2020. 3. 3. 18:25ㆍenvironment
[03 March, 2020]
○ controversial points marked in red
○ notation (question or refutation) marked in blue
#1 How China Became the World's Leader in Green Energy - Scott Malcomson
Today, Chinese labor is relatively expensive, the country’s environment is toxic, and the Chinese Communist Party is striving to reduce foreign dependence. The remarkable rise of China’s green economy is fueled by all three of these factors.
China, well aware of its dependence on foreign energy supplies and the dirtiness of its coal-dominated domestic energy industry, then began to cultivate a domestic market for solar power.
In effect, China seeded the global green energy industry by lowering initial costs and creating artificial demand. → What about regulations to protect labors in the existing industry? How the demand was artificially created; no victims under the market manipulation?
When it comes to green innovation, technology transfer goes both ways. → but the reality seems different (i.e. trade/tech war b/w China and the US)
The connection between the intention of investment in technological innovation and the results is rarely tight. A lot of money was lost laying fiber-optic cable around the world. WorldCom’s purchase of MFS’s unprofitable cable business made it the largest owner of global cable prior to its own 2002 bankruptcy—then the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. But the result was a telecommunications infrastructure that brought the Internet to the world, leading to a host of technological and industrial advances unimagined by the investors who nonetheless made them possible, even if they did not succeed in profiting from them.
China’s advances in green technology have universal benefits that policymakers must not discount, lest the U.S.-Chinese tech war exact collateral damage that benefits no one. The zero-sum logic of decoupling is disingenuous.
Source (Full Text):
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-02-28/how-china-became-worlds-leader-green-energy