19.9.07

Otra Exportación China



Hace un par de semanas el New York Times publicó As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes. Si no lo han leído lo recomiendo ampliamente. El artículo es alarmante y deja claro el costo que los Chinos pagan por su crecimiento económico espectacular, algunos dirían envidiable. Yo no:



Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.


Lo que hace el artículo fascinante es que se pregunta que le conviene al gobierno chino: ¿disminuir la contaminación sacrificando el crecimiento económico o permitir la contaminación sacrificando la salud de sus ciudadanos?



For the Communist Party, the political calculus is daunting. Reining in economic growth to alleviate pollution may seem logical, but the country’s authoritarian system is addicted to fast growth. Delivering prosperity placates the public, provides spoils for well-connected officials and forestalls demands for political change. A major slowdown could incite social unrest, alienate business interests and threaten the party’s rule.

But pollution poses its own threat. Officials blame fetid air and water for thousands of episodes of social unrest. Health care costs have climbed sharply. Severe water shortages could turn more farmland into desert. And the unconstrained expansion of energy-intensive industries creates greater dependence on imported oil and dirty coal, meaning that environmental problems get harder and more expensive to
address the longer they are unresolved.


Un cínico podría responder que ese es un problema de los chinos y que, usando una frase de sabiduría popular que escucho prácticamente todos los días, “hay muchos chinos”. Es decir, sobran. El problema es que, aunque muchos políticos mexicanos no se han enterado, México comparte el planeta con otros países y hay problemas que rebasan fronteras:


China’s problem has become the world’s problem. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China’s coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul,
South Korea, and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.


Si llega a Los Angeles no me sorprendería que también la contaminación que se origina en Chengdu o Shangai llegue a México. Otra exportación china y no de las más bienvenidas.

Gary Becker, en mi opinión el más brillante economista vivo y además un blogger (hay algo superlativamente cool en que alguien de 78 años tenga un blog) no tardó en publicar algo acerca del tema.

Según el:


It is a problem of externalities. The costs of Chinese air pollution to Koreans,Japanese, and Americans are not costs to China, and the benefits of abating this external pollution would not be benefits to China.

Since greater pollution-reduction efforts would lower the growth rate of its output,
the harm to other nations would not enter into its policy.
Es decir, a China no le conviene reducir su contaminación. La única manera entonces sería negociar y cambalachear eso a cambio de algo más:



There are things that China wants from Korea, Japan, and the United States, and these countries can give China some of those things in barter for China's
strengthening its enforcement of its existing pollution controls or adopting and
enforcing newer, more stringent ones.

Un tal Greg Mankiw (si, el de los libros de Eco I del ITAM) no cree que sea nada fácil aunque propone un impuesto pigouviano a las emisiones contaminantes.

Hay una tesis de licenciatura usando teoría de juegos aquí que suplica ser escrita. ¿Alguien?