China is building a national infrastructure with a speed and capacity never seen before. Infrastructure is a valuable asset contributing to a country's national economy. In the case of China the national infrastrucure is also of outmost global importance. I take a look at how China combine their transportation infrastructure with an Earth observation infrastructure that is being immensly improved in China these days; the GPS system.

Global warming in China

China's economy can still be described as red hot. So can also it's research and technical development, include herein it's infrastructure. People's Daily Online reported Tuesday that The Beijing-Tianjin Passenger railway now finished laying down its tracks, marking a new era in China's history of railway construction. The Beijing-Tianjin railway is the first inter-city high-speed railway on Chinese mainland.

Over the last two years, I've been visiting China several times. Every time I return to Beijing the traffic is denser and the air thicker. It is slow and polluting. This is clearly not good for neither economy nor environment. One has to wonder if China really has to make all the mistakes we've done in the Western world.

Satellite picture of Tianjin, China's third largest urban area, after Shanghai and Beijing.     Photo: European Space Agency

When Andrew Revkin of the New York Times discusses the role of China in connection with global warming in his article As China Goes, So Goes Global Warming, he also asks if China will be able to skip some of the phases that the existing industrialized world has gone trough. 

Mr Revkin has talked to BinBin Jiang, a research associate in energy and development at Stanford University. Dr. Jiang sees opportunities in creating an efficient infrastructure for China’s exploding midsize cities. “That’s where you determine if you are going to leapfrog or go along the old Western path,” she said.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change - Bali
During the preceding weeks the UNFCCC met in Bali, negotiating the follow-up of the Kyoto Protocol. Tuesday this week, China officially welcomed the resulting Bali roadmap .

"The roadmap has shown the way and set a timetable for future negotiations on global climate change," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told at the press conference releasing the news.

China will continue to participate actively in relevant negotiations, he said, urging developed countries to continue to reduce emissions after 2012 according to the roadmap, and to leverage new funding and support for technology transfer, finance and adaptation for the developing world.

In their offical acknowledgement of the Bali roadmap, China repeats that it expects the developed countries to pay the bill for reducing emissions and adaptations to climate change. For China this is of course economically conventient and therefore no surprise.

To me this sound very much like negotiation and political tactics. Because there is evidence that China will not sit still and wait until the developed world give in and pay the bill.

Obviously we have to count China's National Climate Program of June 2007 and the EU-China bilateral agreement of December 2007, where cooperation projects on several aspects of climate change are included, as signs of political will to take climate change and global warming seriously.

Can we spot any other signs in China today that indicate it will and can go leapfrog the Western path on its way to become a fully industrialized society?

Chinese transport system and infrastructure

The traffic in Beijing cannot continue to increase the way it does today. Nor in the many midsize cities. The Ministry of railways has established and finished many major contruction projects the last decade. Perhaps the most well known is the Qinghai-Tibet railway, the world's highest railway with an average altitude above 4000 m. You may or may not like the Qinghai-Tibet railway, but it is a matter of fact that China use this infrastructure to collect valuable environmental information, information that will improve our understanding of the Earth system. Every 10 meter along the close to 1000 km long rails on the Tibetan plateau's remote areas there is a GPS station allowing detailed surveying of the crustal movements. The fact that these rails are there allows also other data collection from the Himalayas. An area of great interest not only to China and Asia but the whole world.

The Tibetan Plateau seen from the Space shuttle. Observing in this remote area is very difficult. The railway has improved the accessibility and increased opportunities to gather climate and other Earth system data from the Himalayas. Photo: NASA

High-speed train in Shanghai
Shanghai, China's economic capital, built the world's first commercial maglev route from the Longyang Road metro station to the Pudong Airport earlier this decade. Shanghai maglev is the world's fastest railway system in commercial operation today. This Transrapid monorail has a design speed of over 500 km/h (310 mph) and a regular service speed of 430 km/h (267 mph). It takes about 7 minutes to get from Shanghai to the Pudong Airport and I can personally vouch for it's precise and smooth running as I have had the pleasure of riding it on various occations.

Combining Earth observation and transportation infrastructure
This railway is continuously monitored with mm accuracy by GPS, the well known technique of the Global Geodetic Observing System also used in Earth observation for climate research , geohazards and urban management. The local Shanghai Surveying and Mapping Bureau assisted the Ministry of Railways with GPS services and expertise during the construction phase and issues today monthly reports routinely to the railway operators. This again demonstrates that China is more than capable of exploiting their infrastructures across sectors.

The Qinghai-Tibet railway has made it possible to gather more scientific data from the Tibetan Plateau. China's next challenge is to share these data with the rest of the world. Photo: B L Bye 

The success of the Shanghai maglev rail has resulted in plans for rapid expansion. The next phase will give Shanghai a maglev service between the two Shanghai Airports and will continue its expansion all the way to Hangzhou.

Shanghai – Hangzhou 

Shanghai World Expo 2010 mascot

However, it is clear that railway – and particularly fast rails – will on the long run be environmental friendly due to the fact that less people will choose cars and planes as means of travel. Saving time has positive economic impacts as well.

Green movement

Global Village of Beijing is a non-governmental, non-profit environmental organization founded by Sheri Xiaoyi Liao in 1996. The Global Village of Beijing's mission is to help China to achieve sustainable development by increasing public awareness and enhancing public participation. For Sheri Xiaoyi Liao's restless work to protect the environment she has received numerous awards, among them the Sophie prize, an international award (US $ 100,000), for environment and sustainable development established by the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder and his wife Siri Dannevig. Sheri Xiaoyi Liao is an invited speaker to many major event around the world and is currently adviser to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Green train
One of Global Village of Beijings many projects is the green train. The Green Olympics Train seeks to preserve biodiversity in China's Southwest through public education campaigns to promote green living and green consumption. These measures, along with publicity for ecotourism in the region are targeted at various administrative levels to promote ecological and environmental education. This project is designed to intentionally coincide with the government's “Green Olympic” campaign in order to take advantage of current attention given to environmental protection.

Conclusions

Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin are the three largest urban areas in China. Even if they do not count as midsize cities the railway system being build in and around these cities indicates that China is on the right track. It could look like China is ready to go leapfrog the Western path, at least when it comes to transportation systems.

In connection with the construction of this transportation infrastructure, China has also shown that it's inhabitants are quick learners and innovative users of technical infrastructures. The Qinghai-Tibet railway was actually the first construction project (2001-2006) where China used GPS. China surpasses a number of countries (I will not name names) by it's immediate use of the GPS technology for science such as climate change research while constructing the transportation system.

GPS equipement on the Tibetan Plateau. Photo: B L Bye 

By using the symbolics of the environmental friendly train, the Global Village of Beijing reaches outside the dense urban areas and streches their arms to the poorer and lesser developed Soutwestern China. There are strong environmental groups in China, cooperating with the government to raise public awareness and promote eco-education. 

China, the ancient Middle Kingdom, is vast and deeply complicated and I'll be the first to admit I do not understand this culture but barely on the surface. And I have merely touched upon the subjects of global warming and the big questions from Bali.

One thing I am sure about though, is that China is a lot more technically advanced than we in the Western world would like to think. There is no reason to believe the country will not do whatever it can to protect its resources. That includes taking measures to meet the challenges of global warming.

Stumble It! | Digg It! (6 Diggs)