (electricity, useful heating and cooling) used from the combustion of a fuel or thanksto a solar heat collector.The two previous technologies (cogeneration and trigeneration) are more sustainable and efficient since

it enables to keep energy losses during the combustion of a fuel. Besides, heating and cooling systemtransportation are more efficient than an electric transportation would have.28 http://www.c40.org/cities/beijing/blog_posts

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could be a successful initiative since it is already in cooperation with a few research centers like Tsinghua University for green buildings or the english laboratory ARUP for climate questions. It could also induce a new decentralised energy company to organise a positive energy system with a new distribution system operator created by the Shougang corporation.

Though apparently unique, Shougang is showing the rise of a new kind of environmental governance encouraged by economical and political opportunities, introducing new stakeholders in the urban governance in China.

Figure 5. Plan elaborated for Shougang new service district. The district is crossed by the West - EastChang’an Avenue, which is the biggest west-east axis crossing Beijing.

10. Conclusion

Despite significant efforts to rely on cleaner energy sources, displacement of environmental harm remains a powerful analytical tool to understand Beijing’s environmental governance. Indeed, the city is a showcase of China’s successes for the Chinese Communist Party, while the surrounding region of Hebei remains unknown. Monitoring air pollution at the city level proves insightful, but it hides the deepening inequalities that may improve these figures within the urban area.

Beijing’s embodiment of the country’s achievement also has perverse effects , particularly in the construction sector, with a growing number of green building certificates

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that are awarded based on plans and not on the finished product, and on waste management, as informal recycling structures were removed and refuse is now being dealt with through incineration.

The city is also embedded in a complex net of double governance between the CCP and

the municipal authorities. The hold of the central government on Beijing is therefore much stronger than in other Chinese cities, thus leading to a lower participation of civil society. For instance, NGOs - and even foreign private companies - often directed projects in “pilot cities” but rarely did they intervene in the capital. The Foreign NGO Management Law , currently being drafted, should hinder the capacity of these actors to intervene even more.

Environmental issues also pose the question of awareness to these problems: there is undoubtedly an issue of individual consumption (level of waste output, automobile dependency) and thus awareness at the individual level. Local governments also lack a long-term commitment to addressing environmental issues: incentives to reduce air pollution are market-based (make the city more attractive), what often lead to a displacement of

environmental harm to surrounding regions rather than eliminating the problem at its source.

In spite of these considerable challenges paving the path to environmental governance, there are reasons to be optimistic: indeed, a number of bottom-up trends such as electric scooter use and reliance on solar water heaters have positive externalities in reducing greenhouse gases emissions. Chai Jing’s documentary Under the Dome (February 2015) was watched by over 300 million Chinese people within a week after its release: the film did not only point to the government’s responsibilities, but also aimed to trigger individual-level action and awareness. Though our analysis of Chinese civil society’s prospects is rather gloomy, we must not overlook the impact activists, NGOs and film-makers still have today, as well as the potential translation of their action into public action, such as Wang Jiuliang’s

Beijing Besieged by Waste that triggered informal dumpsites’ removal by the government.

In a nutshell, two main conclusions may be drawn from our research. Unlike Western countries where citizens’ initiatives to mitigate greenhouse gases emissions are welcome, China’s environmental protection path lies in a “state-led environmentalism” (Shapiro 2012) where governance is highly centralized. This induces a number of issues that we raised throughout this report, but the central government is adapting quickly to rising environmental concerns, for instance through the 12th Five Year Plan (2011-2015), considered the greenest in Chinese history.

Secondly, the environmental “showcase” that we witnessed in Beijing could lead us to

believe that China is not actually tackling this problem. However Beijing’s air pollution has actually started to decrease, and it seems on track to continue to do so. The question now lies in whether Jing-Jin-Ji will bring about a change in governance and lead to less displacement of environmental harm.

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