It’s been 10 days since I flew back to China and I find
myself rushing through the pollution, tower blocks and factories towards
Beijing at 287km/h on a shiny new bullet train, after getting to the train
station on a shiny new underground train (which cost a whopping 20p). I’m on
the way to attend a reading group run by the Beijing Energy Network; the topic
of discussion is a report about fossil fuel subsidy reform in China in order to
meet the Paris climate change agreements. In this moment, rushing through a
bleak and degraded landscape between two mega-cities, where spring is just
beginning to reveal itself, I feel a distant sense of hope for the future.
Upon arrival to Tianjin, the city where I live, the first thing I noticed was that there is now a tube station open right outside the bus station. When I left this city 15 months ago it wasn’t there, but there are always new tube lines under construction. Now the bus station is linked to the rest of the transport system in a sustainable manner – I no longer have to take a taxi to get there like I used to when I lived here before.
I dropped my bags in the school where I work (I stayed in the school for a night while looking for a flat) and went outside to walk around and see what had changed in the short time I’d been away. In my jet-lagged state I noticed there are cool-looking new bicycles everywhere. It turns out there are at least 5 or 6 companies who now offer rentable bicycles in the city. They drop them all over the city and leave it up to the residents to do with them what they will. To use the bikes you need to download an app for the company that provided them, then use your phone to scan a QR code (like a barcode) on the bike. It then takes a deposit from your bank account, charges you about 10p to use the bike and gives you the code for the lock. If you find a damaged bike you can message the company responsible for it and they will send someone to fix it. I love this, it’s a slick operation and now there are thousands of people riding these bikes all over the city. I’ve seen people who are clearly learning to ride a bike for the first time using these bikes regularly, as they zig-zag down the wrong side of the road ringing the bell maniacally at any unfortunate soul who ends up in their way.
The bikes have had at least two unintended consequences, as far as I can tell. One is positive; bike theft used to be one of the most common crimes in Tianjin, now it isn’t any more. I always felt safe in China, but my bike never was; I had two stolen in my first year here. Now hardly anyone is buying bikes anymore because they can rent them so cheaply. This means there is almost no market to sell stolen ones. When I tried to pay the owner of a large bike shed to store my battered, dusty, old, cheap bike overnight to keep it safe, she responded “你干嘛存那样的车啊?!”, more or less meaning “What on earth are you doing trying to store a crappy bike like that here?!”, the implication was that it would be safe no matter where you leave it because no-one is interested in stealing bikes like that anymore.
A second unintended, and more negative, consequence is the impact it is having on taxi drivers. They have already suffered a loss of income from Dididache (the Chinese Uber) and the tube lines, now they have to compete with these rentable bikes too. They appear to have had enough… I’ve been told that taxi drivers have been going out at night in groups and smashing up the bikes, or even burning them. It appears to be true. After I met up with an old friend a couple of days ago she wanted to use one of these bikes to get home. After about 6 failed attempts to find one that wasn’t broken she gave up and took the tube home instead. To me, this highlights the need for more skilled work and training to replace jobs that are being lost to such schemes, automation and software, and/or a universal basic income in the short-term while we transition to a new economy and way of living. For example, if those bicycles are made by robots in factories and require very few people to maintain them, the labour costs involved in producing and maintaining them are miniscule, which is probably why they only cost 10p to ride. Of course a taxi driver cannot compete with prices that low. However, if lower labour costs means things become cheaper, then in theory we could all work less hours anyway because automation and other technology is making things cheaper. I don’t think taxi drivers in Tianjin see it that way though as no alternative appears to be provided for them yet…
As I continued to reacquaint myself with Tianjin I also noticed that there are now a small number of charging points for electric cars and there are a few of what I think are rentable electric cars. If you click on the picture you can see that the charging points have been named "intelligent charging piles", which I found quite amusing. I heard there may only be about 100 rentable electric cars in the city so far, but it’s a start and looks very positive. Someone told me that rentable electric bikes are about to appear on the scene too. Let’s hope the angry mobs of taxi drivers don’t smash them up too…
I’ve also noticed that hundreds and hundreds of trees have been planted in the city since I was last here. This city is already pretty green in summer (literally, not environmentally) but now it’s set to be even greener. This is great because, although I have spotted around 10 bird species in the city’s biggest park, in the little time I’ve had to spend bird-spotting so far as I rush around trying to settle back in, biodiversity is suffering immensely in this region of mega-cities. Also, the rainstorms in the summer regularly flood the streets so hopefully all the new trees will slow down runoff and mitigate the problem a little bit, in addition to providing some much-appreciated shading in summer.
Although this country is suffering through environmental problems that are probably beyond any scale that has been seen before in human history, in a way it does still feel good to be here. The hope comes from the fact that everything is changing so fast, and more and more the change seems to be moving in the right direction. I’m looking forward to the meeting I’m attending tomorrow on fossil fuel subsidy reform and I hope that I will find some positive information to share with you. Despite all the positives I’ve mentioned above, these solutions are still small compared to the problems – you realise that when you are driven an hour out of town for a visa-medical and all you see the whole way is giant buildings being constructed from concrete, 8-lane roads, pollution and factories and giant cooling towers belching out all sorts of nasty gases and pollutants. In the midst of all that I was amazed to see a pheasant fly over the road at one point - nature is still there, waiting for us to clean up this mess so it can thrive again.
On a personal note, I’m also really pleased to be teaching again for the time being while I finish my MSc in Sustainability and Adaptation in the Built Environment online. Although I’m an English teacher, the syllabus I have to teach covers just about every topic from climate change to health to advertising to linguistic diversity, because the students need to be able to talk about these things in English to pass their exams and prepare for university abroad. I’m sure that I can gently work sustainability into many of my classes and hopefully help my students to make informed decisions about how they choose to live as adults after they finish school. In my first week they have already responded very positively to a class I gave on climate change, although there is a tendency in China to consider all environmental problems as the same thing, so helping them understand the difference between climate change, air pollution, acid rain and littering etc. and then to be able to communicate about it clearly in English all in a 90-minute class is quite a challenge!
If I get a good response to this blog then I’ll update it from time to time when I feel I have found enough interesting and relevant things to tell you about. I hope you enjoy it, please let me know if you do, or message me if you have any thoughts, questions or criticisms J
Hi Mi Ke, I'm taking the CAT course too, but via distance learning. We've not met. I'm Malaysian Chinese, and my interest is agriculture, although I'm a medical doctor by profession. I hope someday to establish an agro-ecology farm in my home state of Johor. I shall be following your blog with interest.
ReplyDeleteHi Hoon Teo,
DeleteThanks for your comment :-)
That sounds like a great plan, I'd love to do something like that one day too, although perhaps just in a large garden rather than a whole farm. I can't even imagine all the exotic and wonderful things you could grow in Malaysia! Good luck with it!
Keep it going Mike, enjoyed reading it. Big hug matey. Ade
ReplyDeleteThanks Ade :-) We should catch up some time soon! Hope you're doing well.
DeleteThis is really interesting. I also love Mobike and I can't wait for it to take over the world. I wonder how other governments would deal with parking violations and antagonising the public transport industry...
ReplyDeleteThanks Sally, glad you enjoyed it! I'm getting my bank account linked to my phone later on today so I can start using them too - will never have to walk around Beijing again!
DeleteI was surprised to see that you can just leave them anywhere. I wonder how many bikes get lost. Or how many people are late for work when they can't find one near their home. It's an interesting way of doing it.
Hi Mike,
ReplyDeleteI got here via the comment section of the Guardian series on China. Thanks for your interesting blog. Things are really changing in China, some getting better and some worse. My brother lives in Hangzhou and I have visited the city a few times. I can sense that the younger generation is already quite different. One time I boarded a very crowded bus in an outer Hangzhou suburbs. Since it was really packed, many people got on from the exit door. I was really surprised to see people passing their fare card to the front to be scanned! Despite the restriction in civic liberty, I harbour real hope that the country is moving forward positively. My sister-in-law told me that governance has gotten better over the years. City authorities are more responsive to civic complaints and problems normally get solved quickly. She said that's what most people really care about, the nuts and bolts of daily living. That could be one predictor that Western observers are not talking about in their writings. I still believe that once Xi is able to consolidate his power, the grip on civil liberty will be loosened. I'm not sure if you have followed news outlets such as Epoch Times and NTDTV. Interestingly, commentators on these outlets seem to believe that Xi is engaging in a mortal battle with leftovers from the Jiang faction. They believe that Jiang is the source of all evil, literally. Some of the stuff in these outlets are quite far-fetched but for those who know about their background, the implication of them vouching for Xi is shocking, although they do forecast that Xi's victory will bring about the death of the CCP. :-)
Good luck with your works and I appreciate what you are doing for the kids.
Kongxudeyun
Wow that sounds like an interesting read, perhaps I should check it out too!
DeleteYes, although the government ultimately makes all the decisions here, and they're not always in the interest of the people, it is still in their interest to listen to people. If Xijinping wants to consolidate his power then he needs to keep social unrest to a minimum by keeping people happy to some degree. Since many local residents and many of us foreigners who have had a meaningful experience here seem to feel like things are moving more and more in the right direction, I take it as a sign that the government does listen to people to some extent. Unfortunately the power of the people to push them harder is limited, as they still do so at their own risk... :-S
And thank you for your comment :-)
DeleteCame here from the Guardian so your advertising worked :) Really good to read a blog like this from on the ground (as it were). Will be interested to follow your journery, I'm fascinated by the country.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I know this kind of information is not readily available in the West so thought I'd help out :-)
DeleteI would like to read more about your observations! Consider this a positive comment ;-)
ReplyDeleteGreat, Alex, glad you enjoyed it. I plan to write a new entry within the next few days :-)
DeleteHi Mike , I'm Tim from CAT here for a while in Shenzhen district.
ReplyDeleteGood to read your blog. Yeah, I seen those cycles but havent worked out how to pay through phone yet!
see ya
I should be getting that set up this week, will let you know! It will make it much easier to get around Beijing when I go up there on the weekends.
DeleteA Lonely Planet guidebook once summed it up really well: China is a land that is undergoing massive change, but somehow always stays exactly the same.
ReplyDeleteThe people in charge in China aren't idiots or incompetent, and sometimes they do get things right. There is serious public discontent about pollution, so they are trying to do something about it. At the same time their terror of unrest of any kind, which is inevitable given the kind of system they preside over, means that they are loathe to make the kind of painful reforms that could really bring pollution down, like closing down inefficient factories and reducing energy intensiveness. Currently one thing they are doing is moving the most polluting factories out of Beijing, where the kind of social elites who really care about air pollution live, and into provinces like Hebei where most people are less likely to care.
Hi Ji Xiang,
DeleteThank you for reading my blog and leaving a comment :-)
I agree, I don't think the leaders are incompetent, there are huge changes underway and life is getting better and better, but there are still so many more changes that need to take place. It's not a simple task to balance progress in the economy, environment and society all at the same time in such a large and rapidly changing country!
Although, in my limited experience, I'm not sure that I would agree that rural people care less about air pollution, there are lots of protests in the countryside everyday about all different kinds of pollution, I think these people are probably just less empowered to do anything about it and struggling more to meet their basic economic needs. Although it is really difficult to do, reducing the energy intensity of the economy and continuing the drive to move away from coal, for example, and towards renewable energy will make a difference.