e-magazine
Charting a New Path
A significant Party plenary session dedicates itself to lifting the rule of law to a new level across China
Current Issue
· Table of Contents
· Editor's Desk
· Previous Issues
· Subscribe to Mag
Subscribe Now >>
Expert's View
World
Nation
Business
Finance
Market Watch
Legal-Ease
North American Report
Forum
Government Documents
Expat's Eye
Health
Sci-Tech
Lifestyle
Books
Movies
Backgrounders
Special
Photo Gallery
Blogs
Reader's Service
Learning with
'Beijing Review'
E-mail us
RSS Feeds
PDF Edition
Web-magazine
Reader's Letters
Make Beijing Review your homepage
Top Story
Top Story
UPDATED: September 5, 2014 NO. 36 SEPTEMBER 4, 2014
Letting Go of GDP
Diversified evaluators have been introduced to assess local officials' performance amid growing ecological concerns
By Wang Jun
Share

Incorporated into the province's agricultural and ecological zones, Anxi is numbered among the 34 counties and cities of the province that will not be evaluated on GDP growth. This means the most important task for local officials will be ecological protection.

Liu felt that he has a greater responsibility. He believed emphasizing ecological protection instead of GDP growth will make local government officials focus on indicators of environmental protection, such as forest coverage and per-capita area of afforested land.

To protect the environment, Anxi has paid a heavy price. In 2011, all of the county's 630 stone material factories were closed, which reportedly incurred a loss of 2 billion yuan ($324 million) in the county's GDP and 150 million yuan ($24 million) in fiscal revenue. But the resulting environmental protection has helped the county attract some big projects in the photovoltaic industry.

Once a poverty-stricken county, Anxi has now taken its place as one of the top 100 counties in the country in terms of economic power. In the first half of this year, the county's GDP reached 16.7 billion yuan ($2.71 billion), rising 11.4 percent year on year.

"With government performance no longer being evaluated in terms of GDP growth, we will be able to spend more time and effort adjusting our industrial structure, and we will no longer go down the path of addressing the problem only after the damage caused by pollution has been done," Liu said.

Although Fujian has announced its decision not to gauge 34 local governments' overall performance on GDP growth, it has not yet formulated detailed alternative policies on how it will measure their achievements.

Liu thinks since the government at higher levels has shifted the focus of work to ecological protection, they should allocate more administrative resources and powers to environmental protection departments. Otherwise, he claimed, this policy will not have the desired effect.

Ecological GDP

"GDP calculation is an indicator with a history of more than 100 years. It is unrealistic to completely abandon the measure," said Wang Jinnan, Vice President of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning.

"We hope 'ecological GDP' can replace conventional GDP," said Wang Bing, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Forestry. At the end of 2012, he proposed the concept of "ecological GDP," a system in which environmental degradation and resource consumption are deducted from conventional GDP and ecological beneficial activities, such as conservation of water resources, are added.

An earlier concept was "green GDP," proposed by Wang Jinnan and his team in 2004, which deducts resource depletion and environmental losses from the conventional GDP. Wang Jinnan said this statistical method still needs improvement.

Another potential indicator is "gross ecosystem product" (GEP), which was jointly introduced in 2013 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Elion Green Foundation. The GEP will measure the gross product of both natural and artificial ecosystems—including forests, deserts, wetlands, farmlands, pastures and aquaculture farms—and corresponds to the gross domestic product of the area.

All three of the proposed indicators combine economic growth with ecological costs, and all have received the support of local governments across China.

An article in International Financial News revealed that Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces in northeast China now calculate their ecological GDP, while GEP has been adopted by Guangdong Province in the south. Guizhou in southwest China has been designated as a province for the research of GEP.

Email us at: wangjun@bjreview.com

   Previous   1   2  



 
Top Story
-Saving the Ecosystem
-The Burning Question
-New Era for Central Tenet of Governance
-OPINION: An Enduring Cause
-Special Reports: Fighting Against Ebola Virus
Most Popular
在线翻译
About BEIJINGREVIEW | About beijingreview.com | Rss Feeds | Contact us | Advertising | Subscribe & Service | Make Beijing Review your homepage
Copyright Beijing Review All right reserved