China Environmental Law

The opinion pieces in the Shanghai Daily usually have the same strange appeal as a car wreck.  The scene is so harrowing and chaotic, so far from the normal and rational, that one can’t help but stare at it and wonder how everything got so twisted.

Today, however, one of the opinions actually made some sense.  In “Our obsession with cars and the social ‘pressure differential‘” veteran opiner Wan Lixin writes about the subtle (and not so subtle) social pressures that propel middle class Shanghainese into car ownership.

One month ago my son observed to me that a lot of his kindergarten classmates’ families have bought cars.

I drew his attention to the poisonous car emissions, the cost of resources, and so on, but he was certainly well prepared. “If so many people are buying and poisoning the air, why can’t we do so too?”

I should thank my lucky stars that my son has not yet learnt to invoke such holy words as “internal demand.”

Shanghai has to be among the easiest large cities in China to navigate without a car.  Its relatively compact and walkable central core combined with a good and growing bus and subway system, and usually plentiful taxis, make it easy to live in the city without owning a car.  It appears, however, that suburban sprawl is taking its toll here as well.

As a parent I have been tipped off by a number of other parents that they have discovered a fabulous place where their children can enjoy themselves. I have learned to respond to their effusive descriptions with restraint, for these places are likely suburban destinations (read: you need a car to get there).

When such destinations are mentioned on a regular basis, the “pressure differential” is building up.

The way to a Chinese consumers’ heart is through his or her children, so this pretty much assures explosive growth in car sales.  As an American it is hard for me to preach car abstinence to the Chinese.  Mr. Wang tries with these parting words:

When the United States embraced the car culture, its people had before them a virtually virgin continent. There was promise of unlimited space, resources, possibilities, and decades of cheap oil. But Detroit is dying.

We are not starting out with any of North America’s advantages.

I think the most we can hope for is that China makes (and people buy) cars that pollute less.  That may help slow the destruction of the environment, but it won’t do much to slow the destruction of the social fabric that is wrought by the car culture.  It will be very sad to see a China that is car wrecked.