Most of us in Shanghai know about the failure of Dongtan, an eco-friendly concept that was supposed to be built on Chongming Island, but that's just one of dozens of "low-carbon" concept cities the Chinese government wanted to built... and have actually built. Unfortunately, if unsurprisingly, most of the ones now in existence aren't environmental at all. Says energy researcher Jiang Kejun in this telling interview on Chinadialogue, the problem lies in what the government thinks is green: "We can’t blame Langfang or any other city - they were working to the ministry’s standards. But now that “low-carbon” is the thing, the ministry is calling “environmentally-friendly” cities “low-carbon” instead. Langfang is a small city, you can normally bike from home to work in ten minutes, and drive in three or four - but car usage is higher than in Beijing. Why? Because parking is free and the roads are wide... The most frightening thing is that, in the future, half of China’s urban population will be in cities like this. If they all copy Beijing, our low-carbon cities are done for." more ›

During his discussion with Kerry Brown and Duncan Hewitt at the recently held Shanghai International Literary Festival, Paul French quoted British environmentalist Jonathon Porritt as saying that "the biggest problem with the environment in China is that nobody in China could care less about it". more ›