China & the nanny state

When we look at where the lion’s share of Global carbon emissions come from, it’s the elephant in the room…..China. With a population of 1.4 billion and starting their industrial revolution 50 years after Europe and North America there are many ways to justify this.

Spread across such an enormous population, they average 8t of CO2 emissions per person per year compared to many developed countries in the 15-20t per person range.

What China does better than anyone else is they do things fast, none of this nanny state populist coalition government rubbish, where no one makes bold decisions for fear of losing votes. If they want to double the size of a dam or build a wind or solar farm, whinging complaints to EPA doesn’t slow them down, or one farmer stopping/diverting a high-speed railway.

During Covid as you can see below they ramped up car exports from 1 million a year to 4 million (that’s incredible), not just for export. In the space of 4 years their big cities like Beijing and Shanghai basically swapped out IC (Internal Combustion) vehicles for electric, and in doing so their historical smog problem reduced dramatically.

Impressive and whilst carbon positive, most of these vehicles will be charged using coal fired power, so effectively they’ve shifted the pollution elsewhere, a good effort but a large greenwashing factor to consider.

Whilst the electric cars are environmentally superior, if powered by renewable energy, manufacturing batteries is a carbon heavy process…..then there’s the ethical debate about where the cobalt and lithium is coming from, with a strong link to slave and child labour in the Chinese run Congo mines (Watch Blood Cobalt).

Back to farming…..China increased its self-sufficiency in milk production by 11 million metric tons/year from 2018 to 2023, or effectively as much as Australia’s current annual production.

The country’s whole milk powder (WMP) imports plunged from an average of 820,000 metric tons in 2021 to a mere 430,000 metric tons in 2023. Most impressive from an internal supply of quality protein perspective…..bit rough on Aussie farmers who got used to budgeting on $2,000 plus for 200kg friesian heifers to the China live export market.

Now I’m not a communist, socialist, left leaning, right leaning or follow any religion. My opinions are more of someone sitting up on a cloud making independent observations on the chaos that is humanity. So, imagine if you came from another planet, were given a snapshot of earth and its problems…..I suggest China would stand out like ‘dogs balls’ as overall the most successful and sustainable model we have…..Positive KPI’s

• Very low crime
• Low CO2 emissions per person
• Evidence of reversing desertification
• Climate change is fast…..they do things fast

Flip side, their human rights record is appalling, albeit measured by nanny state societies with double the murder rate, suicide rate and quantity of antidepressants used, combined with ingrained drug and alcohol abuse…..If you came from another planet I reckon you might even think nanny state was worse.

Hang on…..I may have come across a little too China positive….. disregarding their appalling behaviour with the WTO (World Trade Organisation) where their treatment of our grain, wine and lobster growers is clearly politically motivated and market manipulating…..and now as reported by Episode 3, Canadian Canola is suffering a similar treatment in response to Canada imposing EV tariffs.

We tend to forget they live in a very different culture…..socially, politically and financially. Whilst their unusual trading responses can be offensive to us, I expect its quite normal in their historical domestic business environment.