China Daily is reporting that China’s draft “circular economy” law has been submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (danwei reports that the Beijing News is also carrying it). As a translation, “circular economy” is not only awkward, it is also regularly substituted by “Recycling Economy” and “Sustainable Economy.” For the purpose of this post, I’ll use “Recycling Economy,” while noting that translation really depends upon context.
In either case, for the last three years I’ve been covering the slow development of this important legislation as it pertains to China’s recycling industries (thus, “Recycling Economy”). And over the course of those three years it became increasingly clear that the legislation would cover much more than recycling and – if the China Daily story is to be taken seriously – it is being set-up as a catch-all solution to of China’s environmental problems.
In late May the China National Resources Recycling Association [CRRA] held its annual conference in Tianjin, and I was fortunate enough to be in attendance when Feng Zhijun, member of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress, vice-chairman of that body’s Environment & Resource Protection Committee, and – most important for the purposes of this post – Coordinator of the Circular Economy legislation, presented the conference’s keynote address.
It’s quite rare that a high-ranking national official like Feng will publicly discuss long-delayed and much-debated draft legislation. But that’s precisely what Feng did – in a sense – on that May afternoon, providing the first hints as to the philosophy and means that China will apply to the development of a Chinese Circular Economy. I covered the speech and the conference for Recycling International, a trade journal based in the Netherlands, and the complete article can be found in the current issue. Below is the section relating to Feng Zhijun’s speech. I note – from the outset – that it was one of the most bizarre presentations that I have ever witnessed by a government official in any country. It was also one of the most frank that I’ve ever heard from a Chinese official, and though the colorful language is both distracting and entertaining, it suggests (to me, at least) the absurd scale of China’s environmental crisis as observed from one of Beijing’s pinnacles.
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