Pollution is a huge problem for China; there are no doubts about it. Due to the growing
environmental concern around the world, not to mention the high spike in
adverse health effects,
something needs to be done.
Is China truly moving into action?
They are supposedly trying to cut back on emissions as both domestic and
international concern cultivates. Nonetheless,
they are still a long way off. Their Climate Change Performance Index is still
poor, demonstrating the need for a greater emphasis to be placed on the issue;
their reluctance
to fix the issue is startling.
What
are some ways in which China could confront the issue? For starters, stricter
laws must be enacted. Understandably, China is trying to maintain their global
appeal for cheap labor/manufacturing. However, the problem at hand needs to be
fixed, otherwise countries will begin to reject their services, even at the
“lower prices” (the negative environmental externalities could, at some point, outweigh
the amount countries are gaining through “lower prices”).
Another idea is for
other countries to impose import tariffs on those Chinese goods specific to
high pollution rates during production. This would, in theory, limit the amount
of Chinese goods countries would purchase, establishing an equal playing field
for those countries that follow the pollution rules to provide goods at similar
prices. This is not an ideal situation; global terms of trade would worsen and the
WTO would need to get involved as tariff wars would most likely be a resultant.
Additionally, some countries would have game-theory-like incentives to cheat
regarding the tariffs.
The last idea is that of a carbon tax, as we discussed
in class. Countries could write out contracts to propose carbon taxes in each
respective country, ensuring enforcement through the United Nations/WTO. The
tax collected could go towards lowering other consumer taxes, as consumers
would likely get hit with higher prices on goods, thus evening out the losses.
fortnately a tax that is recommended by other countries is crasy because there is no need for them to impose just because the US wants them to so in the case of a carbon tax china could simply stop exporting to us. The true question we should ask when considering a change in china's population is who has more power the producer that being china or the consumer which would be USA. In my opinion China in a way has more power over us than we as a consumer have over them and thus they could simply stop trading with us if they dont want to impose the tax we want them to impose
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of this article. One of the problems that I have though about is if we impose taxes on these higher emission goods in China what stops countries from going to India and buying the same good at a lower price? I think it would be very hard to tax a single good across the board.
ReplyDeleteThese solutions to lower pollution in China seem like they might have some issues with implementation. Even if countries do agree to set a tariff of goods imported from China, countries would have an incentive to cheat based on game theory, especially when these tariffs will reduce WTO and welfare for other countries. Although pollution is a huge concern for some, other people honestly don't worry about it as much and would prefer to be able to afford more goods than to protest pollution in favor of the environment. The carbon tax also seems to have potential, but I don't think that countries would indeed lower other taxes to compensate for the higher prices. Tax law is difficult to change and especially with protests from different special interest groups, lower other taxes doesn't seem overly feasible. I think that both of these ideas sound good in theory, but have their issues when implementing them in reality.
ReplyDeleteI do not agree with the above solutions to resolve the heavy pollution in China. Because Chinese governments have tried to settle the sticker law for years or add more tariffs on goods specific to high pollution rates during production, unfortunately, they finally failed. In my opinion, this is a normal phenomenon for many developing countries who are going to become developed class. Recent situation occured in China is similar to British 100 years before. So I believe that China will overcome this problem soon (around 10 years). Besides, I think the core problem refers how to improve the method of production, not how governments intervene firms to sell their products on international market, not mention whether to set consumer taxes. I think countries should stick together and share innovative methods to prevent more pollution being created by somewhere on the earth.
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